Deezer CEO Axel Dauchez has called licensing fragmentation "the cancer of the digital world"and warned that, if publishers continue to negotiate royalty rates directly with music services, they risk killing digital music innovation.

Dauchez believes that this, and the respective holdouts for better rates (such as Marty Bandier's recent fight), are crippling small start-ups that don't have the funds for drawn-out negotiations and large advance payments.

The Deezer man's comments came at last week's World Creators Summit where he ...