Australian music executive Paul Wiltshire believes the music business is experiencing a renaissance, but that many opportunities are limited because it is inefficient and overprotective.
Wiltshire is the CEO of the Los Angeles-based content services and licensing company Songtradr.
From the outset, Wiltshire’s growth strategies and opportunities were based on changing trends within the creative community and the latest technologies to make them seamless.
It allowed Songtradr to expand in the last two years and shape his vision in the new era.
Q: Covid turned the music industry upside down. While many companies went to sleep during the pandemic, it seems Songtradr has doubled its growth plans. What has kept you motivated in these “unprecedented” times?
PW: “We have noticed a clear trend during the Covid confinements where music creators were encouraged to spend more time creating and focusing on digital monetization.
“From Songtradr’s perspective, after the initial interruption of transforming our company to work remotely, we focused on pursuing our goals and fortunately we adapted to remote working life successfully.
“I know that for my colleagues in Los Angeles, less time to go to the office and from the office meant more time to get the balance between work and personal life, so in any case , this had a positive impact.
“The last two years have been an extraordinary moment; from the perspective of technology, the world advanced at least five years in the time of two.
“When it comes to motivation, we are obsessed with democratizing music licenses and digital rights management.
“The music industry is experiencing a renaissance, but many opportunities are limited due to lack of innovation and interoperability along with a culture of protectionism that causes data problems and inefficiencies across the industry, especially in the B2B space where we focus “.
Q: We’ve heard you talk about a “rebirth of music licenses”. How did this come about and what is the opportunity for artists and their teams?
PW: “Music has always been at the heart of culture and defines the human experience in a unique and universal way.
“With the continued proliferation of consumer technologies, this human experience is expanding and becoming increasingly sophisticated.
“World music is now available with one click and with improved search technologies and recommendations, artists can find opportunities to discover and connect with the public through many different platforms and experiences.
“From innovators like TikTok and Netflix that are now major, to platforms like Robolox, Discord, wellness apps to emerging Metaverse technologies, the opportunity is expanding.
“Everyone relies on music to deepen and personalize the user experience by creating new opportunities for music creators and rights owners to connect with the public.”
Q: The way music is licensed has changed, thanks in large part to technology. How is the process now and what will it be like in five years?
PW: “We see the industry opening up more and more to technology to make everything more efficient. It really needs to.
“Technology has created an exponential demand for music and the industry is struggling to keep up, especially from a data perspective.
“Songtradr is focusing on developing tools that eliminate license friction for both the licensee and the licensor, and in particular for digital platforms.
“We approach this holistically from both points of view, what music creators and rights owners want and need, and how music users get the most out of the music they use.
“Our mission is to protect the value of music in this process, as we (and the rest of the music industry) do not want a future where music is so commodified that music licensing transactions are reduced to a penny. .
“In some cases, grouped music subscription access is absolutely appropriate, especially for the individual creator community that is completely conditioned on subscription-based music access.
“In the future, all music licenses will be facilitated by technology and I do not mean prolonged negotiations with email and telephone.
“The way the industry currently works is inefficient and overprotective. Technology can solve both efficiency and value protection, increasing capacity and unlocking more value, that’s inevitable.”
Q: Songtradr has evolved at a great pace over the last two years, with a number of key new hires, partnerships and even acquisitions. What are the best performing areas of business now?
PW: “Our main business is the management of digital licenses and rights. With licenses, we have a segmented view by dividing it into three key groups and user experiences.
“(a) Creators: Content creators who use platforms such as YouTube and Twitch to stream content;
“(B) SMB: small and medium-sized enterprises that use music for commercial purposes;
(c) “Company: big brands and platforms (advertising, games, television / film, digital platforms).
“The most important part of our business is our business customers, as we work with so many of the world’s biggest brands.
“We have offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia and are unique in offering a complete solution to major brands, from sound branding, custom composition, world music licensing, rights management and a complete technology platform up to the ROI of music spending.Manage and track music usage with comprehensive data information.
“We have intentionally created our global footprint by focusing on acquiring businesses of the highest quality in key territories specializing in the supply of music for major brands such as Song Zu, Big Sync Music and MassiveMusic and today we are the largest music business for brands in the world.
“We’ve also been developing unique user experiences for content creators and live players (pretzel.rocks) along with digital rights management solutions for rights holders to ensure they optimize copyright collection from platforms like YouTube “.
Q: Are you looking for more partnerships and acquisitions? If so, what are you looking for?
PW: “There is a lot to fix in the music industry from a B2B perspective.
“(Include) issues with poor data and lack of interoperability between the wider music industry in terms of usage and copyright reports to the major barriers to entry facing new digital platforms if they want to use music as part of any user experience.
“Our goal is to provide solutions that unlock and increase the value of music, and we are looking for strategic mergers and acquisitions and partnerships to accelerate our mission.
“We are looking for opportunities that increase our business license client base, so we are licensing more music, technologies that expand our existing stack to achieve our long-term goals of providing a complete digital rights management solution (supply music, rights, data and copyright management) for both parts of our market and AI / Data technologies that increase our ability to scale and report how we recommend / combine music with a brand or content ( near music).
Q: Beyond the rebirth of music licenses, there is a boom in catalog sales. What is your opinion on this, and should artists with enough success to raise the interest of buyers be wary of “selling” their music?
PW: “The investment coming to the music industry from the financial industry is very positive.
“In the last three years alone, more than $ 12 billion has been invested in the acquisition of music rights and record valuations.
“Music as a whole is inherently more valuable as a result.
“The decision to sell is inevitably personal for the rights holder, although there has never been a better time to sell.
“From a licensing standpoint, I think the only thing rights owners should keep in mind is that they will probably lose control over how their music can be used once they sell.
“Music is being marketed and marketed more and more as there are more and more environments that use music.
“Big brands in particular are more than ever harnessing the power of music to connect with their customers.
“Music investors are bound to look for every opportunity to increase the return on their investment and therefore will look at every business opportunity that increases that return.”