Accounting firms spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about artificial intelligence. Often it's about how AI can prepare tax returns faster, automate compliance work, draft reports, improve workflows and reduce costs.
When used correctly, AI will definitely make you and your team more efficient. But it's also making your competitors more efficient. Clients now have access to a myriad of AI support advice tools to help them with the basic work you used to do for them.
Despite its efficiency, AI won't make you more distinctive in the marketplace. And it won't help you win.
Why will clients choose your firm when accounting products and expertise become easy to access?
This is not an easy question to answer. At times like these, I've found it helpful to look outside our profession for clues. Take the music industry. For the past two decades, music has undergone seismic change since streaming services arrived. And we can learn a lot from those who came out on top.
Before streaming, recorded music was just a product. Consumers bought albums, CDs and, eventually, digital downloads. Distribution was controlled largely by record companies and retailers. But Spotify and other streaming services upended music industry economics when they arrived about 20 years ago. Suddenly, listeners had access to an almost unlimited catalogue of music for a low monthly subscription (or even for free). Streaming was a massive hit to traditional record companies and music retailers. For artists streaming presented both an extraordinary opportunity and a significant problem.
Suddenly, artists could reach a global audience instantly with little or no upfront investment. But so could every other artist. The barriers to entry were low. The financial rewards were more elusive. Producing good music was no longer enough. Artists now had to stand out among an enormous volume of content. No matter how talented they were, artists had to persuade consumers to do more than just listen to their music. They had to get consumers interested in them personally — and pay them for more than just the song they streamed.
That dramatically changed the job of being a musician.
Suddenly artists had to do on their own what record labels used to do for their top artists. They had to develop their own "brand," generate online buzz and maintain ongoing interaction with fans. Social media became compulsory, not optional.
The artist's most valuable asset wasn't the music itself; it was the audience around them. In many ways, what streaming did to the music industry is what AI is doing to the accounting profession.
Many accounting firms sell products: tax returns, financial statements, management reports, forecasts and advice. They generally sell those products on a transactional basis. AI is making those "products" easier and cheaper to produce and sell — not just for accounting firms but for technology companies, too. Your clients now have many other options to get the products they used to get exclusively from you.
Just as Spotify didn't eliminate musicians, AI isn't going to eliminate the need for accounting services. But it will change what accountants need to do to win.
How accountants can learn from music's evolution
The lesson isn't what Spotify did to the music industry. It's how artists responded. And there are many lessons for accountants (see comparative table below):
What music artists did | Why it mattered | What accounting firms can do |
|---|---|---|
Source: Accountests 2026
A recent Deloitte
The product still matters, of course. Nobody builds a lasting music career without music people want to hear. But in today's era of streaming and social media, musical talent is just table stakes. In the same way, technical competence and good advice is just table stakes for accountants. You have to offer more.
Why AI might not be your highest priority
None of this means accounting firms should ignore AI. But there is a danger in believing that adopting AI is itself a strategy. AI capabilities will increasingly arrive inside the tax, accounting, audit, practice management and workflow products firms already buy. Everyone gets faster. Everyone gets more efficient.
Thus, any AI driven competitive advantage disappears.
Having an audience is different, however. Rather than spending the next two years focusing on building your own AI capability, it might be better to spend it implementing lessons from the music industry. Grow your audience, develop your niche, build engagement.
Competitors can't buy that position from a software vendor.
Importance of trust
And there is another important difference between accountants and musicians: trust.
If Spotify recommends a song and we don't like it, we just stop listening. We don't have to trust Spotify's recommendations. But when it comes to money, tax and business decisions, clients want 100% confidence in the professional giving them advice. This allows firms to become stickier with their clients. Accounting has always been like this. But stickiness doesn't change what happens in the end. The victors will win by using the same audience-building tactics as musicians. It just might take longer. Pure AI solutions will find it harder.
Attention → engagement → relationship → trust → client
AI can help at every stage of that journey. But it doesn't automatically create any of them.
Build the audience
Where does building an audience land on your firm's strategic plan? What will make clients choose you when every accounting firm has access to increasingly powerful technology?
Musical artists discovered that when the product became abundant, the relationship with the audience became more important, not less. Today, successful artists operate across streaming, social media, live performances and communities. They create an ongoing relationship with their fans; they don't simply release a product and hope people will buy it.
Let's be honest. Some successful music artists have a mediocre product, but they market themselves extremely well and are commercially successful. On the flip side, great music that isn't marketed well, can easily be overlooked. Too many accounting firms may be heading in the same direction. Don't let that happen to you.
Invest time in understanding AI but also invest in becoming unique and building your audience. AI may make your firm more efficient. Your audience is what could make it valuable.
