Gold Coast Music Awards move for three years
Image: 2016 finalist in three categories, Amy Shark
Next year’s Gold Coast Music Awards (April 27) will shift to Surfers Paradise, in a partnership with the Surfers Paradise Alliance. The deal means that the awards will stay there for at least three years.
It was held at the Burleigh Brewing Co for the past two years.
The awards will be held the night before the 3rd Surfers Paradise LIVE festival, which runs Friday April 28 to Sunday April 30), and announced The Veronicas as one of its headliners as well as a larger program of free outdoor events and indoor gigs.
The new tie-up will allow the Gold Coast Music Awards to use the festival’s infrastructure. This is expected to swell its audience – to 3,000 from the 350 who attended in the past two years.
Awards co-organiser Chloe Popa said on its website, “Surfers Paradise has an incredibly rich musical history. It’s difficult to think of the Gold Coast without thinking of Surfers. There’s a concentration of venues, it’s on the light rail line, there’s plenty of options for families. It ticks a lot of boxes.”
“When we launched the awards, someone asked us where we saw things headed and all of us said we wanted to see the event on the beach at some point. Now, just three years in, that’s exactly what will happen.”
Surfers Paradise Alliance CEO Mike Winlaw observed, “We’ve been very impressed with the calibre of local artists recognised by the Awards … so teaming up is the perfect alignment for both organisations.”
It is a huge coup for the Surfers Paradise Alliance. It stages events as Surfers Paradise Live, the Australian Street Entertainment Championships, Kids Week and Viva Surfers Paradise to draw people into the area.
In its recent report, such events injected $80 million to local businesses during the 2015/2016 financial year. Attendance at these have jumped 320% in the past five years, from 411,000 in 2010/2011 to about 1.69 million in 2015/2016. The SPA report says 50% of attendees come from the drive and intestate markets.
Nominations for the awards run between January 20 and March 10 on its website, with new categories and opportunities for winners and finalists to be announced shortly along with new brand concepts designed by artist-in-residence Dion Parker.