November 15, 2021

Fear At The Top: ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd

When Annabelle Herd joined ARIA and PPCA in February following a 16-year career at commercial TV network Network 10, she hit the ground running.

Herd joined the Australian music industry in a state of flux. On one hand, we had the rise of Australian music’s #MeToo movement where untold stories were finally being told, where we were finally seeing consequences for instances of abuse. On the other hand we had businesses looking internally to see how they played a part in a culture that to put it bluntly, is toxic.

In her first two months in the role, Annabelle Herd started to challenge some of the behavioural norms and gathered a select group of music industry professionals to work collaboratively on just how they would tackle the industry’s culture issues.

Personally, in my almost 12 years in the industry I’ve never seen that happen on such an organised, constructive level.

Then as many of us all know, Denis Handlin, the Chairman of ARIA and head of Sony Music locally, was let go from both positions. The announcement followed multiple articles published by Nathanael Cooper at Sydney Morning Herald about allegations of discrimination, bullying and harassment within Sony Music Australia.

Needless to say Annabelle’s first five months were amid the biggest industry shake-up in recent memory.

:: Listen to Fear At The Top with Annabelle Herd

I have been hugely impressed by Annabelle since I first met her, I’ve already seen the fruits of a lot of her labour, and I know she’s just getting started.

Co-hosted by The Brag Media’s CEO Luke Girgis and myself, this episode of Fear at the Top sees Annabelle Herd discuss what she believes the music industry needs in order to be more prominent in Australia, the consolidation of relationships that has come out of COVID-19, how ARIA and PPCA make money, what individual companies should be doing right now amid #MeToo, and so much more.