'You’re Competing With Literally The Entire World': The AAM Awards' Manager Of The Year Nominees On The Aussie Music Industry

In just one week, the AAM Awards (that is, the Association of Artist Managers Awards) will take place for 2025 at Naarm/Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club on Wednesday, April 30th, recognising all of the incredible talent that is at play behind the scenes as artists are guided towards greatness.

This year will see six awards presented, including Manager of the Year, Breakthrough Manager of the Year, Community Engagement Award, Legacy Award, and the Patrons’ Gift, as curated by AAM Patrons. A new award will also be handed out, with the Emerging Manager of the Year Award being distributed for the first time.

Already, the shortlist of nominees has been announced, with some of the best and brightest names in Australian music management up for awards.

However, while it’s one thing to recognise these managers for their hard work, it’s also important to recognise them for what they bring to the industry as well. What ideas do they have for the industry? What do they feel needs to change? How do they feel Australia sits within the global music industry? And how do they think the industry, fans, and artists can all continue to lead the charge for supporting local talent?

These are the questions we put forward to the nominees of the forthcoming Manager Of The Year category ahead of this year’s ceremony. We spoke to Simone Ubaldi of Sundowner Artists (co-nominated with Andrew Parisi), Leigh Treweek of Handshake MGMT, Jacqueline Thomas-Piccardi of Cinque Artist Management, Daniel Nascimento of UNIFIED Music Group, and Andrew Klippel of Ourness to gain their insights on the topics.

Simone Ubaldi (Sundowner Music)

What aspects of the Australian music industry do you think need to be fixed, improved, or worked on?

We need better strategies to support discoverability for emerging artists, including support and amplification for grassroots music venues where these artists are playing. We lost a generation of live music fans in this country during COVID.

The kids turn out for mass-market music that is served to them by the weight of algorithms, but they don’t know who’s playing at the venue down the road. This has seriously impacted the capacity for young Australian artists to build their local fanbase and use that as a solid foundation from which to launch international careers.

There are other pathways to build audiences, through streaming and social platforms, but in that domain you’re competing with literally the entire world. Our experience is that incredible live shows are what deliver consistent, meaningful relationships between artists and fans, and that hype begins at home.

There’s been plenty of talk about a need to support Australian music more, but what can the industry, fans, and artists do to help?

Sign up to the mailing lists of all of your local venues, or follow their socials, so you know who’s touring, and buy tickets. Go to shows. Take a risk every now and again on an artist you don’t know, and tell people about the ones you do. Go to shows and bring your friends.

The local industry could also really benefit from a government-funded program of marketing and promotion for grassroots music venues, including a coherent platform for gig listings, so that people can easily find out what’s happening, similar to Oh My Rockness in the US.

Wherever possible, Australian artists should take other Australian artists overseas as support acts. If you don’t give your fellow Aussies a chance to play in front of international audiences, who will? Shout out to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, who have given Amyl & The Sniffers, Grace Cummings, and so many other phenomenal Australian acts a massive platform overseas, and helped to kickstart their careers.

There was recent news about Australia falling out of the global top ten markets, but in what ways is Australia leading the charge?

We’re not, Australia is fast becoming part of a homogeneous algorithmic sludge pile of global music consumption where all streams lead to Taylor Swift.

Amyl & The Sniffers are an obvious exception. They just headlined the Gobi Stage at Coachella on their sold out US tour, following their sold out UK/EU tour, and their sold out Australian tour. The Sniffers are charging the world down like a raging bull at present.

Leigh Treweek (Handshake MGMT)

What aspects of the Australian music industry do you think need to be fixed, improved, or worked on?

I feel the biggest improvement that needs to be made is creating pathways for young fans under 18 to see and experience live music. We have to foster future audiences and promote the joy and excitement you feel at a live show.

When touring globally, nearly all the shows my artist roster do are 16 plus. Young people learn the etiquette of how to behave and engage at shows by going to all age shows while developing a lifelong passion for live music that goes on to support the industry at large. 

There’s been plenty of talk about a need to support Australian music more, but what can the industry, fans, and artists do to help?

I think it is incredibly important for the industry to all come together to look at how we can support live venues. Venues who have spent years surviving on alcohol sales to subsidise live music are finding that revenue just isn’t there anymore.

We need to come together to discuss what venue deals should look like to ensure the venue, artist, and fans all benefit. We also need to educate fans on the value of a ticket and the value of music and art in general.

There was recent news about Australia falling out of the global top ten markets, but in what ways is Australia leading the charge?

The reason we have fallen out of the top 10 markets is simply due to streaming, having a smaller population has meant the way music is consumed does not allow us to compete in the same economic way we did previously via record and CD sales, streaming is a numbers game and we simply don’t have the population.

We may have a small population but the international success we are having shows that per capita we have one of the most vibrant music scenes on the planet. Amyl & The Sniffers, Dom Dolla, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Tame Impala, Troye Sivan, and so many more are killing globally both live and streaming.

Jackie Thomas-Piccardi (Cinque Artist Management)

What aspects of the Australian music industry do you think need to be fixed, improved, or worked on?

The idea that just because an artist comes from overseas, that they will be better than a local artist. Perhaps more in classical music, it would be so helpful if excellent Australian soloists were given really plentiful opportunities to perform frequently across the country with our wonderful orchestras, festivals and performance spaces, together building a solid following for not only the artist, but also the presenter. 

It’s important to have brilliant and diverse Australian artists up on the biggest stages so that they can also be role models or aspirational figures to the next generations of young musicians, and spark that idea of future potential.

It surely makes sense on a financial level for the presenter, where a performance fee without any of the international travel amounts to a fraction of the cost of flying in an overseas artist, and feeds positively into the local artist/manager/presenter/audience ecosystem. 

To be clear, my artists appear (and are delighted to perform) with several orchestras, but it would be great to have even more of that happening, if possible.

And again in classical music and jazz, work on cultural and gender representation should remain a focus. Also, making the concert-going experience more comfortable and welcoming (and accessible) for more people could only be beneficial for the music industry in the long run.

There’s been plenty of talk about a need to support Australian music more, but what can the industry, fans, and artists do to help?

All working together in the industry to support Australian music is key. Plenty of airplay would help, more dedicated media coverage via reviews, feature articles/interviews and opportunities to perform (as above). Certainly artists would need to have newsworthy music/art/projects on which to focus but in my experience, they are rarely short of exciting creative ideas and new work! 

For fans: if you like an Australian artist’s music or performances, please support it by buying a ticket to a live show, buying their merch if possible, their music online or even just telling your friends about a gig or an artist, if that’s all that’s feasible. Streaming real (as opposed to ‘ghost’) artists’ music helps too, though the financial return from streaming to most artists is, as we know, pretty minimal.

For artists: lifting each other up, being openly supportive of each other, and for classical and jazz, including Australian music in every concert. There are already many artists and presenters that do this, it would be great to have even more.

There was recent news about Australia falling out of the global top ten markets, but in what ways is Australia leading the charge?

We certainly have world-leading music artists and industry professionals, and I increasingly feel that with everything going on in the world today (geopolitically, economically, and right here at home), there’s an opportunity to lead through creating music that unites, inspires hope, compassion and reminds us that we’re all humans and are here to help each other out. 

We have a chance to lead through kindness, through showing the best of ourselves, and music can be one of the most effective ways to remind us of that.

Dan Nascimento (UNIFIED Music Group)

What aspects of the Australian music industry do you think need to be fixed, improved, or worked on?

More positive amplification of all the hard and great work our artists and teams are conducting locally and globally. It’s not dramatic to say that we are one of the few countries around the world that don’t wrap our arms around our local talent and elevate what they’re doing by being proud of it. Sometimes it feels like an indictment for an Australian artist to be successful or omnipresent. 

Call it tall poppy syndrome or whatever you want, we need to change that. It’s a group effort and it’s not an overnight change – it’s cultural across our wider industry, audiences, media, radio, and other key stakeholders, or on a macro level – policies and government support. Whilst there has been positive developments in recent times, it’s an area that needs continual improvement. 

There’s been plenty of talk about a need to support Australian music more, but what can the industry, fans, and artists do to help?

Lead by example. It’s a matter of culture and instilling habits, let alone being proud of our local artists in a more meaningful and consistent way. We need to continue leading from the front. 

There was recent news about Australia falling out of the global top ten markets, but in what ways is Australia leading the charge?

It’s not easy for Australian artists to export, but the fact is that there are so many artists making it happen regardless. Whether that’s boots on ground or making positive inroads online, we have a plethora of amazing artists and teams across genres and audience communities making genuine progress and having impeccable foresight and initiative to achieve big things globally. 

Coming full circle to my first answer, it’s then a matter of how these results are being received and supported locally and how that amplifies our wider industry accordingly.  

Andrew Klippel (Ourness)

What aspects of the Australian music industry do you think need to be fixed, improved, or worked on?

I've been thinking about this a lot, and my conclusion is that Australians really understand the concept of being champions at sport very well. It’s deeply ingrained into our culture, and we compete globally on many levels.

There’s institutes that have huge funding and access to both a strong cultural lineage and the best current thinking. I feel like it’s a business you can be incredibly ambitious within and there’s support to go all the way… and we prosper. 

We need to build the equivalent of that in music. We need to accept that we’re part of the global music business not the Australian business and get better at working with our artists, their songs, and productions. We have incredible talent here, some incredible minds in the business, and often we punch way above our weight. 

Looking at it more as a business I think would help as artists need support and incredible entrepreneurs around them. A helping hand or any form of charity is only going to create a false sense of security and I genuinely feel we’re better than that. To me it’s all about artist development, so moving that forward in a global context will be how to move the needle for our business ultimately. 

There’s been plenty of talk about a need to support Australian music more, but what can the industry, fans, and artists do to help?

Support ambition. Learning to identify early indications of success and throw funding at those ideas. Not everyone can have success, in fact I don’t think it’s much different now to how it was 20-30 years ago.

There’s only a very small amount of artists that can make it, and we should be more concerned about making those artists work, as this will be the thing that drives more diversity and confidence throughout the industry and will bring greater minds into our industry, and give us the ability to work on more nuanced and original ideas that can define our sound. 

The full list of winners for the 2025 AAM Awards will be announced on April 30th, with details about this year’s event available via the AAM Awards website.

AAM Awards 2025 – Shortlist Nominees

Manager Of The Year
Presented By White Sky

Andrew Klippel, Ourness
Daniel Nascimento, UNIFIED Music Group
Jacqueline Thomas-Piccardi, Cinque Artist Management
Leigh Treweek, Handshake MGMT
Simone Ubaldi & Andrew Parisi, Sundowner Artists

Breakthrough Manager Of The Year
Presented by DMT Law Firm

Ash Hills, UNIFIED Music Group
James Fava, Intergalactic Fantastic Worldwide
Luke Giannoukas, Teamwrk Management
Sarah McMillan, BootsDarling Music
Steve de Wilde, UNIFIED Music Group

Emerging Manager Of The Year
Presented by Live Event Logistics

Damien Platt, Palms Management
Elise Naismith, Lemon Tree Music
Kristie McCarthy, Lemon Tree Music
Rachel Whitford, 27 Music
Zac Abroms, Viceroyalty

Community Engagement Award
Presented by Oztix

Fiona Duncan, Loog Management
Louise Sawilejskij, Nala Music
Nick Finch, Low and Tight
Skinny O’Leary, Sidequest
Stu McCullough, Amplifire Music