We’re all in this together: sound, cities, and the music industries that rely on them

As a Strategy Advisor at the City of Sydney my specialty islive music and performance. As you might imagine, this regularly lands me in the centre of spirited discussions with both industry and government about music venues, regulation, urban planning, liquor licensing and so on. Sound–or noise, depending on how you look at it–is a common feature of these discussions. On Tuesday this week I convened a forum called ‘Sound Solutions’, focused on the topic of cities, live music, culture, sound and acoustics. It was held as part of Music Australia’sContemporary Music Roundtableconference.

Regardless of whether you prefer the word sound or noise to describe it, there’s no getting around the fact that a city is partly defined by its ’aural life’, and how it regulates this will have a significant impact on the nature of its music and the viability of its live music industry. As such, it seemed to be a topic well worth discussing at a national music industry conference.

Working with Music Australia and the Association of Artist Managers we brought in speakers from around the country, including Elizabeth Beach from theNational Acoustic Laboratories, Jon Perring of famed Melbourne venueThe Tote, Sydney event producer and founder ofHeaps GayKat Dopper and Brisbane City Council’s Frank Henry, chief architect of theFortitude Valley Special Entertainment Precinct.

Originally the event had been conceived of as a ‘roundtable’ discussion, largely due to my expectation that we might, at most, attract 20 to 25 people interested in having such a conversation. I was wrong, and in the end we sold out the room. Working with our facilitator Leanne De Souza, we rejigged the session format to ensure that the almost 60 people who showed up would all have a chance to contribute.

The fact that we ended up with triple the number of people we expected was staggering to me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. Sound and the music industry is a niche topic, but it’s not a new policy challenge (see Shane Homan’sThe Mayor’s a Squarefor evidence). It has certainly gathered more than its fair share of attention in recent years, especially in Sydney.

Increasing urban populations represent an important opportunity for the Australian music industry in terms of growing audiences and developing touring circuits, but they also represent a significant challenge. Guided by government policy favouring urban consolidation over sprawl, and bound as they often are by geography and the limits of public infrastructure, our cities are not just getting larger, they’re becoming denser. 89% per cent of Australians now live in cities. To give an indication of what this means, even though the overall density of the Sydney metropolitan area is not comparable to London’s, there are parts of inner city Sydney that have greater population density than the densest parts of inner-London^[i].

Obviously, denser cities are louder ones. This matters because as a city becomes denser and louder, it becomes harder to balance the needs of all its users. I know this because I see it every day working alongside local government planners and regulators, who are at the coalface of this process. The work that goes into understanding, acknowledging and developing policy to manage these competing or conflicting needs is difficult, messy, necessary and, most importantly, a long-term project.

Music industry policy is having a bit of a moment. Governments in Australia and internationally are introducing new policy and strategy to support their local industries. Like the City of Sydney’s ownLive Music and Performance Action Planthese policies or strategies are generally broad in scope but feature sound as a central focus. This is especially the case for those focused on cities or linked to a broader strategy for the night time economy, which is having a similar period in the spotlight^[ii]. The reason for this focus is because of the central challenge I’ve outlined above, but also for the simple reason that sound is music’s singular resource and a city simply cannot have a functional music industry without an understanding of how it is produced, who it affects and how, and a commitment to finding better ways of working with it.

All of which is why it was gratifying to see the forum sell out. Clearly, industry and government want to have a more detailed conversation on the subject, to the extent that 60 of them were willing to spend three hours in a pretty squashy meeting room in Customs House library.

The collective knowledge of the audience was impressive. We had venue operators, event promoters, musicians, liquor regulators, environmental health specialists, urban planning policy makers, industry body executives, acoustic engineers, industry activists and ‘interested parties’. Despite the event being held in Sydney there was also a generally good geographical spread of people. Perhaps the best part was that the room was full of people meeting for the first time. It was not the same people having the same conversation.

The challenges associated with city-based music industries are not unique to Sydney, or any other city. Pretty much everyone I talk to about this issue-including government and industry representatives from Europe, the United States, and other parts of Asia-are grappling with the same challenges. There is much to be gained by working together and sharing information, and that is what Sound Solutions tried to do.

So what magic solutions did we conjure, I hear you ask?

None, because there aren’t any.

Sorry, but anyone who has talked to me about this topic knows that my mantra is the cliché – ‘there’s no silver bullets’. That’s not to say there wasn’t useful discussion and much to share. There was, and I’ll be following this post up with a more detailed rundown in a few weeks, once we’ve been through it all.

All of it will also be detailed in a white paper that the City of Sydney and Music Australia will publish in the coming months. The paper will discuss the findings of the session, alongside a range of other research and observations from the City’s own work in the area and the experiences of intra and interstate colleagues, like Brisbane, Wollongong and Melbourne.

I’d like to think that the Sound Solutions forum was the opening of a new conversation on a familiar subject, and I’m available for wonkish discussions on this topic. If you’re interested in ranting, or being ranted at, feel free to email me at hnichols@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au.

—-

[i]SGS Economics and Planning, 2015

[ii]Shane Homan, 2017

Republished from LinkedInwith the kind permission of Hugh Nichols.

Photo: News Limited