Report: Live music takes forefront at Contemporary Music Roundtable

Between 75% and 92% of an artist’s income comes from live touring.

Those were the numbers announced earlier this month by Live Music Office Audience and Sector Development Director Damian Cunningham. Cunningham was moderating a session at the National Live Music Forum in Sydney, part of the second annual Contemporary Music Roundtable.

The session, titled Activate, Upskill, Develop and Connect, paired together a community radio guru, a patron for artist managers, a festival director, and a strategist for Victoria’s culture sectors to discuss the state of play in the live scene.

Source: Music Australia

At the heart of the discussion was a call for the cutting of red tape that hinders artists’ and live music venues’ growth. Kirsty Rivers, Manager of Contemporary Music at Creative Victoria said that while infiltrating the Government to see it play a larger role in the music industry is becoming more common Australia-wide, she’s still to see a definitive report on just how much the Federal Government spends on live music.

“No one really collates the numbers from the Government about how much is actually spent on live music,” she said. “It comes under arts and music, but it is quite substantial.

“In fact, we’ve been looking particularly at that role Government is now playing in the music industry,” she added. “[…] The size of the packages and the way that Government is approaching music is significantly changing.”

One of the more recent examples of the Government’s investment in live music is the national Live Music Map.Developed in association with the South Australian Government and the Australian Music Radio Airplay Project (Amrap), the Live Music Map highlights the essential businesses an artist needs to engage to tour the country, from venues to gear hire, community radio and booking agents.

The Live Music Map was released August 2 and generated 80 new listings in the first 12 hours of release.

Yvette Myhill, Executive Director Association of Artist Managers (AAM), looks after more than 260 artist managers through the peak body. Myhill said over 60% of AAM’s manager members have international experience, but that they used live touring as a pathway to achieve overseas and commercial success.

“Touring is still the core of income that comes through for artists and managers and they need the experiences and the pathways to get them there,” she said. “The [Live Music Map] to help them start early and learn what they need at that grassroots level, and even as their more established, is a really valuable resource.”

Damian Cunningham and Yvette Myhill at Customs House
Source: Music Australia

AmrapManager,Chris Johnson said the Live Music Map will help to get radio airplay for new Australian music, and that it’s a critical first step to showing artists how they can integrate community radio into their touring strategy.

“We’ve been able to plug in all the community radio stations that support Australian artists into the [Live Music Map],” he said. “We’ve explained it to the stations that this is a chance to show your live plays alongside venues and other people in the music sector.

“[It’s also] a good way to find another point to motivate community radio to support Australian artists because of the benefits of being exposed through the Map.”

Yvette Myhill added that for AAM members in particular, live performance is more crucial than ever in terms of revenue raising.

“There are a lot of festival opportunities which allow them performance fees, where the cost of touring isn’t included,” she said. “There’s an income source there that’s relatively easily achieved […] but you need to have the smaller gigs and the gigs in your local areas to gain that support from your local community to enable you to then achieve those larger opportunities.”

Kerri Glasscock, a venue owner (Venue 505, Old 505 Theatre) and Festival Director and CEO at Sydney Fringe Festival, has been using Sydney initiative Live and Local to help retailers.

The partnership between Western Sydney Councils and the Live Music Office was created in response to the decline of live music venues and the impact of questionable governmental red tape, like those associated with the Sydney lockouts and the archaic live music restrictions in South Australia.

For the past three years, Glasscock has used the Live and Local initiative to see Sydney Fringe place live music into local retailers in Surry Hills for a four-hour period.

“[Sydney Fringe] provides a really great avenue to partner with stakeholders to really test stuff out,” she said. “So we were keen to see if our testing of the Live and Local framework would be helpful and could be rolled out nationally.

“Of the four Live and Local events that [have been held], three have been used as the opening celebrations for Sydney Fringe Festival.

“We decided that because it was going in a festival we would do a Live and Local model on steroids and take it a bit further,” she added. “So what we’ve done on all three occasions is […] approached all the local business, whether they’re a performance venue or not – they could be a bookshop, a café or a hairdressing salon, any of those things – and placed live music performance into all of them.”

Glasscock said the initiative saw businesses see profits increase by up to tenfold than their usual weekend earnings.

“The event now draws about 3,000-4,000 people annually and it just reminds people of what they have on their doorstep and gives a little nudge to business owners to include an artist as another way to bring in patrons,” said Glasscock.

Glasscock, who was a member of the taskforce that put together the national Live Music Action Plan, said she’s working with the Live Music Office to address New South Wales’ venue crisis. Currently, it’s actually cheaper for artists to take out a lease on a performance space where companies have an ownership of a creative space. It’s also more beneficial for the artists because it means there is no curatorial control and they can maintain all box office. However, the red tape associated with doing so makes it virtually unattainable.

“We’ve been working through a lot of it with the work of the Live Music Office to try and navigate that,” said Glasscock. “This year we’re launching a new creative arts precinct along Parramatta Road in partnership with the Inner West Council where we’re taking our work to the next step, working closely with local Government to see how we can minimise state-wide restrictions and push those barriers. Certainly, I’d love to see an adaption of small arts venues, that would make my job a lot easier.”

Closing the session was Mark Gerber, owner of Sydney live music venue Oxford Art Factory. Gerber knows all too well how the Sydney lockouts have crippled the live music scene and resulted in the closure of many venues. However, instead of listing the numerous effects the NSW government’s controversial 2014 laws have had on venues, jobs and the wider community, Gerber spoke of Sydney’s resilience.

“In times of strife I feel that people actually become more creative,” he said.

Gerber will host the second annual Volumes festival at Oxford Arts Factory on August 26, but said the event was the brainchild of his bar manager James Spink. Set to host 80 emerging acts over four venues this month, Gerber said Volumes is one example of why it’s the industry’s duty to nurture creative people like Spink.

Shining Bird at Volumes 2015
Source: Volumes

“Artists and creatives a lot of the time don’t know what the parameters are, don’t know the best way forward…” he said. “So I think one of the important things in the live music industry is that we need to pass on the knowledge and give people the means and the ability to be able to extend on their creativity.”