Frontier’s Michael Harrison: Aus is the third biggest territory for music
Australia is the third biggest territory for music, according to Frontier Touring Tour Director Michael Harrison.
Harrison was speaking on the ‘Gateway To Australia’ panel at Music Matters in Singapore yesterday and made the comment from a live touring and revenue perspective.
In IFPI's2014Recording Industry in Numbers report, the global recording industry body said that of the almost 50 markets covered worldwide the US remained in the lead and Japan wasthe world’s second largest recorded music market.
Harrison was speaking alongside Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) CEO Dan Nevin and Chugg Entertainment GM Andrew Stone to give attendees an overview of where the market is currently in Australia and of the opportunities in touring, radio, streaming and retail.
Andrew Stone discussed Chugg Music signing Sheppard, who yesterday announced that breakout track Geronimo was certified Platinum in the US, and Nevin touched on Australia’s digital and physical sales climates.
Nevin told the audience digital sales are up 55% locally and physical is down to 35%. He said iTunes was still the main digital player and JB Hi-Fi the main physical player with 170 stores and between 60-80% of local sales coming from physical releases.
Speaking to TMN post-panel, Nevin said the local state of streaming was touched on as he told attendees the platform holds a small but growing percentage of the pie. “Some of the main streaming services are starting to get a bit of a stronghold on the market in Australia, but there’s still over 30 services,” Nevin told TMN.
Nevin also told TMN that as streaming services become more popular in Australia he recommends large independent labels open a dialogue with global rights body Merlin to potentially become a member. “Indie labels would be crazy not to be aligned with them to be honest.”
“[Labels] either sign up to a distribution company, or they sign up to a subscription type distribution deal – and we make sure that we don’t weigh in one way or another so it will depend on who I’m talking to – but certainly the bigger labels, I will say to them ‘have you looked at Merlin? Have you looked at what they’ve got on offer?’”
The panel also included a brief discussion about the importance of local conferences Face The Music and BigSound (QMusic reported the 2014 BigSound generated $264,000 in sponsorship income; a $94,000 increase on 2013) as well as the peak time for international acts to tour Australia.
Frontier’s Michael Harrison said the peak touring time of January through to February has blown out to September through to June with only July and August being quiet months now.
Image Source: Frontier Touring Facebook
Image Credit: Duncan Barnes