After Five Years, The Industry Observer Waves Goodbye

All good things come to an end. It’s a cliché as old as break-ups, but it remains true.

The Industry Observer was a good thing, and if you struggled to locate the site in the early part of this week, well, that’s because it’s come to an end.

Luke Girgis’ The Brag Media (then Seventh Street Media) launched TIO in March 2017, a fresh news and feature-focused platform with an MO that, as its name explained, was all about observing the music industry.

At the time, Australia’s music industry was at a tipping point. The live music front was thriving, the recorded music side rebounding, and TIO entered the game in competition with established titles The Music Network and The Music.

Much has changed in that time. Live music has gone through a spectacularly difficult stretch and is now in comeback-mode, the record biz continues to grow as streaming platforms shape its present and future.

Those “trade” rivals, TMN and The Music, have changed hands in the past year, with the former now part of The Brag Media.

Everything changes.

TIO doesn’t fade away. Its thousands of published works — 19,874 articles and 162 podcasts, to be exact —  can be found within The Music Network, including Poppy Reid’s excellent and ongoing coverage of sexual harassment and discrimination in the music industry, work that set the agenda and earned Reid, now editor-in-chief across the media group, the 2022 AWMA for music journalist of the year.

TMN will also carry those TIO insights on the great, late Michael Gudinski; obituaries on those industry heavyweights who left us too soon, including Ken West, Chris Murphy, Ted Gardner and Justin Cosby; the exclusives, the analysis on Australia’s key businesses and players, and their place in the global industry.

You’ve told us when we’ve done good, or when we’ve missed a beat.

The pleasure has been all ours. We’ve enjoyed wearing the TIO hat at home and abroad, chasing stories, and, in 2018, partying at the SCG for an awards ceremony under that brand.

TMN is a logical home for TIO. Reid, Jake Challenor, Vivienne Kelly, Christie Eliezer, and myself have all played a part in TMN’s storied history in the domestic music industry.

The old band got back together, we’ve got new tunes, and we’re making more noise than ever, with Variety and Rolling Stone among the venerable titles now in the fold.

Raise a glass for TIO, if that’s your thing and you’ve ignored dry July.

The only thing in Australia’s music and media industries that are constant, another informed cliché tells us, is change.

And change is good.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.