Popular musicians and key industry figures will head up the Music Australia Council, a new government-backed body established to support and grow Australian music at home and abroad.
Music Australia is one of the central bodies of the federal government’s national cultural policy, revealed in January and titled ‘Revive’, which operates within Creative Australia and will benefit from an investment of $69.4 million over four years towards contemporary music (as outlined in May’s Federal Budget).
The Albanese Government has talked a big game about resuscitating local arts and culture – a sector worth $17 billion – following the devastation of the COVID-impacted years, which saw live music suffer a crippling loss of $1.4 billion in revenue.
The task of the Music Australia Council – comprising eight members appointed by Arts Minister Tony Burke – is to reverse those fortunes.
“Australian musicians have been crying out for greater support and strategic investment. Music Australia will deliver what the industry needs to grow and realise its potential, at home and internationally,” Mr Burke said in a statement.
Who is on the Music Australia council?
The appointees most familiar to music fans will be Gordi, the folktronica singer-songwriter known for her excellent J Award nominated 2020 album Our Two Skins (which the PM is a fan of). Offstage, she’s Dr Sophie Payten, who worked on the COVID frontlines as an emergency doctor.
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Also on the board is Mama Kin, real name Danielle Caruana, a solo artist and co-founder and director of The Seed Fund – an arts grant fund established with her husband, acclaimed WA-based muso John Butler.
Fred Leone, the award-winning Butchulla Songman who scored a streaming hit featuring on his cousin Birdz’ track ‘Bagi-la-m Bargan’, which charted at #30 in triple j’s Hottest 100 of 2020. He is also the founder of Impossible Odds Records.
Other appointees include Michael Chugg, the legendary Australian promoter behind Chugg Entertainment and Frontier Touring; Petrina Convey, industry veteran and owner of UNITY Mgmt. Group, and Nathan McLay, founder and CEO of Future Classic – the independent label and management company best known for giving the world electronic super-producer Flume and non-binary drummer-turned-solo star G Flip.
Rounding out the council appointments is Fred Alale AM, co-founder and Chair of African Music and Cultural Festival Inc.; Lisa Baker, City of Playford’s arts and culture manager, and Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette AM.
“It’s essential that Australian musicians and industry experts themselves have a seat at the table – and that’s what these appointments will achieve,” said Mr Burke.
“With their dedication, passion and expertise in Australian music, the appointees will make sure that Australian music is the soundtrack to life in Australia.”
Australian music is world-class, remaining a Top 10 market globally – and even surpassing the growth of the UK and US — according to reports from the IFPI, an organisation representing the worldwide recording industry.
But beneath the surface, Australian music is struggling.
What will the Music Australia Council do for Aussie artists?
Following consultation with Australian music industry bodies – such as ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) and royalties agencies APRA and PPCA – one major issue Music Australia will invest in is making artists export-ready.
Artists who’ve found success Down Under – such as Amy Shark, Budjerah and 1300 – have told Double J firsthand about the difficulties of ‘making it’ overseas.
“Australian artistry is thriving but the business models have gotten really complicated,” Adrian Collette said in a panel in May titled ‘What Does the Federal Budget Mean For Music?’
“The old ways of breaking a band, and the series of gatekeepers whether you like them or not – that world has changed completely… To break a band nationally you have to break them internationally first.
“How do you invest in artists? How do you get them export-ready? So they can have real impact over time internationally which now, like it or not, seems to be one of the absolute necessities if you want to break bands and songwriters and enrich the Australian songbook nationally, because of what’s happening with streaming.”
This leads to a second major issue the Music Australia Council will tackle: addressing the discoverability of Australian music — helping it to stand out in a crowded global marketplace where hundreds of thousands of new songs are uploaded to streaming services every day.
Cutting through an increasingly saturated market is a major issue, as evidenced by the dearth of Australian talent in the ARIA charts.
As recently reported, there have been more albums by Taylor Swift in the Australian Top 50 every week this year than albums by all Australian artists combined.
So far in 2023, only a handful of homegrown artists have landed at #1 on the ARIA Albums Chart.
Brisbane pop iconoclasts Cub Sport’s Jesus At The Gay Bar, TikTok sensation Peach PRC’s debut EP Manic Dream Pixie, Australian rapper Kerser’s A Gift & A Kers spent two weeks at the top, and this past weekend, G Flip hit #1 with their anticipated second album Drummer.
It’s a crisis situation according to Annabelle Herd, chief executive of ARIA, who has previously praised the formation of Music Australia. But it’s not for a lack of “incredible talent”, as she told ABC News in July.
“The difficulty and the challenge that we have for Australian music is that because there is so much music available, the share of listening of Australian music is declining.
“A stat that I heard the other day was that 80 percent of music discovery is of old music. In other words, only 20 percent of music discovery is of new music, and that includes Taylor’s new album, or Beyoncé’s new album.”
Against this backdrop of local talent and emerging artists competing with, and getting crowded out by, international streaming titans and vast back catalogues, Music Australia will be tasked with “getting inside those algorithms and getting a better deal for Australian music”, as Mr Burke put it to the National Press Club in February.
ARIA’s chief executive Annabelle Herd welcomes the arrival of the Music Australia Council(ABC News: Geoff Kemp)
“A landmark moment”
The formation of the council – which is set to hold its first meeting at the end of September – has been hailed as a “landmark moment” by APRA AMCOS chief executive Dean Ormston.
“It represents for the first time in the nation’s history that we have had a long-term commitment from government to work in partnership with industry to make Australia a music powerhouse.”
Ormston added that he’s looking forward to working with Music Australia to “fully realise the cultural, economic and social benefits of a vibrant, healthy and sustainable music industry.”
In a statement today, ARIA and PPCA reaffirmed its support for the Music Australia Council.
“We look forward to urgently commencing work with the appointees to tackle the significant issues faced by local music,” Herd said. “Now it all comes down to execution…
“Australia’s contemporary music industry is an incredible incubator for world-class talent. But for the world to discover that talent, we need the right strategic support and investment. There’s no time to waste.”
The Music Australia Council will also work closely with the many governmental layers of policymaking, ensuring a wholistic approach to strategic investment.
It’s a major difference that Music Australia chairperson and Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette outlined in May.
“The big dynamic here is having a dedicated investment stream, not a grant-making stream, for contemporary music and then to get the best possible advice on how we build that framework and start to implement it over time.”
There’s a long road of hard work ahead of them but one thing’s for certain, Australia’s music-makers and industry shakers will have all eyes on the new government body to see if they can sing… or hit a bum note.
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