The future of Australia’s live music industry depends on a globally-focused, commercially engaged and collaborative approach that embraces the capability and expertise of the industry’s biggest players.
Appearing before the House of Representatives committee inquiry into the live music industry in Melbourne this morning, Live Performance Australia Chief Executive, Evelyn Richardson, set out three game-changing priorities for the industry to survive and thrive.
First: develop a global export strategy where we properly harness and engage the commercial sector, leveraging their national and global footprints and expertise. This requires pulling the various parts of the music industry together, live, record labels and publishers and the streaming companies. This should be a first order priority for Music Australia.
Second: invest in the Artists Career Matrix. We need to understand the myriad of pathways an artist now has to navigate to grow and sustain a music career. What does that career matrix look like in 2025 and beyond and where does government invest valuable public funds to support local artists succeed in a global market?
Third: identify options for cutting through on the streaming services. This may be through having a percentage of local content requirement on locally curated playlists in our market. The bigger challenge is how we get our Australian artists onto global playlists.
Ms. Richardson pushed back against some of the misinformed claims put before the Committee in previous hearings around the role of our largest music promoters in the live music industry.
‘Our major promoters play a very important role in the Australian market. They employ 1500 people directly across the country, 100,000 plus people indirectly (crew, service providers, marketing people etc) and all of them invest strongly in Australian artists through touring, festival plays, artists development and media spend on promoting local artists.
‘They collectively generate around 85% of total ticketing revenue, attendance and GST revenue to government. They invest in people. They invest in artists. They invest in infrastructure. They invest in technology and innovation.
‘The fact that the world’s leading companies want to invest or partner with Australian companies brings capital and expertise to our local industry. It also helps connect Australian artists to the global industry through international networks and relationships.
‘In a globally competitive, capital intensive and high-risk industry, we should be embracing the opportunities presented by our largest promoters to take Australian music to audiences at home and internationally,’ Ms Richardson said.
