21St September 2018 Submission to the House Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts Inquiry Into Factors Contributing

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 Sydney 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, Jen Cloher, Nick Cave, Paul Kelly, Troye Silvan, Missy Higgins, Sarah Blasko, Tame Impala, Mojo JuJu, Darren Hanlon, Sia, William Crighton, Flume, 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

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