Paul Wiltshire and Songtradr are at the centre of a Golden Age for Music

Paul Wiltshire sees the next decade as a golden age for music and artists - fuelled on one side by the low barriers to entry for artists to get their music into the world (supply) and the need for great content and commercial situations that require some sort of musical accompaniment (demand).

What Songtradr does 

Songtradr commercialises music  by matching songs to a commercial party – such as an advertiser, a film production house, a video game maker, a retailer, an app designer or a podcast maker – that is looking to set the right mood with the right piece of music.

Paul explains to AFRs Sarah Thompson, Anthony Macdonald and Tim Boyd

You might choose a piece of music based on a mood (“epic”) and a theme (“drama”) and a genre (“R&B/soul”). Then we could further refine our choice by nominating a vocal style, a featured instrument and a tempo. The Songtradr search engine will then throw up hundreds of choices – we liked Stay With Me by Stuart Moore – that you could then licence.

Songtradr helps its customers step through the  minefield of licensing and raised money for strategic acquisitions  and has made strategic acquisitions designed to expand Songtradr’s reach in with brands 

• creative music agency -  MassiveMusic facilitating  its ability to process the datasets on which it bases its music matching capabilities 
• it also bought Tunefind, a music discovery service for TV, film and gaming

The Money Side 

Last year Songtradr  raised  $US50 million at a valuation of about $US300 million  -  revenue more than double in 2021, from $US19.3 million in 2020, with gross profit up 400 per cent.

The business, has been backed by  WiseTech’s Richard White, Trevor St Baker’s family office and institutions such as Perennial, Regal Funds Management, Aware Super and Argo, 

Something you might want to know about Paul 

Paul is known as one of the most talented and successful entrepreneurs in the music industry. He dabbled with singing and performing, but his real strength was in helping others create and publish their works. 

He is one of the guys that works in the background to help everyone else become successful and realize their dreams. 

He is content to do this. 

He has received many awards for his record production and for the songs that he has written. The sales of his compositions exceed 15 million records. 

He has provided rights management and distribution services for more than 600 thousand catalogs, songwriters, and artists to date.