Category Archives: Music

Spotify’s monetization misstep with its new fundraising feature

(This was originally published as a section in today’s Monetizing Media newsletter. Sign up here.) Hi everyone – Last week, Spotify added a feature called Artist Fundraising Pick for artists to add a fundraising links to their profile. It’s done in partnership with Cash App, GoFundMe, and Paypal.me so when a user clicks it, they are redirected to […]

The Covid-19 crisis should push musicians to own their audience and invest in virtual concerts and membership models

(This was originally published as a section of today’s Monetizing Media newsletter) This crisis is an opportunity for the music industryMusic has been hard hit by Covid-19 because live events comprise such a large proportion of artist earnings. But working from home is forcing artists and their teams to confront how under-developed their business is […]

Kobalt Music, Part 2: Music’s broken system of copyright and royalty management

Part 2 of my series on Kobalt Music and the state of the music industry breaks down the complex structure of copyright tracking and royalty payments in music and how Kobalt has pushed the industry forward through centralization and transparency. Read it on TechCrunch >> How Kobalt is simplifying the killer complexities of the music […]

My interview with Northzone’s PJ Pärson

Today I posted an interview in TechCrunch that I did with Northzone general partner PJ Parson at the SLUSH conference in Helsinki. We talked about the core investment thesis that has guided him for 20 years, how he went from running a fish distribution to running a VC firm, his best practices for effective board […]