Paul Wiltshire: Yeah. Wow. That woke me up. Now I'm awake.

Michael Walker: You're like, wait, what? Okay. I was expecting the yak. Alright, I'm very excited to be here today with Paul Wiltshire. So, Paul is the CEO of a company called Songtradr. He's produced over 15 million record sales with 12 number one hits before founding Songtradr.

He's an award-winning entrepreneur, revolutionizing music licensing and rights management for creatives worldwide. And he's a driving force behind democratizing the music industry through cutting-edge technology and unmatched industry expertise. So I'm really excited to talk to him today and share a little bit about what he sees that's working right now for independent artists.

At the time of recording this, there's such a big wave of revolution that's happening in the music industry due to generative AI and also feeling kind of like, how do you cut through the noise? There are so many artists releasing music every day. So, really excited to have Paul on the podcast today to share a little bit about his experience and advice for independent artists to be successful.

So, Paul, thank you for being here today.

Paul: Thanks for having me, Michael. It's great to be here.

Michael: Absolutely. So, maybe for anyone who this is the first time connecting with you, could you share a little bit about how you found yourself as the CEO of Songtradr and a little bit about your journey?

Paul: I think if I was to go back to when I first really discovered music, my current role in the music industry was the furthest thing from my mind. I mean, I started out wanting to be a keyboard player in a band and write songs, and for the first—I guess for the first 20 years of my professional music life—it was all about that.

I started out playing in bands, mainly cover bands, but I had aspirations in original bands that didn’t work out. And I loved the creative process. I was very much into producing music and hands-on with tools such as synthesizers.

You know, DAWs—you have Logic. I think I had Emagic 1.2, which is like the 1995 version of Logic Audio today. So I’m sure many of your listeners weren’t even born then. That was the period where Power Macs were coming in and you were starting to record audio on computers. And I just loved that. I fell in love with that whole process. It just felt really magical. And the feeling of creating music is still, today, an unmatched feeling. I think it's hard to replicate.

In the pursuing years from there, I think my first time in music production was completely free. It was without any real goal other than to make music I wanted to make. And that was—as I referred to before using the word "magical"—it really was.

I found my way into having to also make a living out of it though. So then I started working with different artists—always independent. I think this is going back to the late '90s.
 I set up my studio to be able to do everything I needed to do at the time: record vocals, finish a track. I played guitar, keyboards, and a little bit of bass, so I was able to do everything. And I just did that almost every day for many, many years until it really became a honed skill where I could produce professionally.

And that gave way to a career where I started working mainly in Australia with a lot of well-known artists there. I got to travel here to America, where I now live—where I was also born, that's another story.

That was my life until, really, as recently as 2010, 2012—around that period. I started wanting to explore the bigger problems that I was seeing as a result of having years in the industry and working with rights, in particular copyrights and publishing, as well as recordings.

Having built up my own collection of recordings and copyrights, I was quite frustrated at how hard it was to actually monetize music that I created that I wasn't paid to make. As a producer, I was being hired by other artists or record labels, and all the music I made outside of that sort of sat on a hard drive. I was like, "What am I gonna do with this?" I was always fascinated by rights and how it worked. I used to get my royalty statements and just be like, "This can't be right."

This statement says that the song I composed had X amount of sales and I'm due this amount of royalties. Meanwhile, the recording information that came from, say, the label, was entirely different. And the two would never match up.

Clearly, there's something very broken in the music industry. And as I started to learn more about how it all works and how antiquated—even today—the industry is from an infrastructure perspective, it really made me think about technology.

What's technology’s role in the music industry, in terms of music rights?

So at the time, I was a young father. I had two boys—they were six and seven at the time. My wife and I packed up our bags from Australia and moved to America with the ambition to create a platform that democratized music licensing and connected rights holders together so that we could license music efficiently—so that anyone could.

We moved here to Los Angeles in 2013 and set up the company in 2014. It was very humble beginnings. We found our co-founder, Helga Stefan, who was the CTO. It was really Helga and I sitting in a room, creating the product. Victoria—my wife—was actually working on design and how certain things could look. We built the company very slowly. We did raise capital to help fuel it, and we found that we got a lot of traction from artists looking for ways to license their music.

We found that they came en masse. There was more supply than demand. Having to solve demand in a marketplace like that was a big challenge. So I might pause there, and we can go into that aspect as the next step.

Michael: Awesome. I love it. And I feel I can relate to what you're describing right now in terms of early stages of building this business and seeing a massive problem, and wondering what's the role of technology to help solve this problem.

I'm curious to hear where the story goes. I want to hear more of it, and more about Songtradr.
 I mean, that's a big problem to solve. And I've had that same thought too—about licensing and just how crazy antiquated it is.

And the fact that there's a black box that all this money goes to, you're like, "Wait, what? The black box?"

Like, how is this black box...

It’s black boxes.

Black boxes.

Multiple of them.

Paul: Oh yeah. It's not just one. I mean, there is unmatched royalty income on, I would say, almost every DSP's balance sheet in the world. So, no, it's a problem. Just the size—it's largely due to the lack of, I guess, education or knowledge around what is a copyright.

So I'm an artist, I'm putting out a record. You're kind of unaware that there are two rights: there's the recording right, and there's the copyright. And I think that it's not uncommon for distribution—like DIY distribution platforms—to make the copyright data optional because hardly anyone really understands it.

What's a PRO? What does it mean? Who are the co-writers? How does this all work? Friction. And it's overwhelming. It is a tough thing. I mean, it took me, I think, a decade to understand it, even though I was well and truly in the business of making music and earning a living from it. But I didn't really understand—I certainly didn't understand—how everything worked and how everything was collected.

And these were back in the much simpler days when it was really more about sales and not the global arena that it is today with DSPs.

But the next sort of stage of building Songtradr was really around how do we—well, first of all, when you're embarking on a mission like this, it's sometimes best to be a little ignorant, I think, about how hard it is. Because if you knew how hard it was and just how long it's going to take you, you probably would just say, "There's got to be an easier life ahead of me."

But it's incredibly hard building technology. It's incredibly hard building a platform that people will come and use and like. And there are all types of challenges along the way—whether it's how to manage a team, how to manage people, how to grow a company—there are all kinds of challenges.

But what we found was we really needed to accelerate the demand side of our business in terms of finding customers that would license music so that the artists and the songwriters who come to the platform would have a better experience.

Maybe this was an error—that we didn't launch with a distribution service. Since around that time, there were a lot of distribution companies really starting to scale. We thought, "We'll focus on licensing," and we introduced distribution later. But it wasn't—you know, that may have been an error because it could have been an opportunity for us to capture more data and just to have an artist do all their things in one place. But those are the things you miss.

The process for us to really speed up the demand side of our business—so that is, customers licensing music: advertisers, music supervisors working in film and TV, gaming companies that want music for games—this was going back to 2016, 2017, 2018, those years.

We had to raise capital to hire people, to have relationships with the people in the industry to create more transactions. And so you have the challenge of building a business and then needing capital to expand the business, to have the people to be able to get the results.

Then we really started to see that advertising was a very valuable area in the licensing business. And we thought, "Oh, let's do that really well. Let's really hyper-focus on that area," because when we think about advertising, it's like all the biggest businesses in the world—most of them have to advertise in some way, and so much of that advertising requires music.

So we really saw that as a big opportunity. And we sped up our ability to license music to advertisers by actually using M&A and acquiring several businesses that were experts in just creating music and licensing music for major brands and advertising agencies.

In 2019, we bought a company called Big Sync Music. Then we bought a company called Massive Music, which—both are very well-known brands in that arena and have had years of experience creating some of the biggest campaigns and music-related licensing for brands and advertisers. And that led to us speeding up the business, growing it to be a larger global company.

We also bought a company in Australia called Zu, which was a well-known creator and music company for brands and advertising there. So it expanded our footprint across Asia. By 2021, we had offices in Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, New York, and LA.

Then we started looking at the infrastructure side of the industry. It's so crucial in order to be able to facilitate licensing—especially in the digital space and the gaming space.

One of the complicated areas of music licensing is when a track is used or licensed in any type of content and then appears on YouTube or TikTok or some UGC platform. Often there is the friction of the platform not recognizing the music and therefore taking it down, or it being registered as a copyright that's represented by other rights holders and creating a conflict.

So we started really hyper-focusing on: how can we solve that problem at scale for the entire music industry? What does that infrastructure look like? And we embarked on—and we’re still on the journey of this—really building infrastructure that allows us to connect with platforms like UGC platforms but also be able to license to more digital businesses like gaming companies, etc.

That led us to buying a company called 7digital, which we found to be a very interesting business where all of the world’s music is distributed to 7digital, and it becomes the single point of entry or delivery for some major DSPs in the world.

That was one step toward a goal of being able to look at the world's music and eventually see if we can solve how to match all of the recordings to copyrights and solve the greater issue of understanding what is the data of the music industry.

I know recently, Bandcamp became part of our platform or part of our ecosystem. There are so many artists on Bandcamp that would have money owed to them, that have distributed music to the many DSPs. We have an ambition to go and collect at some point for them and find that money.

But it's a long journey. There's so much to do and so much to build that it could be a three- to five-year journey in order to accomplish that.

Michael: Wow. That is so, so inspiring. Thank you for sharing. And just a higher level of thinking—I imagine that comes into play when you're looking at the wider [00:16:00] market and looking at mergers and acquisitions and figuring out how do we solve some of these major issues—like actually quantifying who owns what.

Where my mind goes with that is—I think we’d love to hear your thought process about where we're at now and where things are going. In particular, Web3 and blockchain seem like they have some major implications for this specific problem.

Also, the other thing I’d love to pick your brain on is just supply and demand. You talk about how important it is that demand matches supply. And right now there's this new era of generative AI as it relates to music in particular and how that affects the supply and demand of these supply chains for licensing. That's a big—woo, that's a big cliff to potentially look over.

So, out of those two, which one is kind of calling to you to speak to first?

Paul: I mean, the supply and demand piece is really interesting because we, in many ways, we've never lived in a better time for independence. And at the same time, because there's so much supply, it would feel for many that it's never been harder.
 Mm. And so, and this is—but there is a true democratization happening in the music industry, I think, over time. And the independent music, by market share, has continued to grow and continue to be more and more relevant. And I think we're—I think in the years to come, it will only get better, but that will be eroded to some degree by AI and AI generative music if we're not careful.

And the thing is, there is inevitably—I would say that there will be technologies that try to empower anyone in the world to want to be a musician and to be a creator. That's inevitable. When we think about what goes into a piece of music, this is where I have a fairly strong belief that art should shine.

Good art should shine above, and we should use tools to really express our art and make it as positive or as good as we possibly can. But I think it's important for artists today to look to technology to give them every chance of success. So whether that's being on all platforms, but also using technology to help create product, create their tracks faster, to work smarter.

When generative AI is inevitably going to make music to a higher and higher quality, there's going to be apps that allow anyone to create music and share it. So it really begs the question: what is an artist, and what are they saying, and what are they sharing with the world? What goes into their intentions?

And I just strongly believe that artistry will always shine. I don't think someone randomly putting up a track created by AI is going to be a transformative artist career. I do believe someone who sweats and bleeds for their music career every day, that refines their abilities—they really work at it, they give it all, and they have something to say, and they're able to really connect with their inner voice, not try to follow what they think they should be, but who they truly are and express that and connect with that.

These are the things that really help them stand out and be able to really make a difference in the world, but also to afford a career from it. In terms of how hard that is to do—I don't know why my camera keeps on doing up and down, anyway—in terms of how hard that is to do today...

Yeah. I do think artists need to think of it as a business. They have to be very disciplined in terms of how they approach the day. It's like daily routines of exercise and writing and mindfulness and being healthy, and you're sort of looking at all the pillars of life and making sure that you're absolutely 100% when you are writing that music and you've got that edge.

But also treating it like a business—making sure that you're activating all your channels, you're responding to fans. We are really moving into this very powerful direct-to-fan world, which is where independence will flourish.

So what you do—your communications, you're putting in the effort to communicate to your artists, having that positive feedback loop between you and your fan base so that you're talking about it, you're connecting with them, you're giving them time. Even though that doesn't feel as fun as making music and just doing your craft, it's an essential part of the business that supports you to make your—to have your craft.

I'm spitballing here, but it's been a long time since I had to survive just as a musician. And I think if I was to go back out there now, I'd be quite intimidated by the sheer volume of music. So it's something I do think about.

Michael: Hmm.

That's powerful. I mean, I got goosebumps several times you were talking, which usually makes me think that you're on a good path.

What I'm hearing you say is that these tools are certainly going to change what's possible for creatives and maybe even redefine what it means to be an artist.

And your recommendation would be for people who are witnessing this wave happening to swim along with it. There’s momentum there, and to not use it to lose who they are—not to just let AI go create something and then it’s not connected to who they are.

But actually using it as a tool to express themselves is ultimately who's going to be most successful with that tool. It reminds me of—we had Nolan Arbaugh on our podcast a few months ago. He's the first human Neuralink patient.

And he's paralyzed from the neck down. And we had him on the podcast and he created a song telepathically with his Neuralink.

And it really opened up my eyes like, wow—what a wild world. Are we going to be in a world where we can just think? I mean, I guess everything that we're doing already is sort of a function of like, I’m thinking, but I've practiced enough to know—my fingers kind of know what to play.

But it starts with a thought and then it turns into the actual music.

And if we're just kind of removing the gaps or the friction points between your ideas and your voice and you sharing who you are, and just making it easier for you to express that in a more beautiful, articulate way, definitely seems like that's a more empowering way to look at the rise of generative AI—versus like, “Oh, it's bad,” or, “We shouldn't have it,” or, “We should try to put it back into a box.”

Paul: Yeah. I think it's important. You can easily say something is bad, something is good, and pass judgment, but it doesn't stop it from happening. And I think the industry has historically resisted change, and it didn't work out so well for it when it did. It has to embrace it.

But there does need to be—I mean, this is from a humanity perspective—AI is the quantum shift. There's nothing like it, I don't think. Maybe the discovery of electricity, right? That was a massive shift that led to so much change. But this is a next level.

Michael: I mean, it's like building on top of that too, right? It's all kind of connected.

Paul: Yeah. And when we think about what—I don't know how much you've experienced just using AI, just like ChatGPT. It just makes everything so much quicker and faster.

I think ChatGPT has almost become a bit of a friend. It's like, “So why do you think this?” and, “How would you do this?”

And it's remarkable how, when we think about what it is—it's a consolidation of billions of minds.

And so that power and where that's going to lead is unimaginable, and it's going to go very fast, I think.

So that requires legislation. There's going to need to be some legislation around the arts.

It may take too long to get that. It's not exactly easy to get new laws passed. But you'll have all of these loopholes around it—like you'll have countries that don't legislate, where you can launch a platform that does a certain thing.

And then it'll be gray whether you're a user in America, but the platform’s in a country with a very different set of political values or at least intellectual property values.

So I think inevitably there will be massive disruption through platforms that create products that infringe inevitably on someone's rights.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Paul: But I think the best we can do is lean into it as much as we can to use it for good.

And what I often think through the lens of a brand, if a brand had been traditionally licensing music for an ad, and it's always historically paid for that music, it's paid—there's an artist behind the music that's creating that sound of their brand or their product.

I think it would be difficult, especially for the big Fortune 500 brands, to move away from that and just go, “Oh, let's get a computer to make it.” Let's remove the artist. I mean, it's quite a shift in consciousness around how they think about art that's selling their product and connecting to consumers.

And I think there would be some noise around—a negative noise around—that if they were to take that path. They may still do it. And in 20 years, maybe that's what everyone does because it becomes desensitized.

But I think inevitably the future—we'll probably, instead of having 20 million or 15 million artists in the world, there'll be 200 million, maybe 500 million because anyone who can arguably create a piece of music is an artist.

And if we get to the stage you're talking about, where you can create it with your mind—mm-hmm—it’s, anything's possible.

But I still believe in—I think, I've lived a life that's art, creative, and part commercial, and they're two different parts of the brain.

And I know that when I'm in that creative brain, it's really about connecting to whatever you want to call it—your soul, your deeper intuition. And I think art is really expression of how we're feeling and what our experiences are in the world.

And there will always be a market for that kind of truth to be shared.

Michael: Hmm. Yeah. Well, maybe at some point in this conversation, we can try to go to some deeper territory. Just kidding. This is awesome. Sorry, am I—

Paul: Am I too hippie?

Michael: Oh, this is great. No, this is my favorite kind of conversation to have.
 And I mean, your background in the industry coming to this too, I think is just very, very interesting.

But what you're sharing around the soul—like the soul of music and how connecting with that self, or the soul, or whatever you want to call it, and expressing it—that’s really kind of like the heart of what makes music what it is.

Especially, it brings people together. It connects us.

And so what I'm hearing you say is that AI is an amazing tool, but ultimately it comes together with the soul as well. And that's the part that—

Paul: That's very hard to emulate. That's very hard to emulate.

Michael: Yeah. Emulate the soul. Gosh, what’s the test called where you talk to the AI and if it fools you into thinking it’s a human—the Turing test.

The Turing test of the soul. I guess that's one of the big questions we're going to—I mean, we're already starting to ask right now—but certainly as it becomes more and more intelligent is, like, yeah, what is the nature of consciousness? What is the nature of the soul?

Is this thing intelligent in a way that it has—like, what does it mean to have a soul?

So not a question I ask very often, but I feel like it's kind of—it's led us here in this moment.

I'm curious to hear your perspective as it relates to music and as it relates to the blossoming of this new form of intelligence in the form of AI.

You mentioned it's like a billion minds coming together to form this unique form of intelligence. And obviously, we're going into conjecture mode here. Like, we're discovering what is the nature of this digital intelligence.

But what's your perspective on the future of where it's heading?

And how that ties into some of the more—the roots. The roots of who we are as humans and the roots of what we're doing with music.

Paul: In terms of AI’s future capacity?

Michael: Yeah, maybe in terms of your perspective on the soul and consciousness and how AI and this form of intelligence plugs into humanity.

Paul: Mm-hmm. Well, I think as a consciousness, we're like teenagers.
 I think we've been, I think, believing in the possibility that we can be so much more than what we are today.

I mean, science tends to always look backwards and measure. It's hard to look into the future and map out what's possible.

One of my favorite films is Interstellar. I think I've watched that about 15 times.

The soundtrack, by the way, is incredible to work with. If you ever want to just focus on something, that soundtrack is killer—Hans Zimmer.

But we're stepping into belief systems.

And it's an incredibly personal topic.

But how I go about life is I recognize that I'm somewhat a child in the universe, and I'm here to learn.  And I think you have to intend to—well, it's like what you put in is reflective of what you get out. So I think intentions are important. Intentions to do good, intentions to mean—

Intentions to grow something that's healthy, whether it's family, whether it's keeping your own body healthy or the business that you're building and the customers that you have—to ensure that they've got something that's going to benefit them and grow with them, however that materializes.

And I think it's almost—and especially going through—I'm sort of hitting the middle part of my life.

And there's almost a need to disconnect from the ego.

The ego is sort of there. It's very present when you're younger and it's like—it's almost fueling.

It's like, I'm going to be a rock star. I'm going to be a successful producer. I'm going to be a successful entrepreneur.

I've had those, I've had that ego inside me over my life.

And I think it's about being—finding your true self takes a lifetime.

And the relationship that has to music is—music is the perfect way to communicate.

What does that sound like?

What does any emotion, any thought, any feeling—

Can be expressed, I think, in music.

And I don't think there's—

Well, you can do it in film, right? It's more actual.

Where music is more interpretation.

And I just find that is the single most powerful art form. I mean, I'm biased towards music.

But I think it's the single most powerful art form in the world.

It can turn someone to tears instantly. It can make someone just want to move, or it can make someone happy.

It's an incredibly powerful force.

And we recently had—our house burned down in the Los Angeles fires in January.
 And so I think even that event—

I spent 20, 30 years curating a very cool studio—amazing vintage synths and outboard gear and console and SSL, all that, guitars—

And I think that experience of having to lose all these things, these material things, has certainly woke something up in me that made me look a bit more inward.

What is the journey? Why did this happen?

Is life just random? Is it bad luck?

And there's really nothing you can do but get over it?

Or is this a remarkable opportunity to use what is a tragedy—and certainly there's grief and disappointment associated with going through something like that—But is it an opportunity to really transform your life into something better, something happier, something more joyful, something more meaningful?

And I'm kind of waiting for the time I get to be at a piano again, which was—I had a very nice grand piano in my lounge room, which I would just go and sit and play.

It was kind of everything.

It was really just making up music.

I think every time I sat at the piano, it was just something new.

And I let it go. I'd play it, let it go.

And maybe if I hit on something good, I might record on a voice note.

But I miss that.

And I'm looking forward to going back to that to see what comes out musically.

And meanwhile, I have to run a big company and I’m always distracted with running the company, building the business. I've got—hopefully my shareholders won’t listen to me and go, “Ah, he sounds a little soft.”

Don’t worry, I’m still a capitalist.

You can be two things. You can be many things.

You don’t have to—

It is an amazing world we live in.

There is so much light. There’s so much dark.

And I think the world is going through its own growth phase at the moment. We live in really bizarre, politically polarized times where there is very little meeting in the middle. It’s like you’re either—it’s either you're crazy or you're Hitler. It’s a bizarre time.

And I think humanity’s learning.

When I refer to it as teenagers—we’ve had all these tools of this power of being able to communicate to the world through social media.

And we’ve only had that sort of power for 15 years.

And we’re learning the consequences of it.

And—okay, what's the next phase of learning?

And hopefully it's a very bright and positive future.

But I have great faith in humanity to transcend almost everything.

I mean, we've got a pretty strong proof of that—that we've done it in the past.

Michael: Mm.

Paul: This is a deep conversation. This is unexpected.

Michael: Yeah. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t expecting specific ED for either, but that is so powerful. I’m so glad that you shared that. And what it reminded me of was the Einstein quote: "Imagination is so much more powerful than knowledge," because imagination is unlimited. And knowledge—you talk about kind of looking at the past, and we’re trying science, we’re trying to assign things and measure things—but really, part of the nature of who we are is that it’s creative in nature, and therefore we can have intention, and we can decide: what are we going to create together? And that’s why those intentions and doing good is so important.

Paul: I think for artists, it’s very important to really believe in yourself. It’s almost like a combination of—it's one part research. Make sure that you're doing some—if you’re wanting to make a career out of it, you do have to figure out how to connect with an audience. And there’s very practical aspects to that. But you have to hone your talents. You have to be the best version of yourself to give yourself the best chance. But also, having a faith in your ability to succeed—whatever that is. Some people are religious, some people have their own versions of spirituality, whatever that looks like. But at its core is: I can, I believe I can achieve this. And setting those intentions and having a clear picture of what you want to achieve, and not being distracted by—there may be people who are critical. Someone, an A&R guy or girl, might listen to your recording and say, “Eh, not really hearing it. Don’t think you should do this. Look for another career.” You may face all kinds of criticism or roadblocks that just make you feel like, “I shouldn’t be doing this.” But I just think it’s very powerful.

I had so many people tell me that what we were doing with Songtradr was impossible. I was crazy. And it was gonna fail. I think I heard that for many years. But I don’t hear that so much anymore.

Michael: Mm. That’s so good. What came to mind there at the end was the little engine that could. It’s a book I’m reading to my kids often now. It’s just like, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” It is really powerful. If you don’t believe that you can, then you almost certainly are not going to. It’s one of the challenges that you described. It’s almost always going to be more challenging than you expect. And so if you don’t have that strong faith, that belief in yourself, then there are so many opportunities to fall off.

Hmm. Yeah. Well, Paul, this has been a really fun conversation. I appreciate you sharing. And some of those topics, I know, are in different territory that often don’t get shared because of—you mentioned—the political landscape, and just in general, we’re in a polarizing time. And it seems like music has an opportunity to break down walls and kind of bring us together. And so I really think that the impact that you’re making on musicians around the world, and the fact that we have these many platforms that you are building into a network to be able to help soundtrack who we are as a collective, is really important work.

So I just want to say thank you for all the work that you’ve put into that and making the world a better place. And for anyone that’s listening or watching this right now who’s a musician, who is interested in learning more about Songtradr and about some of the different platforms that you’re part of, maybe you could share a little bit about where’s the best place for them to go to dive deeper or connect more with the tools.

Paul: I mean, undoubtedly for us, Bandcamp is our prized property. Bandcamp is—it’s much more than a platform. It’s a very important global community of fans that support artists. And I don’t think there’s really anything like it in the world. We feel very honored to be its caretaker, and we’re looking at how we can really expand the opportunities for artists on the platform through licensing and through other ways of being able to make money as an artist.

But I think the best place for those artists that aren’t on Bandcamp—we would love you to sign up and set up an account. It really does require—there is such a huge audience. So your music may get discovered naturally, but it’s really about bringing your audience there to support you and to be part of that community.

We’ve got lots of things planned for the next few years. Everything takes time with technology. It takes a long time to build all the things that we might come up with. I wish that we could press a button—and maybe we’ll get there one day—we can just press the button and everything updates. But we’re very excited about the future of being at this intersection of the music industry. We’re great believers in independence. We work with everyone in the music industry. We work with the major labels. We work with major publishers and brands and game companies and DSPs.

And our role is to make it easier for all of those stakeholders to operate in an industry, I think, which has only just begun to unlock its real value. I think the music industry is going to continue to grow and grow and grow. And I think technology will help speed up that growth. But I think just the one thing I really hope the industry does is take legislation seriously around AI and how we can ensure that it’s used for good and it’s not used to really dilute what we do. But I think we’ll get there.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Well, I share your belief in a more positive future than now. It seems to be the direction things are headed, despite the more awareness that we have of all the problems that we have, which are many. But we are definitely—it pays to celebrate, sort of acknowledge where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

Well, Paul, thank you so much again for being on the podcast today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Like always, we’ll put all links in the show notes for easy access, and I’ll look forward to connecting again soon.

Paul: Sounds great. Great to spend time with you, Michael. All the best.