6PR’s Tod Johnson and Morris Miselowski discuss the Future of Music – Part 1
Business Futurist | Foresight Strategist
If you’ve read this far, something probably connected.
Maybe it put words to something you’d been sensing but couldn’t quite land. Maybe it made something complicated feel clearer. Maybe it unsettled a position you thought you’d settled.
Good. That’s where this work lives.
Not forecasting. Not scenarios at 2050. Not more noise. What’s already moving. The shifts most organisations can’t yet see, name, or understand the full weight of. What it means. What to do about it while it’s still a possibility, not a problem. Short term and long.
Morris Misel has been doing this for 30 years across 160 industries, with boards, executive teams, and leadership groups in Australia and internationally. More than 2,800 engagements. Over a million people a year through conferences, boardrooms, and media.
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Choose Forward.
Music is undergoing its most fundamental structural change since recorded sound was invented. AI can now compose, produce, and personalise music at scale. Streaming has commoditised access while collapsing recording revenue. Live performance has become the primary economic engine. The entire chain from creation to consumption is being rebuilt, and the future of music will reward those who understand the new economics, not the old ones.
Diversification is non-negotiable. No single revenue stream in the future of music is stable — not streaming royalties, not sync licensing, not even live performance alone. The musicians building sustainable careers treat themselves as multi-channel brands: direct fan relationships, subscription models, live experiences, licensing, and selective use of AI tools to reduce production costs. This logic applies equally to labels, promoters, and educators.
The core threat is not replacement — it is devaluation. When AI can generate competent, royalty-free background music on demand, the market for that category collapses. This affects session players, jingle writers, library music composers, and volume-based producers far more than most realise. The economic pressure on mid-tier professional music is already significant and will intensify considerably before the future of music finds a new equilibrium.
Music is a leading indicator for every creative field. The disruption sequence — digitisation collapses distribution costs, platforms aggregate audiences, creators lose leverage, then rebuild through direct relationships — has repeated in publishing, photography, and journalism. With AI, it now accelerates across all creative industries simultaneously. Understanding what happened to the future of music gives every creative professional a clearer map of what is coming.
Watch the artist-fan relationship, not the platform. Platforms change; the direct economic connection between artist and audience is the signal that matters. Artists who own their audience data, build subscription communities, and create live experiences streaming cannot replicate are showing the sustainable future of music model. Also watch AI music regulation in Australia and internationally — the next few years will shape intellectual property frameworks for a generation.
