Industry News

Vale Pete Lusty Pete Lusty, who started as a lawyer, in 1997 co-founded Ivy League Records and Winterman & Goldstein management with Andy Cassell and Andy Kelly. They were behind the global success of Jet, The Vines, The Avalanches, The Sleepy Jackson, Empire of The Sun and, currently, The Teskey Brothers and The Rubens. A statement from Ivy League Records read: “For someone who had achieved so much success, he had no interest in self-promotion. He never had a social media account, and he never spoke at any music conference. His view was that he just wanted to do the work, help his artists be the very best they could be and enjoy it. He lived and breathed music and the friendships that came with them. He was constantly thinking, constantly working, constantly solving problems, constantly giving encouragement. There was no line between work and his personal life, in the most positive sense. He just loved it.” Cassell and Kelly described Lusty as “a master strategist with a genius intellect and an uncanny ability to read the state of play and predict the future.”

COVID-19 #1: Can The Music Business Hang On Until October? As Australian music associations and sectors held emergency meetings after the government brought in a 500-cap (and then a 100-cap) crowd restriction, the general feeling was a turn-around in October. No one was quit sure why October was chosen, since we don’t know where the bottom is. But this was from people in retail, venues, labels and live production, whose jobs rest on their intuition. Within ve days of news of the 500 cap, the value of lost work in the entertainment eld was $150 million, according to I Lost My Gig. In an open letter to Victoria’s premier Daniel Andrews, singer-songwriter Alex Lahey said she didn’t expect to make money until November. This is a dilemma. Those who traditionally work on, say, a festival in winter will also work on another festival in spring. But if winter events postponed to spring, then they can only work on one rather than get an income from both. Much of the industry is made up of small freelance businesses, existing on small savings and forecasted work. Few have paid leave, said the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. Live Performance Australia, ARIA, APRA AMCOS, Support Act Ltd, Sounds Australia, CrewCare and Live Music Ofce were among those who met with the government asking for a $850 million survival package – making the point that the music industry needed to be placed in the same space as airlines and tourism. They also stressed that industry people needed quick access to benets and rental help. Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher agreed that the biz injected millions into the economy, and that musicians were the rst to put up their hands up to raise millions for bushre victims, and it was time they had the love returned. Music SA’s manager Lisa Bishop pointed out how the community could help out the music industry – buying music and merchandise, get radio stations to play Australian music, donating to their crowdfunding campaigns, donating refunds from cancelled shows to Support Act and get politicians to offer tax relief for venues. Support Act began a fundraising campaign as it steeled itself for a ood of applications for those suffering nancial and mental health issues. In the rst two weeks of March, it had as many calls as it did in the three months before. It was not helped by two major fundraisers, CrewCare’s Roady4Roadies and the industry’s Music In The House, were cancelled, leaving a gap of $350,000. If you’re feeling the sting, contact Support Act on 1800 959 500, the Lifeline Hotline on 13 11 14, or you can text their helpline on 0477 13 11 14.

COVID-19 #2: Venues Some venue owners are predicting they won’t return as they were already working on slim margins. After struggling with patron numbers after the bushre polluted air kept people indoors, the coronavirus was indeed the last straw. Even if the crisis lasts for a month or two longer, their nancial crisis will continue for ages after. Melbourne venue owner Jon Perring summed it up when he called on musicians and the public to come and support their premises. “The Live Music world is facing annihilation,” he said in a statement. “I don’t want the Tote and Bar Open to become some a footnote in a book on the good old days. We are losing gigs at such a rate that I will have to put off most, if not all our staff. 25% of the Australian workforce is casual. How will these people pay rent and eat if they can’t work?” While some venues continue to work around the virus, they are also vulnerable to legal action from punters who claim they were infected there, and nes of $100,000 if attendance inadvertently goes over 100 because there wasn’t enough staff to monitor.

COVID-19 #3: Music Retail These days Australian music retailers have two strong sales spikes in the year – Record Store Day (RSD) in April when 85,000 come out to check out 200 indie stores, and the Christmas rush. RSD postponed from April 18 to June 20 was a blow. One store told us that it would cost him $20,000 a month to keep on going. However the Australian Music Retailers Association (AMRA), which runs Record Store Day in Australia, was talking to record companies and sponsors about a replacement event on April 18. AMRA president Blake Budak, who runs Landspeed Records in Canberra, said “The third Saturday in April is a hallowed day in the diary of all music fans and we don’t want to abandon that, but we are also very aware that we are not operating under normal conditions. So we are looking at how we can still safely celebrate indie music and indie record stores on our Day of Days. How we do that is the challenge.”

COVID-19 #4: Songs People are turning to old hits in the crisis, with REM’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ back on the iTunes charts, its US streams up 48% in the rst week to 746,000. Billboard also noted that REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Losing My Religion’ were also getting streaming and download traction. Other songs included Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’, Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’, The Minutemen’s ‘Corona’, Shwayze’s ‘Corona and Lime’, Bad Religion’s ‘Infected’, The Knack’s ‘My Sharona’ and even Weird Al Yankovic’s parody ‘My Balogna’.

Netgigs Launches Yet another Australian music tech company is making its mark on the world. South Australian musician Joe Ward started music live-streaming company Netgigs in 2018, rst with Adelaide bands, with customers paying $10 to $20. It featured at BIGSOUND, streamed the Queensland part of the Australian National Live Music Awards and worked with acts in Ireland. Netgigs now has production teams in 100 countries and has licensing deals with record and management companies in place so artists get a royalty from every ticket sold, and is set for a strong global launch. Joe Ward discussed the initiative, saying “The whole idea was to let people see a show they couldn’t get to, whether because they were living in regional areas or it was sold out. But in the current climate where big gatherings are not allowed, Netgig provides a really strong option.”

The Vanda Young Competition Is Back The Vanda-Young Global Songwriting Competition is open until May 14. First prize is $50,000 from APRA AMCOS, Alberts and BMG. The second prize is $10,000 from legal rm Banki Haddock Fiora, while the third is $5,000 from Aon. The emerging songwriters winner also gets $5,000 from Australasian Music Publishers Association.

Lighthouse Award Goes National The Lighthouse Award, which supports women in artist management, has gone national this year, and doubled its grant to $10,000. Applications close April 7, see APRA’s website for details.