SGC Media Group acquires Purple Sneakers, launches Countrytown

Stephen Green’s SGC Media Group is getting further into the media business.

The Brisbane-based music company, founded by Green in 2010, quietly acquired iconic electronic music site Purple Sneakers in January and today launches country music outlet Countrytown.

The business’s first foray into media began in 2018 with the launch of The Faction on iHeartRadio, an online radio station and social community dedicated to metal music and fans.

With the birth of Countrytown, Green said the decision to start a site for under 40 country fans follows the demise of Foxtel-owned CMC and a lack of online media dedicated to the genre.

“We’ve been working more country releases with our marketing division over the last year or so and it’s been such an obvious hole in the market,” Green said.

“We have great radio outlets, but there are not enough editorial options for country artists who want to get across who they are to an Australian audience”

“Not only that, but there’s an underground of young people for whom country is their pop music and we thought it was about time they had a home.”

Longtime Purple Sneakers editor Emma Jones remains at the helm of the electronic, club, hip hop and indie music site, which also relaunched today with a new lick of paint.

Green said the new content strategy has already paid dividends, with the site hitting all-time traffic highs as part of a six-month rebuilding plan for Purple Sneakers.

“Our move this year to create and acquire media titles is consistent with our core as a music company,” he said, adding that the business is making strategic moves where it makes sense.

“Our aim is in serving genre-based communities that are at the top of the tastemaker funnel and in turn unlocking those communities for musicians, labels and other music-adjacent businesses.”

SGC Media includes a full-service PR and radio operation, repping chart-topping acts Sheppard, Lauv, and Gurrumul, and calendar events BIGSOUND, the NIMAs and Australian Music Prize.

It’s been a busy two years for Green. The group has expanded to include indie division Title Track, metal arm Collision Course and launched the Radio Monitor system in Australia.

As first reported by TMN last November, SGC Media Group and staffer Cara Anderson also opened digital and social shop For The Record Digital with the tag line of ‘More digital, Less Bullsh*t’.

“While 2020 has been a very difficult year for the industry, it has been an opportunity for us to put some building blocks in place to help us become the business we want to be in 2021 and beyond.

“Our industry, as well as the entire media landscape, will be different at the other end of this pandemic. The one thing that won’t change is that music will still be produced and in demand.”