Feature: Melbourne Music City

Melbourne has developed a very clear strategy to help it become one of the world's music cities, much in the same vein as Liverpool, Seattle or Nashville. Christie Eliezer explores how the Australian music capital intends on getting there…

The rule of the thumb for emerging musicians is this:If you want to get a record deal, move to Sydney. If you want to make great music, then Melbourne is where it’s at. More than any other Australian city, Melbourne has long had the hallmarks of other music capitals as Seattle, Austin and Berlin – a strong stable of community radio stations and small venues encouraging and supporting new acts and scenes.

“These were pivotal and linked,” emphasizes Patrick Donovan, CEO of Music Victoria. “You had broadcasters who could play whatever they liked. Audiences could hear a new act being interviewed on the radio and their gigs advertised, and go and see them in a local venue.”

Adds Johann Ponniah, head of award-winning I Oh You Records, “Melbourne’s strength is the quality of its venues, and how their capacities range from 100 to 2,500 people.”

Melbourne long-time late night hours created a culture of going out to catch live acts. There are about 500 venues in Melbourne, about 120 alone in the city area. According to a recent live music census, 97,000 people head out every Friday and Saturday nights to see music. This generates an average turnover of around $5.4 million per weekend in ticket sales, door entry, food, drink and merchandising.

The music industry as a whole contributes $1 billion a year to the Victorian economy, according to statistics compiled America’s Pollstar magazine.

“The attitude of Melbourne punters has always been important,” confirms booking agent and promoter John Sinclair of Fleming Artists. “They’ll see a new band, and go back and see them again. It means bands can develop in Melbourne. In Sydney it’s all about being HOT and HOTTER. That’s why there’s been no great band coming out of Sydney for the last twenty years.”

Now a series of initiatives is emanating from the State Government designed to build up Melbourne as one of the great music cities of the world. Ironically it took a 22,000-strong rally outside Parliament in 2010 to protest draconian planning laws closing down live music venues which saw both sides of politics start to listen.

The Government is willing, for the first time, to work with the music industry on the issues it faces. Significantly, members of the industry, spearheaded by Music Victoria, rose to the task of articulating these issues in an across-the-biz manner. As a result the Government is allowing the industry through advisory committees and roundtable discussions to take the lead in devising strategies which affects its well-being.

This year came the Agent of Change rule, which live music activists had been campaigning to get for ten years. It was possibly a world first that Agent of Change was applied to an entire state rather than just a city. It protects venues and rehearsal studios from complaints by newly arrived residents. It also puts the onus on builders to sound-proof new residential developments.

The State Government has also promised further reforms including streamlined licensing controls, updated planning rules, reduced regulatory burden for smaller venues (that is, under 500 square metres), and a fund of $500,000 to help heritage venues undertake sound- proofing measures.

Also this year, The Melbourne City Council released its Music Strategy 2014-17. These include setting up a music hub in the city area, finding new City-owned spaces for musicians to rehearse and play in, and all-day live performances and family-friendly events to create an atmosphere where music is continually in people’s faces.

The Strategy aims at promoting Melbourne as a destination for music collaboration and investment. Telling the story of Melbourne music will be a boon to the tourism industry. Tourism Victoria, which has tapped the music music industry in past campaigns, has been part of preliminary discussions.

The City will also work to create for the music industry stronger links with retail, hospitality and manufacturing.

A keystone initiative, says Chair of the City’s Music Steering Committee, Councillor Rohan Leppert, is to strengthen the five-year old Melbourne Music Week as a showcase of local music. Running for nine days (November 14 to 23), it has 250 acts playing 110 events in 40 locations. Last year, it drew almost 50,000 to free and ticketed events.

“November is shaping up to be our biggest and best yet,” Leppert says. “80% of the acts are going to be Victorian. It’s going to be the best showcase of Victorian music in Melbourne.”

Melbourne Music Week has partnered with the Face The Music conference, and also incorporates The Age Music Victoria awards and the Australasian Worldwide Music Expo.

These partnerships, Leppert considers, can “really sell it as an example of Melbourne knowing what it’s talking about in being a music capital. It’s done well in other cities in the world and Melbourne can do a lot more in reaching out to the world and showing the benefits of its a lot more to do but we’re getting there.”

There’s The City’s first move since the announcement of the Strategy is to work with the music industry on how to tell its story. This will include walking tours of landmarks, and a Hall of Fame. Fresh from setting up Chrissy Amphlett Lane and marking the tenth anniversary of AC/ DC Lane, the City is investigating the possibility of turning over more public urban space into commemorating musicians and music. “The Council has control over this space so it can do a lot of interesting stuff in the telling of the story,” Leppert says.

Music-themed laneways and plaques are high on the list. Leppert points out, “Melbourne has a fantastic reputation for being a music city but it’s not always straightforward for the tourist who comes to the city to experience the music and how they can immerse themselves in it.”

Also of importance to the City of Melbourne is to directly work with venues to acquaint them with the laws they work within, and to ensure they understand their obligations. “Live music venues are an important part of the story, If there aren’t there, then the experience of music in Melbourne will be severely diminished. Keeping them operating as best they can is (something) that the Government should have a role in.”

The City is also interested in gaining a larger picture of the music industry’s economic and other contributions to the state. This will involve a great deal of research.

“The Music Advisory Committee is full of experts in their own field. The drafting of the Strategy has been a big step in the understanding, which is a fantastic thing.”

That the Strategy adopted most of Music Victoria’s own White Paper recommendations is indicative of current close ties.

To Music Victoria’s Donovan, what is encouraging is how the Government is working holistically across various departments to bolster the music industry. “You have the Arts Minister and the Planning Minister talking about the hub. The manufacturing department is looking at the music industry as a real industry.”

Also heartening is the Government’s plan for a feasibility study on sister city relationships and if they have any real benefits. Music Victoria is looking at different models which will encourage overseas artists to spend some time in Melbourne to collaborate with, and mentor, local talent.

The UNESCO City of Music program, which sees an alliance of cities as Glasgow, Liverpool, Seville in Spain and Harbin in China, is something that Donovan wants Melbourne to be included in. Melbourne is already part of the UNESCO City of Literature program, and Donovan is keen that the music industry gets a similar level of funding and support.

There are other issues to be addressed as part of Melbourne’s stance as a music capital. The Environment ProtectionAuthority’s first review in 25 years must allow for a three-tier policy for volume allowances, dividing venues in the inner city, suburbs and outer suburbs (see www.musicvictoria.com.au for a full report). Musicians should be provided with greater financial security (more than half the city’s musician community need a full time job) if they are to continue making music. More venues should be protected by local councils on cultural significance reasons.

Melbourne’s councils are taking a greater role in music strategies, yet there is very little interaction with the music industry. Aside from the City of Melbourne, a notable exception is the City of Yarra – which covers music hubs as Brunswick, Northcote and Richmond – which has its own Arts and Cultural Strategy. In an encouraging move, in early October, the City of Port Phillip which covers the once thriving St. Kilda (now with no record stores and only two venues) has employed former Universal Music A&R chief Craig Camber to head its Arts & Culture division.

Music Victoria is further addressing the problem by writing the music strategies for the councils of Geelong, Mornington, Ballarat and, possibly next year, Bendigo.

So why are Melburnians so obsessed with music? Views vary from its cold climate to the distance from surf beaches. Historically, Melbourne has been a thriving music city since the 1960s. The town hall circuit was so flourishing that acts needed two sets of equipment and road crews to play up to four shows on a Saturday.

It was in Melbourne where the seminal pub-rock movement began in the early ‘70s. This followed the relaxation of liquor licensing laws and the realization that the teens who saw bands in town halls had turned 18 and wanting to catch acts where they could now drink legally.

Pub-rock shaped the “Australian rock sound” as other cities adopted it. It created a boom in festivals, and even underground bands started to develop such large followings that forced commercial radio to play their music. Musicians from around the country and New Zealand moved to the southern city to cash in on its live opportunities.

But its reputation as a global creative city had its genesis in the mid-70s with the heady Mushroom Records/ Countdown axis. The post-punk era, which followed, was a period of greater DIY, experimentalism and genre- hopping than any other Australian city. The Nick Cave-fronted Boys Next Door and Birthday Party, and Dead Can Dance, went on to global recognition. The self-described Little Band scene (1978 to early 1981) was immortalized in Richard Lowenstein’s Michael Hutchence-starring Dogs In Space.

The electro-dance scene saw Melbourne saw the Avalanches, Rogue Traders, Madison Avenue and Midnight Juggernauts go to global audiences. The recent EDM “Melbourne bangers” or “bounce” sound was picked up by overseas clubland taste-makers. Dutch DJ and producer Laidback Luke, for one, revealed he was trying to reproduce it. “Globally, it’s a new and fresh sound that I see as a little brother of the Dutch sound and a nice new challenge to me!” he declared.

The energy of today’s Melbourne music vista is primarily a by-product of the 1990s explosion of late night bars and laneways. It created little pockets built around a particular style of music. It wasn’t just artists who emerged from these scenes: they also gave rise to a new breed of enthusiastic new promoters, agents, writers, designers and graff artists peculiar to that scene. Fuelling that excitement were, and are, the street papers and, recently, music websites and indie-sympathetic lift- outs of mainstream newspapers.

This gives the Melbourne sound an astonishing diversity. So much so that The Age/Music Victoria awards had to introduce a stand-alone Genre awards to cover eleven distinct styles. I Oh You’s Ponniah observes, “Melbourne has a strong dance community and a strong rock community, and they’re finding an appreciation of each other.”

This diversity and growing interaction allows Melbourne to remain defined as Australia’s music capital and one of the great music cities of the world.

FACE THE MUSIC:

Peter Chellew explains how the music expo helps drives Melbourne’s music agenda

Melbourne music has a peculiar culture, which permeates the musicians, the media, its clubs and its audience. “It’s a no-bullshit community,” describes Peter Chellew, Executive Officer at the non- profit The Push Inc which runs music events and programs for young people, and Conference Director at the Face The Music. “We don’t like pretensions, we like to keep it real.”

Face The Music (Friday 14 – Saturday 15 November at Arts Centre) is shaped by this attitude. It’s not a commercial enterprise, and opts for a cheap subsidized ticket and its programming is heavy on the grassroots and the do-it-yourself ethic. It’s a background Chellew came from: emerging in indie bands, he presented a show for 15 years at Triple R, ran PBS-FM and helped Sydney set up FBi Radio.

Chellew explains, “Big Sound is very much Australia’s portal to the Asia Pacific and the rest of the world, looking at exports and Australia’s place in the world. Face The Music is really a development summit. We focus on skill development and making connections. Victoria always deserved its own conference, and people are embracing it.”

Last year’s Face The Music was a sell-out with 850 delegates. This year Chellew expects a similar full capacity. Over half of those coming to hear 150 speakers are emerging to mid-level artists.

As a result, its keynote speakers are DIY warriors. US producer and commentator Steve Albini is a champion of indie business models outside the corporate structure in the new music economy. UK radio broadcaster, label owner and artist manager Jen Long is an advocate of the need to be multi-skilled and being upfront about promoting yourself.

There are sessions with Edgar Froese who founded German electronic band Tangerine Dream who pioneered selling their music through mail-order and online. Detroit political activists and techno pioneers Underground Resistance have an anti-mainstream business strategy which includes creating a strong community.

Accessing Froese and Underground Resistance came from Face The Music’s partnership with Melbourne Music Week. “Melbourne Music Week provides exciting music, which needs to happen around a good music conference. That’s the important part of the partnership for us. Now we’re able to get exclusive talks from the artists who are coming to town.”

The latest announcement of international speakers included US booking agent Marshall Betts of the Windish Agency who looks after Courtney Barnett in America and is here to look at acts to sign; Lorde’s co-manager Ayisha Jaffer; and Adam Lewis of US radio and online publicity Planetary Group which has been effective in promoting Australian music to US college radio.

This year Face The Music introduced an app which, among its features, enables attendees to contact other delegates and speakers to set up meetings. “Making new connections is an important part of Face The Music,” Chellew says. Last year, Face The Music facilitated delegates setting up 250 meetings with music industry executives.

This article is taken from the November issue of the Australian Music Business Review.If you'd like a hardcopy of themagazine pleasecontact us.