21st September 2018

Submission to the House Standing Committee on Communications and The Arts Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Communications/ Australianmusicindustry

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for considering this submission, which is in collaboration with the Australian Association of Musicians (AM).

My name is Andrew Barnum, as a PhD candidate at UTS in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, my study is investigating the cultural contexts of Identity, Artifact and Change through the lens of Australian Song in the age of digital music. To date I’ve interviewed thirty-five Australian songwriters (genders and music genres) to understand the conditions in which their practice exists in Australia.

In consideration of the terms of reference stated for this inquiry, it’s important to start with some unifying statements as drivers of purpose for this submission.

WHAT ARE OUR COMMON BELIEFS AS AUSTRALIANS?

As a community of Australian artists and citizens, we are informed by the belief that our nation should strive to be a productive nation - empathic, respectful, imaginative, industrious, adaptive, open and successful. (Creative Australia 2013)

In this submission we are considering the reasons why our Association should support these beliefs as central to our strategy to re-invigorate The Australian music Industry, which is both a cultural and commercial Australian enterprise, locally and globally.

This submission considers the factors that will grow and sustain our uniquely Australian Music Industry, as a proud Cultural and Creative Industry, and in doing so, confirm our sense of self as Australian musical entrepreneurs, our desire to feel we belong here in our birthplace as Australian artists, producers and copyright holders, and can sustain livelihood and opportunity at home, as productive members of the field of cultural production in Australia.

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018 Australian culture is the embodiment of the distinctive values, traditions and beliefs that make being Australian in the 21st century unique – democratic, diverse, adaptive and grounded in one of the world’s oldest living civilisations. (Creative Australia 2013)

STRATEGIC GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY OF AN AUSTRALIAN SONG AND MUSIC INDUSTRY

As an association, we are responding strategically to the cultural, economic, social and technological challenges that the next decades of this century are likely to present for the Australian Music Industry. Australian musicians and songwriters today are resourceful, creative, and tenacious against the odds presented locally and globally.

However, the Australian music industry is under renewed pressure to sustain its hard- won, and successful Australian tradition of adapting to the uniquely local conditions of:

• Multi-national corporate domination of labels, publishers, and their associations • The cultural grip of an externally measured cultural cringe and tall poppy syndrome • Australian content quotas that embed local disadvantage towards airplay and exposure • Local media distaste, indifference or ambivalence towards local artist’s production •Distance, isolation, remoteness (geographically, metaphorically and inter-personally) •Poor pay and conditions for honest cultural and commercial work, well done • Decreased educational focus towards the value of local Arts, culture, music and song • An inter-generational shift from analogue product to digital interactivity •A contested, reticence to clearly state what ‘Being Australian’ means to Australians, as expressed in Australian music and song.

The Australian music industry has grown and sustained a culture of ‘punching above its weight,’ maintaining resilience and determination to succeed, prosper and sustain the pulse of our unique musical modality of local languages, stories, experiences and sense of place.

In short, Australian musicians and songwriters have endeavoured to sustain a resilient and adaptive cultural momentum in the face of local and global precarity. Australian music and song artists are required to be creative, patient, consistent, and perseverant towards expressing their core Australian values and beliefs within the shifting conditions of a re-defined Cultural and Creative Industry in the digital age. It’s time for this culture of determination and uniquely Australian creativity to be rewarded by Governments, Private and public sector Industry, and the broader population.

Artists today make their careers not only in traditional cultural fields, but with growing success in the broader economy. The cultural sector is generating significant value to the Australian economy as the importance of creative industries increases for both consumers and businesses. The cultural sector has always been central to the social life of Australians, but it is now an increasingly important part of the economic mainstream. (Creative Australia 2013)

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018 NATIONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

Culture, then, concerns identity - the identity of the nation, communities and individuals. We seek to preserve our culture because it is fundamental to our understanding of who we are. It is the name we go by, the house in which we live. Culture is that which gives us a sense of ourselves. (Creative Nation 1994)

Australian music and song has already experienced its first golden age from the 1970s to the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games. This was a pan-Australian team effort, a national obligation taken up by music artists, songwriters, labels, citizen consumers, venues, festivals, radio & television, cinema, performing arts, literature, creative arts and most recently, the internet.

Ours was a local, and international cultural success, that established our collective face, and voice, to the wider world of music and song cultures, but most importantly, generated immeasurable local pride for our own national music culture. We all learned to count ourselves in, take our own music seriously as valuable, and we prospered.

This cultural prosperity can only be returned today with a concerted national effort, where all Australians become re-educated and curious towards the connection between the musical expression of our national values, and sustainable local and global economic growth.

Understanding, that when we take ourselves seriously as a proud music and song culture, recognising and accepting the value of our own artists and their profoundly personal local work, we are investing in ourselves as a nation. Every time local media, or digital platforms choose an Australian musician or songwriter for local airplay or exposure, our own national cultural identity is renewed, and the strength of our national pride, sustained.

And this pride and confidence flows to the broader economy. To Education, Tourism, Hospitality, Services and a secure local and global Creative and Cultural Industry. The voice of Australian music and song filters through our everyday understanding of ourselves as a creative nation, proud and unified in a uniquely Australian entrepreneurial adventure of learning, and growing our cultural spine of belief, for ourselves, and for the world to share.

CHANGED DIGITAL CONDITIONS AHEAD

Since the complete conversion to a global, digitally connected Australian nation, along with the complete re-structuring of the local and global digital music industry (including the adaptive miss-steps, and shortcomings of our ICT infrastructure roll-out), our song and music culture, and industry has had some noticeable global attention through our uniquely Australian ‘grain’ of voice.

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018 Artists like Courtney Barnett, Vance Joy, , Nick Cave, Paul Kelly, Troye Silvan, , , Tame Impala, Mojo JuJu, Darren Hanlon, , William Crighton, , Tash Sultana, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Gareth Liddiard, Glenn Richards, Laura Jean and Gang of Youths, to name a few, have kept the local Australian spirit firing, and inspiring our local cultural momentum.

Truth be told, the Australian music industry has been dealt a body blow during this digital transition, and we are still turning it around in 2018. A re-alignment of all the inter-connected moving parts of the successful Australian music industry mentioned above, are being re-established in the new media context of digital music.

Any notion of the previous Australian music and song Industry has been radically re- tooled to a fully interactive digital experience between user and music-based content. The previous linear supply chain of analogue production to product, has been replaced by digital production, available to buy, or subscribe to via platforms like iTunes, Spotify and others. This inter-generational shift requires re-thinking around the availability, and homogenous consumption of digital music. Today, in Australia we are literally drowning in music, and sadly by a high percentage of the imported version.

The context and roles within music and song production, and consumption has been radically re-engineered by digital music interactivity:

The producers are the audience, the act of making is the act of watching, and every link is both a point of departure and destination. (Kelly 2005 Wired, We are the Web)

The future of the Australian Music Industry is dependent on adapting to new conditions, both commercially, and culturally.

The future of music will be driven by the convergence of expert and social curation. (Elias Roman 2011, TechCrunch)

HOW DO WE PLAN AND WHAT ARE THE DELIVERABLES OF A FUTURE STRATEGY?

We need a national plan of action towards amplifying and bolstering local reception of the voice of Australian music and song, within Australia. Without addressing our lazy, cringing indifference, and silent cultural malice towards the value of our own songwriters’ experience as Australians, our Industry will not be sustainable. This is a struggle that must be revealed as a chronic national lethargy towards our own cultural citizenship.

It seems that the most reliable way to address renewal and esteem, is through the carrot of community Education, and the stick of Regulation. Our solution demands tough, local love on behalf of our artists, producers, and the field of cultural production that authorises, and denies access to the recognition, acceptance, and livelihood of the Australian tellers of our national story.

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018 STRATEGIC ACTIONS

Call out the too easily accepted choking-off of our local voice in music and song by commercial and independent media, recognizing our own lazy, cringing reliance on external measurement and judgment, as the face of our surrendered Australian cultural esteem. Back our own artists in their cultural and commercial enterprise to succeed.

Dismantle the silent distaste that’s been built up against our own local output, denying our birthright-voice as inferior, other, or less profound in comparison to the imported cultural mythologies that we ‘favor and prefer’ ahead of our own production. Ours is a proud local tradition of local language, stories, experience and sense of place. Back it.

Restore Australian music and song to its natural place as the dominant, national music culture in the hearts and minds of Australians.

Enshrine our independent song and music production as equal, and consistently better than the imported version. In Australia, the established cultures of sport, food, wine, and architecture, sustain local confidence and passionate reception within Australia. But when it comes to music and song, we remain captive to local doubt and poor self-esteem, and put the external product first, ahead of our own voice of local experience.

Diffuse the domination of multi-national corporate power in our Australian music industry. Encourage and support our growing independent sector in the age of the connected creative Australian arts entrepreneur.

Raise the quota of Australian music airplay on all electronic media, to renew the affection by Australian audiences towards our local musicians and songwriters, and affiliated industries, and in doing so reward their cultural tenacity on behalf of our Cultural and national identity.

Deepen education towards our cultural conversation on Australian music and song. Look beyond the quantifiable management and measurement of budgets, targets and charts only, and delve deeper into the largely unspoken, and guarded space that Australians are reticent, or uncomfortable to enter. This is the personal space, where contested national beliefs, values and dreams reside. This is a place of the heart, where we talk quietly about who we are, what we honestly believe, and where we stand in this world. This is the place where Australian musicians and songwriters inhabit every waking hour.

Proudly adventure to the heart of our own Australian inspiration, not just the manic pop thrill of passing fame, or the strategic construction of hit songs or chart domination. This is the place where your fellow Australians, our songwriters tell of our own lived experience, ‘the name we go by, the house in which we live.’

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018 Reward the uniquely Australian champions of our Music industry today, and across decades, who have selflessly nurtured and fostered our fragile cultural pulse, and stayed the course on behalf of our national cultural voice of value in music and song, both at home and for the world to treasure.

CONCLUSION

With our core beliefs around the renewed national purpose of a sustainable Australian Music Industry confirmed (why), we can then reach agreement on our national initiatives (what), This requires an affirmative statement of who we are as The Australian Music Industry, and our rebooted measureable goals as a national awareness campaign. (Not in terms of who we are not, or what we don’t believe). The final step of the process is the detailed logistics of an implementation roll-out of the following initiatives (how).

KEY INITIATIVES

• ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIAN MUSICIANS COMMUNITY MUSIC PROGRAM

• BETTER REGULATED LOCAL CONTENT QUOTAS

• REFORM MUSIC ROYALTY COLLECTION ORGANISATIONS

• REVIVE THE LIVE MUSIC INDUSTRY

• MAINSTREAM MEDIA EXPOSURE

• MUSIC PIRACY REGULATION

• STREAMING REGULATION

• NATIONAL AGENT OF CHANGE STATUS

• NATIONAL CULTURAL AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

• AUSTRALIAN MUSIC AS A CULTURAL TOURISM DESTINATION

Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely, Andrew Barnum | In collaboration with The Australian Association of Australian Musicians John Prior, Tim Williams, Adrian Keating

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anon, (2018). [online] Available at: https://tonedeaf.com.au/australias-biggest-musical- exports/https://tonedeaf.com.au/australias-biggest-musical-exports/ [Accessed 20 Sep. 2018].

Aph.gov.au. (2018). Creative Australia – Parliament of Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Libr ary/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201314/CreativeAust [Accessed 20 Sep. 2018].

Pandora.nla.gov.au. (2018). Pandora Archive. [online] Available at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/21336/20031011- 0000/www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/contents.html [Accessed 20 Sep. 2018].

TechCrunch. (2018). Songza Raises Seven Figure Round; Launches Mobile, Sharable Music Collections In The Cloud. [online] Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/13/songza- raises-seven-figure-round-launches-mobile-sharable-music-collections-in-the-cloud/ [Accessed 20 Sep. 2018].

WIRED, W. (2018). We Are the Web. [online] WIRED. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/ [Accessed 20 Sep. 2018].

AM Co-Submission | Inquiry into factors contributing to the growth and sustainability of the Australian Music Industry | Andrew Barnum | 21.9.2018