Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, Hewitt delved into the dynamic landscape of the music law industry, offering insights into prevailing trends and imminent challenges and opportunities.

Hewitt highlighted a significant trend reshaping the industry – the newfound ability for artists to break into global markets with unprecedented ease.

“The largest trend, this is not just in the future, this is already in play, is that it used to be very hard for people to break markets outside of the market that they were in and that they were touring in, and they were getting radio support in and those kinds of things,” he said.

He recognised the historical challenge Australian artists faced when attempting to enter international markets, with few expectations for those with unrecognisable talent.

“When I started as a music lawyer, there were very few Australian acts that had real success outside of Australia, and it was quite an ephemeral thing to achieve. Certainly, the majors had never really been great at it.

“There’s the odd exception. There is the odd act that is just so supersonically successful that it just happens, or almost, you couldn’t stop it from happening. But for the most part, people who are very smart and invest a lot of money in music have found it very hard with the internet and then with streaming,” he said.

Australian artists now have unprecedented opportunities to reach global audiences through the rise of the internet and streaming platforms.

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This shift is evident in Hewitt’s practice, observing a surge in global breakthroughs among his and his colleagues’ clients.

“I think that has changed remarkably in our office. Between some of my colleagues this week. One is in America at the moment and was just at Coachella with one of his clients and another one is in London at the moment.

“We’ve got, I think, four or five acts that literally at the moment, as in literally today that we’re recording this, are having global moments and are kind of blowing up, if you want to use that terminology, from things that are connecting on TikTok and then connecting inside the DSP. So streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music and so on,” he said.

Hewitt also noted a significant shift in the music industry, highlighting that artists no longer rely exclusively on securing a major label deal to achieve success.

“One of the trends is that it used to be very much. A lot of ways to market could only be opened up by major labels. If you want to have real success in America and you want to get radio in America, you almost cannot do that without a major label.

“There are lots of quite dark reasons why that is to do with its legacy in payola and the way the majors really tied up radio programming in North America,” he said.

“It’s not that you can’t. You can. Someone like Flume had a radio hit in America with Never Be Like You through an independent label. But historically, if you want to have real success in America, the biggest recorded music market in the world, you have to do it through a major.

“Whereas now, you look through the list of the most successful artists, and a lot of them still will have ties to the major label ecosystem. That hasn’t necessarily changed. But the days of having to do quite draconian major-label deals to get real success and very significant economics are gone.”

Instead, Hewitt noted how artists now have many options for navigating their careers, including independent routes that prioritise creative autonomy and ownership of their copyrights.

“A lot of our most successful artists either haven’t or they have, but in a very considered and very piecemeal way where they’re not really tied into this system. That is going to own their copyrights, going to pay them, you know, not the lion’s share of income, and be quite restrictive about how they can operate and what they can do.

“All these artists now, they have an almost unlimited number of options in front of them, how they want to do it and how they want to carve it up,” he said.

However, amid this newfound freedom, Hewitt acknowledged the challenges of preceding success in an increasingly unpredictable landscape.

“That’s the real challenge or the most challenging thing that the business is finding at the moment is that people find it very hard to predict what it is that’s going to have those moments,” he said.

With fewer gatekeepers and traditional success metrics, Hewitt explained how investors and talent scouts need help to discern which emerging artists will achieve breakthrough moments.

“It used to be, in the past, there’d be gatekeepers. If you get this away at radio, you could predict what will happen. If you could get this away from these cultural tastemakers or gatekeepers, you could predict what could happen in an indie-label landscape. If Pitchfork was going to cover something in the 2010s, you know that from the back of that, these other things will happen. And on the back of them, you’ve got a good shot at these happening.

“Whereas now, people are very reluctant to back or invest too much time and energy into things that haven’t got some momentum behind them because no one quite knows how to solve the problem of how do we make these things happen or how do we improve our successes or chances of it happening,” he said.

Despite these challenges, Hewitt remains optimistic about the future of the music industry, expressing: “It’s a better time now than it has ever been in the history of the music business.”

However, he acknowledged that accessing resources for new talent remains a hurdle, emphasising the need for innovative solutions to bridge the gap between artistic potential and financial investment.

“For new talent, it can be very hard to access resources where in the past you had a great demo, some be like, ah, you are awesome, I’m willing to invest in you.

“There’s a lot of money to be spent and invested in talent. It’s just. There’s a bit of a disconnect now between just the goodness of the music and/or the product and the money,” he said.