And, none of those paths, aside from Neighbours, gave musicians any kind of guarantee of having their work heard overseas.

That's the big difference in the streaming and social media era – music isn't region-locked any more. Anyone can be heard anywhere. One tick of a box when the recording label or aggregator uploads the track and suddenly your song is available to tens of millions of streaming subscribers around the world. The trick then, of course, is getting people to listen to it.

Although Triple J and having managers interested when she was busking in Byron Bay was instrumental to Watson's success, she says streaming services were key when commercial radio stations were subscribed to the experience paradox.

"Streaming services are very important," she said. "The radio doesn't want to play you until you're No.1 on Shazam, and you can't get No.1 on Shazam without getting played."

The scale of platforms like Apple Music and Spotify make it difficult to run Unearthed-style programs, which is still the gold standard for finding new Australian artists who haven't had the opportunity to tour or professionally record. But both services run programs to launch new artists onto the world stage.

Spotify has Rise, which gave the world American singer-songwriter King Princess and Australian-Japanese musician Joji, makes short-form documentaries about the artists, pays for new photoshoots and features them in more playlists.

Apple Music has the monthly Apple Music Up Next Artists, which gives the featured artist a short film, interview on the Beats 1 radio station with Zane Lowe, a performance on US late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live and more inclusion in playlists. Australians Amy Shark and Dean Lewis were both Up Next Artists, and, as a result Dean Lewis is now the No.3 most streamed singer-songwriter on Apple Music worldwide, only trailing Ed Sheeran and George Ezra. Lewis is also the No.1 most streamed singer-songwriter in Australia.

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In addition to those programs, both services have playlists of new music for subscribers. Apple Music last week changed the update cycle of that playlist to daily instead of weekly to give more artists air time.

Apple's new New Music Daily playlist will blend new music from already popular artists with music from people you've probably never heard of. According to Rachel Newman, Apple Music's global senior director of editorial, there will be a featured song every day that will go beyond just that playlist and hit Zane Lowe's Beats 1 Radio show, as well as spread throughout the platform's playlists.

"We're hoping to drive real numbers, and also provide a PR and marketing opportunity through this great extension on Beats 1," Newman said.

Although the first song featured was by Taylor Swift, who need no more introduction, it will be cycled through new and noteworthy artists, depending on who the editorial team unanimously agree has the best track of the day.

The Australian team is one of our more significant groups of people.

Rachel Newman

Newman is originally from Sydney and Apple Music has a substantial editorial team based in Australia. "We really invest in people and human curation, and in building up physical teams all over the world that are made up of the best music people from those markets," Newman said. "We have really fantastic deep subject matter experts in all of our markets, and the Australian team is one of our more significant groups of people."

The biggest complaint from many artists about this new streaming era is how poorly they are paid. But Newman is quick to distance Apple from that criticism. "Because we pay the music community very, very well," she said. "I think you'll find that we don't get criticised."

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Anecdotal evidence from artists who speak out suggests Apple Music pays more than its rivals even though that gap reduced between 2017 and 2018. According to a US study by The Tricordist, in 2018 Apple had a 9.95 per cent market share of streams but paid out 24.95 per cent of the dollars. This is compared to Spotify's 29.22 per cent of streams and 48.95 per cent of dollars, and YouTube Content ID's 48.58 per cent of streams but dismal 6.99 per cent of the dollars.

Spotify, Amazon, Google and Pandora are currently suing the US's Copyright Royalty Board to overturn a decision to increase royalty payments to songwriters over the next five years.

But, while the streaming services continue their search for the next big thing and try to hold onto subscribers by finding them their new favourite music, the musicians stay focused on their art.

Fresh from Beats 1, Tones and I headed into LA to get working on the music video for her new song The Kids Are Coming, appropriately about how the next generation is fighting to make the world a better place.

The author travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Apple.