What AI means for musicians, rights and revenue

Paul Wiltshire's ability to keep reinventing himself offers a blueprint for artists and innovators who are navigating a fast-changing music industry.

Keyboardist, songwriter, record producer, tech entrepreneur — he has gone from writing on number one albums for Australian stars such as Vanessa Amorosi and Delta Goodrem to founding Songtradr, a global music licensing and rights management platform.

Now based in Los Angeles, he wants to help democratise the music industry as artists navigate the shift from traditional record-label sales structures to modern models featuring independent artist monetisation, direct-to-consumer platforms and subscription-based streaming.

Wiltshire launched Songtradr in 2016 after spotting a gap in the market. Traditionally, placing a song in most media formats requires approvals from multiple rights holders, often causing delays and lost royalties. Songtradr simplifies this process, allowing rights owners to upload and manage their music on one platform.

“Songtradr began partly out of my frustration with making music and having to travel around the world to try and place it in film, television and advertisements,” he says. “I felt like this was an obvious way to connect the two sides.”

Wiltshire believes the sync-licensing model helps streamline music rights in a digital world and puts more money back in the pockets of artists.

“We live in a highly commoditised environment where all the music that has ever been released is available for A$15 [via some subscription platforms]. So, our role is to increase the value of that, and protect its value.”

The streaming conundrum

The fact that file-sharing and digital streaming has transformed the music industry is old news.

Subscription-based streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, or Joox and Tencent Music in Asia, are now the main distribution channels of music. Global recorded music revenues hit US$31.7 billion (A$43.83 billion) in 2025, with paid streaming accounting for 52.4 per cent of all revenue.

Dean Ormston, CEO of Australia and New Zealand’s music rights management organisation APRA AMCOS, says the music industry is well placed, despite challenges. “It is a fast-growing, fast-moving sector that is seeing strong growth in a variety of areas, in particular, digital.”

Ormston notes that more Australians are doing well both locally and internationally than ever before.

Nevertheless, poor earnings through streaming platforms and user-generated content platforms, plus the copyright risks associated with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), present a headache. APRA AMCOS wants governments and regulators to forge stronger partnerships with music industry leaders and provide greater business, taxation and copyright support for a “superstar” industry that, according to Ormston, can drive enormous economic and cultural value.

Entrepreneurial musicians

In a complex commercial ecosystem, acclaimed Australian singer-songwriter John Butler is in many ways the epitome of the modern musician.

Butler has assembled a dedicated team of professionals behind the scenes, including his accountant Kylie Thompson FCPA, director of Sorrento Strategic Accounting, as well as lawyers, marketing and PR specialists, music publishers and distributors.

“It takes a village these days,” says Thompson, a music-loving accountant who has been supporting independent artists for three decades. She encourages clients to focus on good asset management in addition to their musical skills. “In order for an artist to stay authentic, it is important for them to keep creative control and ownership of their intellectual property.”

Thompson adds that musicians should have a mindset of being “the CEOs of their business”. While streaming has made music more discoverable, she says it has also devalued music as a product, making it crucial for artists to prioritise touring, merchandising and brand deals. “You have got to get out there to try and make some money, because streaming is not going to cut it.”

 

"Being across revenue-generating opportunities, such as offering VIP fan experiences to support regular ticketing income, can improve [an artist’s] profitability."

 

Butler’s wife, musician Danielle Caruana (aka Mama Kin), agrees it is crucial for modern artists to become entrepreneurs who pursue partnerships and multiple forms of revenue through a direct-to-market model. “The burden and the opportunity for the music industry is that now, more than ever, the most important thing for artists is to connect directly with their fans,” she says.

With the algorithms that drive Spotify playlists, TikTok feeds and YouTube recommendations determining what the world hears, Caruana says such platforms have become the new “gatekeepers” of music choice, rather than record labels and radio programmers. “You can have 30,000 followers, but your posts may only go to 7 per cent of those people.”

When performing or touring, Caruana never misses an opportunity to get fans’ email addresses, postal addresses or other contact details. This allows her to connect directly with them, rather than spending money on social media platforms.

Validation of this approach came last year via chart success for her two-person band Mama Kin Spender, with its album Promises peaking at No. 2 on the ARIA Top 20 Australian Albums chart in August 2025. “Not one of those sales, not one of those metrics came from streaming platforms,” Caruana says. “That was purely through direct contact with our fan base.”

A role for accountants

In Australia, the Bass Line report by Music Australia, reveals that the nation’s music industry generated A$8.78 billion in revenue in 2023–24.

Paul Luczak CPA, founder of The Gild Group, a professional services firm that serves music and entertainment clients, says it is crucial for artists to think like business owners while staying creative. “Touring businesses are expensive to run, so being right across a detailed budget is crucial to maximising profits,” he says.

This is where accountants can make a difference — guiding musicians on budgets while they focus on delivering the “fan experience”.

Luczak says there are many expense categories that can “turn the profitability needle” including travel (staying in hotels versus renting a tour bus), production (making smart choices around lighting and lasers) and road crews (getting the numbers right).

“Likewise, being across revenue-generating opportunities, such as offering VIP fan experiences to support regular ticketing income, can improve profitability,” he says.

Luczak adds that it may be worth engaging an experienced royalty accountant to undertake a periodic desktop review or audit to ensure royalties are not missing.

APRA AMCOS encourages music creators to surround themselves with experts, which includes accountants.

“The artists who survive and do well understand the economics of the business, how their rights play out and how their rights generate revenue for them,” Ormston says.

Accountants may also provide taxation advocacy. As part of its lobbying work, APRA AMCOS has called on the Australian Government to introduce tax incentives to assist grassroots live music following the post-COVID-19 pandemic closure of many venues. A proposed live music tax offset is designed to convince more hoteliers to support artists in their venues.

The topic of AI

Analysis from Creative Australia shows that just 8 per cent of the top 10,000 artists streamed in Australia in 2024 were local. At the same time, Australian artists are achieving strong global reach, with 80 per cent of Spotify royalties in 2023 coming from overseas audiences.

AI is the new force reshaping the industry in two opposing ways. It enables faster, more efficient music production, but also raises concerns about increased competition, intellectual property theft and rights management.

Ormston says musicians have long embraced new technologies and are already using AI to improve production quality. However, concerns persist that AI-generated music could displace human creators.

In response, APRA AMCOS is advocating for stronger regulation to safeguard copyright and intellectual property, drawing parallels with earlier technological shifts such as radio, television and the internet. “In every one of those disruptions, the copyright framework has actually worked,” he says.

 

"AI is a highly valuable tool for ideation. Certain artists will be suited to using it as a tool. And if you think of it as ‘great artistry + hard work + great training + AI’, it equals a potentially better outcome,” he says. “But there will be those artists who will not want that, and rightly so, because what they make is pure in its own sense."

 

While streaming platforms have generally adopted licensing models, Ormston is concerned that generative AI companies may take a different approach. “They are coming from a tech perspective, rather than being in the music industry. And they have already ingested the world’s commercial music, the world’s literature, the world’s artwork.”

The industry is now grappling with this tension, with numerous legal cases underway globally.

Despite these copyright and intellectual property threats, Wiltshire remains optimistic, arguing that AI could ultimately expand the industry by amplifying creativity, rather than replacing it.

“AI is a highly valuable tool for ideation. Certain artists will be suited to using it as a tool,” he says. “But there will be those artists who will not want that, and rightly so, because what they make is pure in its own sense.”

Wiltshire hopes to use Songtradr and Bandcamp, a site it recently acquired, to find ways to make more money for artists and the wider music industry. “There is so much opportunity in the music industry to expand its value. It is about building the right tools and technology to do that, and to open up markets.”

The next phase

Resilience and adaptation will be a key theme for musicians in the coming years.

At APRA AMCOS, Ormston says the focus must be on increasing the visibility of local artists outside streaming platforms, including being played on community and commercial radio, and performing at international festivals.

“Every time an Australian song is performed internationally, whether live or on television, that is returning dollars back through us,” he says. “We are seeing Australian artists headlining big international festivals around the world, getting streamed around the world and performing live around the world. That is also a cause for excitement.”

Ormston believes a play-local campaign is crucial for the music industry. “The same way that you want people to ‘buy local’, you should ‘play local’ as well.”

Caruana will continue to engage with music promoters and fans, especially live-music enthusiasts in regional areas such as the Margaret River in Western Australia and Bowraville in New South Wales. “For emerging and mid-career artists, the importance of regional centres and how that plays into the bigger picture of viability is crucial.”

As she contemplates the music landscape in Australia, she wants to see greater leadership through legislation to prevent the “algorithmic de-prioritising” of Australian artists and copyright, as well as a minimisation of AI interference.

“Everybody needs to dare to be leaders.”

Music an as intangible asset

With the aid of accountants, Kylie Thompson FCPA, director of Sorrento Strategic Accounting, advises entertainers to take advantage of music’s value as an intangible asset. To do so, she lists a five-point plan:

1. Think of your intellectual property (songs and recordings) as a resource that can be licensed repeatedly.
2. Build a catalogue sales strategy featuring different versions and remixes of songs.
3. Register and protect your copyright.
4. Look at potential sync-licensing deals through television, gaming, apps and podcasts.
5. Maximise the value of back catalogues of recordings.

Vinyl rocks

The continuing rise in popularity of vinyl records is an undeniable bright spot for the music industry.

Vinyl is not a niche collectible — it now regularly outsells CDs in the physical format category and keeps setting new annual highs. Once seen as an endangered format, vinyl purchases topped US$1 billion (A$1.38 billion) in the US for the first time in 2025, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

In Australia, vinyl represented 72.8 per cent of physical sales by dollar value in 2024, Australian Recording Industry Association data reveals, with sales hitting A$44.5 million.

Dean Ormston, the CEO of Australia and New Zealand’s music rights management organisation APRA AMCOS, says the popularity of vinyl is clearly “not a blip” and has become an important part of musicians’ revenue through merchandising transactions.

“The dollar return on vinyl records for an artist is great if they are doing their own pressing,” he says. “It is an important part of the mix, and it is fantastic that people are back experiencing music in a different way to streaming.”