Industrial Strength: Six acts battling for Gold Coast’s Song of the Year; WA live industry meeting authorities; Guvera introduces data saving; VIC working on first creative industries strategy; Jeff Martin opens studio

Six tracks battling for Gold Coast’s Song of the Year

Six tracks are finalists for the inaugural Song of the Year Award on the Gold Coast. It is part of the Gold Coast Music Awards, which return after 20 years. The six are The Vultures’ Candy Cigarettes, Feeding Fauna’s (pictured)50 Million to One, Jimmy The Saint and The Sinners’ Re Animator, Casey Barnes’ Flesh And Bone, Lane Harry x Ike Campbell’s Anarchy and Gracie Hughes’ Straight Lines.

The awards are held tomorrow (Wed July 22) at Burleigh Brewing Company in Burleigh Heads.

In other categories:

Band/Artist of the Year: Casey Barnes, Felicity Lawless, Hanlon Brothers, Jamie Lee Wilson, Karl S Williams.

Emerging Artist of the Year: Bree de Rome, Felicity Lawless, Hanlon Brothers, Jimmy the Saint And The Sinners, Katie Who, Lane Harry x Ike Campbell.

Live Music Venue of the Year: elsewhere, Miami Marketta, The Soundlounge

Live Music Event of the Year: Buskers by the Creek, Gold Coast Folk Festival, (m)ocean as part of Bleach, Wallapalooza.

Local Music Champion of the Year: Rob and Jackie Saunders, Polly Snowden, Graham Ashton, Guy Cooper, Scott French.

WA live music industry meeting authorities

There has been an upturn in the amount of Perth’s live music venues of late – the latest, Jack Rabbit Slims, opened on the weekend in Fremantle by Alex Paoiff and Luke Whelan of the Pilerats collective – but the live music community is still apprehensive about the lack of opportunities for new acts, and the red tape and cost of starting venues, and protection from noise complaints among others.

It will meet with authorities including liquor licensing and planning, as well as local councils and the Australian Hotels Association this month to suss out problems and come up with a strategy.

Victoria to work on its first creative industries strategy

The Creative Industries Taskforce will start work on Victoria’s first creative industries strategy, to present to the State Government by end of the year. A five-week public consultation drew ideas and comments from 9,500, both online and at workshops. Themes to come out of the consultation included the value of collaboration across disciplines, the need to invest in new ideas, research and development, the importance of arts education, and putting diversity and inclusion at the heart of the new strategy.

Victoria’s creative industries contribute almost $23 billion to the State’s economy and support over 200,000 jobs.

Guvera introduces data saving

Australian-owned music streaming service Guvera has expanded its data saving function to all 20 markets it operates in globally. It allows users to significantly reduce their data usage while streaming music. The advanced audio buffering technology significantly reduces the data impact of playing the song again in the future.

Guvera CEO Darren Herft said, “Guvera is focused on providing customers with the music they love, on their terms. Data is an increasingly important commodity and our data saving function ensures we are meeting the needs of music lovers.”

Jeff Martin opens studio in Byron Bay

Jeff Martin, leader of Canada’s 4-million selling Tea Party, has set up the new Riverhouse Studios in Byron Bay in a 100-acre rainforest, to produce acts and bands. Spending a lot of time in Australia, he’s been working with local acts including Black Diamond Express and Lepers and Crooks. Says engineer Paul Pilsneniks, “Jeff is one of the finest producers that I have had the pleasure of working with.”

Aside from digital and analogue gear in Riverhouse, multi-instrumentalist Martin offers an array of exotic instruments to use, including saz, cumbus, oud, sitar, sarod, hurdy gurdy, esraj, harmonium and a 1916 Gibson harp guitar.

For all production and recording interest, contact Melissa Barrett at melissa@hummingbirdpr.com.au. Martin is touring Canada soon with the Tea Party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Edges Of Twilight, followed by a sabbatical in Morocco.

Creative Partnerships brings back Plus1 matched funding

Applications are open for Plus1 2015/16, Creative Partnerships’ matched funding program. Arts organisations receive matched funding for fundraising campaigns that support a project or activity of their choice. Recipients share in more than $1.2 million in dollar-for-dollar matched funding, capped at $50,000 per project, and have around eight months to run their campaigns. Deadline is August 28, all details at www.creativepartnershipsaustralia.org.au.

Finalists for Art Music Awards

Finalists for the 11 categories of the Art Music Awards were led by NSW’s Moorambilla Voices with three, followed by Paul Grabowsky, Synergy Percussion and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. They are organised by APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre (AMC) and held on Tuesday August 11 at the City Recital Hall in Sydney.

Splitsville!

Kisschasy are breaking up with a final tour in October, during which they will play their debut album United Paper People in its entirety to celebrate its 10th anniversary of release.

After 21 years, Adelaide’s Etypejazz are calling time, with a farewell show at Norwood Concert Hall on August 30. Founding member and saxplayer Beth Lyon is returning from overseas for the gig.

Adelaide’s Soundpond for sale

After six years of running indie gigs in Adelaide and 25,000 hours of live broadcast shows, the team behind Soundpond.net is looking for someone to take over. For sale is its 120-capacity licensed venue, the online radio station which has a 13,000-strong fan base, The Beatshed hire studio, the office and online infrastructure. Contact Managing Director Adam Daze via http://soundpond.net.

William Barton: takes the didge to Russia

Composer William Barton, also one of the world’s best didge player, took the music to Russia. The appearances included the world-famous Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, accompanied by the youth orchestra. Mt. Isa born Barton performed pieces pertaining to his growing up in Australia, including Dust On My Feet, ending the sets with Warumpi Band / Christine Anu’s My Island Home, “one of my favourite songs and an unofficial Australian anthem.”

Arts winners at ASTRA Industry Excellence Awards

The ASTRA Industry Excellence Awards in Sydney this year had three new categories to mark the 20th anniversary of subscription TV in this country – Rising Star, Television Professional of the Year and Creative Professional of the Year. Winner of Rising Star was Abdel Moorhouse, Programming Assistant at Foxtel Arts, from a finalist list that included Zakary Chenoweth (Foxtel Music Channels), Maree Ryan (BBC) and Topher Willis (NBC Universal).

Nickelodeon’s Slimefest 2014, which drew 10,000 with use of music acts in Melbourne and Sydney, won Most Outstanding Public Relations Campaign.

Government’s ‘Stephanie’ puts spotlight on muso incomes

The Federal Government had to do a backflip after coming up with nonsensical figures in a new website to explain the 2015 budget to small business owners. It claimed a guitarist called Stephanie who runs her band as a business and earned $300,065, therefore receives a tax cut of $1,000 and additionally deductions for items purchased for under $20,000. The music media pointed out that average musicians earn between $7,000 and $10,000 from their music.

The Government admitted ‘Stephanie’ didn’t really exist and just used as an example. A spokesperson said, "Treasury says the cameos are based on real tax data … [it] is taken from taxpayers who reported on their tax return that they were 'Musicians and Entertainers'.”

Said Peter Bayliss, MD of Canberra-based boutique accounting service for the arts industry Into Tomorrow. “The reality is quite different and it would be much better if promotion of the good things that exist for musicians were highlighted rather than an over the top example. Most musicians in Australia tend to work a day-job to supplement their artistic endeavours.

“While there are many tax offerings in their favour, i.e.: income averaging and being a profession where you can offset losses against other income (subject to thresholds and tests), an example demonstrating a $20k immediate write-off ignores many factors that each artist faces: lack of cashflow with which to make any such purchases, inability to offset any losses due to other income, low income level from their art etc.

“Being an artist is by and large tough. The important thing from a tax point of view is how to get the balance right between having a regular income that pays the bills and the ability to invest your time and money into your art without being disadvantaged tax wise.”

Management change for Ballina Coastal Country Music Festival

The Ballina Coastal Country Music Festival in regional NSW had a lifeline thrown at it. Carol Stacey who started it four years ago, found it had become too big for her to handle and lack of volunteers forced her to end it. Now the Rotary Club of Ballina will take over from 2016, as the event brought business to the area. Stacey has been asked to stay on as adviser.

Venues update: fund raisers, record attendances, new additions,

* With The Flying Scotsman in WA’s facing new council regulations, the 16-act Scottofest was held over three stages last Friday to raise money to buy proper soundproofing solutions.

* The Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) posted a record attendance of 1.4 million in the last financial year (June 2014 to June 2015). It was the fourth year in a row that the venue exceeded 1 million visitors.

* Adelaide Fringe pop up venue Royal Croquet Club has offered to find a new site for the 2017 festival. It has been at Victoria Square since 2014, operating February and March and drawing 200,000 people. But it’s under pressure from other venues grizzling it has an “unfair advantage”. Adelaide City Council is muttering trading restrictions (including a 1 am close and a midnight lockout) but reckons it can stay there in 2016. Council is supportive of the venue but thinks it’s in the wrong spot. Meantime, Port Adelaide has offered several locations.

* Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s Monty’s ended with a million-dollar damage bill after fire broke out at the back of the heritage-listed building.

* Perth gets a new 200-capacity live music venue, The Boston, this Friday, at the corner of James & Milligan.

* Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club promises to bring out the big guns when it celebrates its 10th anniversary in September.

And a few other things…

After using its powers to demand to collect data of $80 million worth of royalties from performance right associations, the Australian Tax Office is about to hit the music industry. According to the Melbourne Herald Sun, the ATO has discovered over $500,000 in undeclared taxes from 1,000 of the music community. It now plans to go through the financials of more than 15,000 individuals and 1,000 companies with a fine toothcomb. Up to $8 million could be found.

You’d do anything for your bestie, right? So Lorde flew from New Zealand to Washington to surprise Taylor Swift to do Royals with her. The love-in continued on Twitterland. “She's a wondrous angel," Swift squealed. Lorde replied, “(Taylor) is the leader of a great and beautiful galaxy that I'd live in forever.”

Fast growing New Zealand winery company, Yealands Family Wines reveals it plays classical music to its vines.

Keith Urban became the first country act to perform at Canada’s 40-year-old Festival de Quebec, drawing 70,000 to his set.

Tumbleweed’s Lenny Curley, who’s been doing all the band’s artwork for CD covers, posters and merchandise, holds his first solo art exhibition based on his sketch drawings in hometown Wollongong from July 31.

London-based newly married Aussie expat Peter Andre has had to postpone his honeymoon. He had to appear as a witness in a court case between TV producer Neville Hendricks (who was behind his series) who is suing ITV2 for £549,060 damages and costs after it axed him from working on its reality series.

The Brisbane version of weekly street paper TheMusic is going fortnightly.

Adelaide arts association Guildhouse is raising $50,000 for interest-free loans to help South Australian visual artists, craftspeople and designers.

Neil Finn joined Johnny Marr at his Auckland club show for two songs during the encore, guitar on I Fought the Law and lead vocals on The Smiths’ There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

92.5 Gold FM Gold Coast breakfast show host Richard Fowler celebrated his 60th birthday by getting engaged to girlfriend of three years, Sherie Malcolm, 49, during a New Zealand holiday.

Also in New Zealand, Ryan Adams was shaking off jetlag with a stroll through an Auckland cemetery (as you do) and found an abandoned cat looking worse for wear. He gave it some food and water, and twittered for help out as she refused to let anyone carry her out. A fan turned up, caught kitty and took her to safety.

Doc Neeson’s family had a court win over the $70,000 the late Angels singer loaned promoter friend Mark Filby. The court told him it found him “evasive', “unreliable” and would “do whatever it takes to further his own interests including lying” and ordered him to pay $100,000 (including court costs and six years’ interest) within 56 days.

A homesick Aussie working in New York tried to raise $3,000 through crowd-funding on Kickstarter so he could get back for Splendour In The Grass. Alas, the platform pulled the plug after the first $1,000 was clocked up in two days.

Brisbane club DJ James Richard Roles, 28, about to be set free after a three year prison stint for 13 offences of indecently touching two boys aged nine and 14, was back in court yesterday on another charge. In April, prison authorities found 30 pages of “graphic sexual fantasies” about boys hidden under his mattress and he was charged with “making child exploitation material.”