Thanks to Annie Lee and her team for having me on their 2SER radio show, "The Daily" last Monday.
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I have a really special guest joining me this morning, Joe from the music site, which you probably are all really familiar with, called sydneymusic.net.
Usually we want to say it's a positive story and we want to have fun talking about things, but this is a bit more of a call out, because it is a community-funded website. It's coming out of everyone's own pockets and out of everyone's generosity, and they don't have any sort of government funding behind it, and they are a little bit low on funds at the moment and potentially close to closing.
So joining me in person this morning is Joe from sydneymusic.net to tell us a little bit through more on that.
Joe, tell us a little bit more about SydneyMusic, the website for those who might not be so familiar with it.
Sure! SydneyMusic.net's aspiration is to document every single original live music event happening in Sydney, regardless of how big the event is, what kind of space it's in, whether it's anywhere from coffee shops and restaurants to arenas and stadiums, we consider it all to be part of the incredibly important fabric of our live music ecosystem.
We want to be able to give it visibility and make it easier to discover, so we can get more people out to shows.
We love that, because, you know, Australia and Sydney in general has a really great local music scene - if people didn't know already! For [artists] to have a place to sort of get the word out in a sort of a fair manner, because if [listeners] haven't seen your website, it's quite clean, and everyone's on the same playing field. So doesn't matter if it's someone big, like Olivia Rodrigo, playing, or someone at the Oxford Art Factory playing their first time, or maybe second time. They all get this sort of the same playing field, which I really, really love.
But I think we have to jump into the important topic that we are here to discuss is the state of the site at the moment, funds-wise. Take us through a little bit how the funds work for SydneyMusic there, and what the current situation is, at the moment.
Yeah, sure. Look, we stumbled into creating this organisation. It started out very much just as a passion project, evenings and weekends. The size and complexity of our scene means that it quickly started taking about 20 hours a week to maintain - and got to the point where it was about 30 hours a week. By the point we were hitting that workload we'd been running for two years, and for me personally, I decided to quit my full time job because it was becoming untenable to, you know, do that full time work alongside that 30 hours a week. And so we wanted to figure out the organisation's sustainability and also figure out how much it truly costs - because I think when you're doing it as a passion project that exists around the edges of everything else that you're doing, it can be kind of hard to understand how much it would cost to run an organization like that. So we've been working on that for the last seven, eight months.
At the moment, we have a very conservative run rate, which is around $1,300 a week, which basically means that we pay musicians and creatives to help us to maintain the gig guide, and that is to the tune of around 20 hours a week. We consider it to be a really great way to provide some some sustenance to a part of our community. And then there's, of course, all of the operational costs, as well as trying to figure out, you know, what sort of organisational structure we need to make sure that it continues to deliver to the standard that we want it to.
Absolutely, of course. Like there's a lot of money going behind the scenes, the website doesn't just appear. You need to have tech people, for sure, to actually keep the running up and going.
Now, I think the big question is, you did mention because you're a regular on Danny's Breakfast Show, I was tuning in, and I was that's when I heard you, and that's when I reached out. I was a little bit shocked, because you said - I don't know if you were being a little [hyperbolic] - but you mentioned that you were minutes away from shutting down. But don't worry! I did check the website ...
It's still standing - for now!
It was illustrative, I suppose, but still very much a picture of the reality that we're in. I think that a lot of people would have started pulling the emergency sirens earlier than we had, but we've really wanted to kind of continue in faith. Firstly and most importantly, we just want to continue to get the information out there. We're told every single week that people discover live music thanks to what we're doing. We've been told that people have a greater attachment to our local live music community because of what we do, and that keeps us going. So we are looking to economise where we can. But the reality is that some costs are unavoidable.
And so yeah, in terms of where we are from a financial point of view, we are very much operating on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. And that's not really a tenable situation to be in for any organisation. So - we are trying to communicate the gravity of that situation to people and talk about the gravity of the situation.
That really is honestly, well, some might say, paycheque to paycheque. I know on on the site, you guys do have a button where people the community, can pop in funds if they have some money to give, to donate to you guys. But also you have some merch. But is there anything extra that you guys are planning to do that you want to share with us? Maybe a fundraiser in person, that to try and get those funds back up so you guys are in a spot where you're not in a dire situation every other minute.
I think the primary thing that we're struggling with is - because the organisation's total workload is around 50 hours a week - to add additional activities on top of that, it's a real challenge to find that time and to find the people power to contribute to that. We did do a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago in a bike shop. It was a really exciting time.
I think the main thing is just the investment of time versus what we recoup from doing an event, from a fundraising point of view... it's not currently something that we can justify spending time on right now... but we do love putting on parties! We love putting on events. It's our favourite thing to see our entity, which people primarily access online, turn into something that happens in real life, and that is something that really gives us a lot of joy. So whenever we can find the time - and it's mostly something we do for the love of it, rather than something that we think is a strategic way to fundraise - but we do love getting people in a room and just making some noise. That's one of the best things you can do.
That sounds like fun, and we love to hear that. So, for people who are listening in, who really want to help out and don't want to see this website go anywhere, but to stay on the internet - it sounds like you need more manpower and monetary support. So what is it that you guys probably would need the most at the moment?
I feel the complexity of reaching out to our audience in a cost of living crisis, and we are reaching out to the punters with the greatest of reluctance, because our audience is primarily made up of the people that are most ardently passionate about the grassroots and musicians and the people that are facilitating that ecosystem. And we have a massive problem with musicians' livelihoods being able to pay their way for themselves, so to ask for money from musicians or from the people that are actually keeping our scene alive - we would much rather those funds be going to them, and not to us. So it's been with a lot of conflict that we've sort of begun to ramp up this messaging to this degree.
We've been told by the government funding bodies that we've spoken to, that they don't have funding categories for us, and that they won't be funding us. We've spoken to national, statewide, local, you know, whether it's councils or local funding bodies or whatever - if you think of them, we've probably had a meeting with them, and that's been the response.
That was, look, I'm going to be really honest, that was a surprise and a bit devastating. But at the same time, we don't consider ourselves to be entitled to government funding. They have their own strategy, and they have their own approach to what how they're doing what they do. We are surprised that they don't see us as being worth investing in because we see the effect of what we're doing for us to have for over 4,000 unique people visiting the website every week and using it to help them discover live music, and that's without any audience acquisition. That's without any marketing spend whatsoever, pure organic traffic going to a website.
It's like a word-of-mouth thing ...
It is very much a word of mouth thing! And it's just growing week on week on week by itself. We see what that has done without any sort of amplification, and we imagine what could be possible in terms of enriching our live music scene.
I think about the number of people that are lapsed live music goers, including in this area where we are, here in Macquarie Park. I used to live in North Ryde, 12 years ago. I used to run live music shows in my backyard, and we used to have dads from the neighbourhood come to our shows, and they were over the moon. They'd say, "there used to be live music all over our neighbourhood" - and it doesn't exist there anymore. And they'd forgotten that live music exists. And that was 12 years ago, and I know that that trend has continued, and there are so many generations that have lost contact with the the fabric of live music and how it facilitates community. I want that back, and I want that back for all of us.
I think it's so important that we have it happening in our postcodes. Musicians can't afford to live in 2042, or, you know, the inner suburbs, to the same degree that they used to, that used to be where it was all happening. And we need to see live music be visible in all those places. And we want to help make it discoverable. That's a narrative that I think should be speaking to the interests of what funding bodies are looking to achieve. But as yet, we haven't really found the simpatico with them to get on the same page.
But I have hope, and I know that they many people inside those organisations do love what we're doing. It's just a question of strategically, where they're at in terms of how their budgets are structured right now, we don't exist - and that just is what is. I'm not saying that with any judgment, and then I'm not saying that with any rancor. It just is the situation right now.
I think to go back to the question around, where should the money be coming from? I think that the music industry, if they have a long term view of what our site promotes in terms of energising and activating the grassroots, the artists that we are giving the greatest amount of exposure to are the ones that are currently at the greatest risk of giving up their craft.
Not the greatest thing to hear.
If we want local artists that are currently playing the coffee shops and DIY spaces right now, to potentially be Metro filling or Enmore filling acts in 10 years time, we really need to be getting the music community around those artists. But unfortunately, I think the music industry is more interested in preserving their existing lines in which they're doing things. I understand that the music industry is in crisis. They are looking to sort of shore up what audience capture they have. Unfortunately, I think the underground is being left behind, and we're seeing signs of that all the time.
But it's exciting that the musicians are creating the best art that I've heard in the 20 years I've been in Sydney. It's an exciting time for music in Sydney, and so for that reason, we think that this is worth continuing to do
And hopefully we'll get to see SydneyMusic.net up and running for many, many years to come. But Joe Hardy, thank you so much for sharing your input, your thoughts, into local music. And hopefully, with the conversation we've had, maybe people who've used the website will know I go, "Hey, you know, I have some some change to spare", or maybe just $1 to say, I think, you know, everything goes a long way. So to try and, you know, support you guys for whether it's to buy a t-shirt or to just donate via the website, they can just do that. Joe Hardy, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for having me.
That was Joe Hardy from SydneyMusic there, he's one of the founders of a well-loved website. They're chatting to us about so the dire situation financially that the website and the business is under currently because they don't qualify for government funding, but then they also don't really want to ask local musicians to help out, because, as you already know, while those big businesses like Ticketmaster, are making huge amounts, I think they had record sales this year for ticketing and charging people for selling those tickets. Smaller artists, who are really the backbone, aren't really making that much - they always have a second or third job lined up. So it's a bit of a tough situation to be in.
But if you do have anything to spare, and you know, and you love the the website and the support it gives to local live music, please consider buying a shirt to to support them, or donating when you can. But that being said, hopefully we'll be able to speak to Joe in the near future to talk about how the site is doing well, and instead of the fact that they're in a little bit of dire situation.