The Eternal Problem Is That The Music Industry Is Seen As Lowbrow

20 July 2015 | 4:27 pm | Steve Bell

"The endless struggle that contemporary popular music faces is that on one hand it’s not treated as a legitimate art form by funding bodies..."

With this in mind the industry peak body is digging into their pockets for a QMusic Industry Night, which they’re hosting at The Triffid on Wednesday 5 August, at which any participants in Queensland music can grab a drink and mingle with likeminded folks from every facet of our vibrant scene. On the night there will be brief talks by QMusic President Michael Crutcher and Executive Officer Joel Edmondson about the future of Queensland music, but mainly it’s an opportunity to network and help take Queensland music forwards in the most constructive way possible.

“It’s not just for QMusic members, we want to hear from anyone and everyone who’s in the industry,” Edmondson explains of Industry Night. “It’s always tricky for QMusic because we have paying members who reap certain benefits, but really we exist to serve constituents – which is the entire industry – so what we’re trying to do is stimulate a greater sense of community within the industry. It’s largely necessary because while social media is such a convenient way to interact you can’t say that you really know a lot of people just by seeing what they post on Facebook, so we aim to create meaningful links between people which is what the Industry Night exists to do.”

And Industry Night is not the only initiative QMusic are currently overseeing in an effort to take our scene towards the future in the best health possible – they’re currently conducting an online survey with an aim to encourage innovative collaborations between artists, industry and government. Everyone is encouraged to fill out the survey’s four brief questions – doing so should only require a few minutes input from each individual with a stake in the Queensland scene - the feedback from which will inform a vision document to be released for public consultation later in the year.

"QMusic is here to channel the collective wisdom of the industry and come up with solutions to its problems."

“QMusic isn’t here to come up with the solutions to everything – QMusic is here to channel the collective wisdom of the industry and come up with solutions to its problems which genuinely reflect the challenges which are communicated to us by our constituents,” Edmondson continues. “If it’s just going to be me or some other member of QMusic coming up with all these solutions, that’s not really a facilitated approach that’s particularly democratic. We need to know people’s concerns to act – I’m interested in what people need and then working to try and fill that gap.”

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The Brisbane-bred Edmondson has been Executive Officer of QMusic since the beginning of 2015, and has the perfect background and pedigree for the role. A musician himself, after finishing his undergraduate studies at Griffith University he was awarded the prestigious Scotland Scholarship by the British Council and went on to complete his Masters in Music in the Community at the University Of Edinburgh. He then spent time honing his skills with various not-for-profit and local government bodies as a creative change facilitator, implementing strategic reform, and was also a founding director of the Red Hill DIY venue the Hangar, and its artist-run indie label, LoFly Records. Edmondson has obviously faced a fairly steep learning curve since being handed the reins in January, but explains that he’s relishing the opportunity to make positive change within the scene.

“It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for me personally, because when I went and studied Music In The Community in Edinburgh my head got filled with a lot of ideas that I could potentially translate into helping the music industry in a way that I didn’t see it helping itself at the time,” he offers. “But then when I came back to Australia there wasn’t much work doing that, so it’s been a pretty long road to get to the point where I’ve collected a lot of other professional experiences and skills to combine that with my music industry skills so they can be applied to this job. This job is like the perfect opportunity to help put it all out on show and help make a difference.

“[Most of the learning so far has had] to do with the politics and inter-relationships of people in the industry, because when you’re a peak body you try and remain as agnostic and Switzerland-like as possible, especially with something like BIGSOUND where there’s a lot at stake for a lot of different people. It’s about understanding how certain decisions can affect other people and how the way that it rolls out is pretty sensitive.”

Edmondson believes that his own background as a musician gives him empathy with the plight currently facing our artists in the scene, even though the challenges facing musicians starting out in their careers seems to change all of the time.

"You use the word ‘empathy’ but it’s actually this strange kind of empathy which is a bit more brutal than that."

“It’s strange, because you use the word ‘empathy’ but it’s actually this strange kind of empathy which is a bit more brutal than that,’ he reflects. “When I was a more active artist two of the things I failed to do was, (a) reach out and get a lot of support and, (b) be really realistic with myself about the commercial nature of what I was doing. So I think my attitude towards artists when I talk to them in my capacity in this role is sort of one of ‘tough love’, making it clear that it’s all worth doing but it’s also hard work and the dream of being discovered isn’t going to just happen, you have to work hard on the business side of it as well. It was interesting going to Canadian Music Week recently and following around a couple of the bands that Sounds Australia had taken over there and just seeing firsthand how hard a band has to work these days to penetrate the noise of all the other bands that are around and to do something professionally that’s going to work in this increasingly cutthroat market. Just seeing that in the flesh was a stark reminder of what it’s like out there at the moment for artists.”

In the past there’s been some misunderstanding about QMusic’s role as an advocate for the state’s scene, and Edmondson hopes to educate people as to their real role – not for QMusic’s benefit, but so that they can more efficiently do what they’re there to do; help Queensland music.

“I think that advocacy is an incredibly important part of what we do,” he iterates, “but it’s always difficult when you’re a peak body funded by the government because a lot of advocacy you’re doing is to government, so you’re kind of being given money to perform a function and the relationship then when you’re advocating for industry can become a little bit uneasy if what government is doing is not necessarily in the interests of our industry. But we’ve entered into a period now where solidarity in the arts sector is incredibly important because successive governments have taken a more and more conservative line in terms of arts funding. What the Queensland Labor Party have announced this week is promising but I will look forward to seeing how that translates for contemporary music. But I think there’s a way of doing that on behalf of the industry that doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of arts organisations do, which is name calling of the government. What the music industry needs is a really sophisticated approach to PR and advocacy that just makes a much more rational argument about the economic and cultural value of the music industry. It’s just that eternal problem that the music industry is seen as something that’s lowbrow and because it’s an industry that has an internal infrastructure of its own which allows it to sustain itself – well that’s the theoretical view – whereas in reality while on a macro level the music industry is doing fine, most musicians are earning less than seven grand a year as musicians. So at the personal or micro level the story is a lot different and not nearly as rosy, and that’s the story that needs to get out there a little bit more.

“But QMusic is also about providing professional development infrastructure that helps people – particularly emerging musicians – translate what they’re doing into something that can be of commercial value. I’m also interested in getting much more involved in supporting independent music business, because in Queensland particularly one of the reasons people move on elsewhere is because we’re missing some of those key pieces of infrastructure. We have great publicists and managers going around the place, but they’re all fighting the good fight a lot of the time – none of them are rolling around in cash. The reality is that in an ideal world there would be more extensive government incentives for people to make music for the public’s benefit and a whole different tax system – real proper support just so music happens. If we had music happening in the streets all the time New Orleans style that would be amazing for cultural tourism, but if you wanted to transform places in Queensland to be like that you need investment to make it happen.”

QMusic exists under the umbrella of AMIN (Australian Music Industry Network) – the network of state-based music organizations providing a national voice for policy development and advocacy issues – and Edmondson has of late been a crucial player behind AMIN’s agitation for a cross-portfolio Federal Government approach to funding the contemporary music industry. They’re asking the Federal Arts Minister George Brandis to start a taskforce to look into the future viability of our vibrant contemporary music industry, which at a government level often seems to be treated like the red-headed step-child in comparison to the funding lavished on more “highbrow” musical pursuits like classical music and opera (even though statistics prove that contemporary music injects far more money into our economy). Brandis, of course, played a critical role in the decision made by the Federal Government in the last budget to funnel money away from the Australia Council to the Ministry of Arts with a view to establishing their controversial National Programme For Excellence In The Arts.

“The endless struggle that contemporary popular music faces is that on one hand it’s not treated as a legitimate art form by funding bodies in relation to other art forms,” Edmondson reflects, “but on the other hand it’s not treated seriously as an industry or an economic producer by other parts of government, so it’s kind of in this no man’s land. I think that’s where the industry needs to start its conversation by saying that it’s kind of homeless, and there needs to be a cross-portfolio approach to reconcile that homelessness.

"If people want to see more live music then getting out there and supporting it as much as possible is really, really important."

“There’s definitely historical baggage there. If you look at a lot of the other stuff that’s going on in society at the moment, there is a huge generational clash of cultures happening and contemporary music is caught up in that. Sure, there’s heaps of people in their seventies who love rock’n’roll but they’re in the minority, and the reverse is true that the patronage of contemporary popular music is mainly young people and as they age that will become the thing people are nostalgic for. The question is – as with something like climate change for example – whether we can afford to wait for that change before we take action about preserving things.”

Edmondson has some further interesting ideas of his own about not only the challenges facing the Queensland music industry but also about how we can stimulate the scene moving forward.

“I think what’s happened in the Valley around noise regulations has been great – we could be in a lot worse position than we are now,” he argues. “I think what’s happened in Kings Cross shows that it’s very damaging to live music to instigate draconian lockout laws when there’s no evidence that they work. But to look at the big picture, if people want to see more live music then getting out there and supporting it as much as possible is really, really important. A lot of our challenge now is about trying to build our way beyond the few [live music] precincts in Brisbane and try to create a vibe that’s a little less orchestrated and managed – where people can go to a light industrial area near them, or even a residential area, and establish DIY venues where a band can set up and people can sit around and drink beers and listen to music and hang out. 

“Creating a music city is predominantly about official venues but it’s also having that sense of things happening organically as well, and I don’t think that’s been encouraged by government. When I lived in Berlin you’d walk down the street and there would be an impromptu happening in an abandoned shop front with people hanging out listening to someone play guitar and sing – we have plenty of abandoned shop fronts. I think in Queensland generally – but in Brisbane in particular – the whole ‘new money’ thing is a double-edged sword, because on the one hand it’s enabled us to create these great venues that are really impressive to go to, but then on the other hand everything can feel quite staged then if you don’t enable other people who mightn’t have the economic capital to compete with that to do something as well.”

So there you have it – if you feel like a stakeholder in the Queensland music scene then get along to the QMusic industry night in a few weeks and be proactive in helping it move forward. If you can’t get along in person there are still plenty of more digitally-oriented ways that you can keep abreast of development in the QMusic world.

“The best way to get involved is to sign up to our Broadcast digital newsletter,” Edmondson says. “Just go to our website and scroll down to the bottom of the page – all of the different opportunities for engagement and consultation and support is advertised through that Broadcast. There’s also QMusic membership as well that you can find out about on the website.”

QMusic Industry Night is held at The Triffid on Wednesday 5 August.