Australia needs a national strategy to ensure the live music industry survives, a parliamentary inquiry has been told.
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The sector is facing an existential crisis with smaller venues needing immediate help, according to Kris Stewart from QMusic, the peak body for Queensland's music sector.
Iconic Brisbane live music venue The Zoo closed its doors in July after running at a loss for the past three years.
Owner Shane Chidgzey has lost $3 million running the venue since 2020.
"We don't have any chance whatsoever of getting anywhere near a profit," he said.
Despite seeing its best-ever ticket sales in 2023, The Zoo was constantly losing money due to higher costs and falling food and drink sales, Chidgzey said.
"People shouldn't have to get drunk to keep the music industry alive," he said.
At Gold Coast venue Mo's Desert Clubhouse, expected attendance has halved while operational costs were up 200 per cent in the past 12 months.
Industry-wide problems include reduced audience spending, huge increases in insurance costs and a weak Australian dollar.
But there were still some opportunities, Stewart said.
"This is Halley's Comet, not the end of the dinosaurs," he said.
"I think this is an extraordinary moment in front of our eyes."
There was no shortage of potential solutions on offer at the parliamentary committee hearing in Brisbane on Wednesday.
Big international tours could be told to hire local support acts while government-funded culture passes that subsidised young people's spending in Europe might also work in Australia.
An extra charge added to ticket sales for large concerts could go into a charitable trust to support grassroots music - a solution that has been tried in the UK.
The future of Australian music was in the hands of small and medium-sized venues in part because musicians could not fund new recordings or marketing without regular gigs, Stewart said.
"If we want an Australian industry in 10 years from now, we need to acknowledge that our small music venues are the soil from which our artists grow," he said.
At the big end of town, anti-competitive behaviour by major touring companies such as unreasonable performance contracts should be investigated, Jeff Crabtree from University of Technology Sydney said.
About three-quarters of Australia's live touring industry is run by Frontier Touring (a Mushroom Group joint venture with a US company), US-owned Live Nation Australia, and TEG (Ticketek), leading to entrenched power imbalances, he said.
The changes wrought by technology also emerged as a theme during the hearing.
A new generation was not hearing Australian music on the radio because it was listening via algorithm, with local demand for homegrown tunes the lowest it had ever been, Stewart said.
Another looming issue for the industry is artificial intelligence - the soundtracks and background music worth billions to the sector when composed by local artists could soon be generated by AI.
But technology could also make the industry more efficient, according to testimony from the Centre for Arts, Sports and Technology, which said the sector tended to fight innovation.
Australian Associated Press
