EXCLUSIVE: Yours & Owls Expand Venue Roster, Enter Victorian Market

Big news out of Yours & Owls today: the Wollongong-based music company has announced a “significant expansion” into their venue booking roster, entering the Victorian music market and scoring new venues in Queensland and Sydney.

Yours & Owls has entered the Melbourne music scene by welcoming The Thornbury Theatre, a cinema-turned-music venue, The Station on the Sunshine Coast, and University of Sydney (UTS) institutions The Loft and The Underground.

“We are delighted to add these new venues to the Yours and Owls roster. Melbourne is a music city and hosts one of the healthiest live scenes in the country; we are excited to be a part of that ecosystem via the Thornbury Theatre,” Y+ O co-founder Ben Tillman commented in a statement.

“The Station is an epic space with so many possibilities for hosting incredible events, and we can’t wait to deliver some unforgettable shows to the Sunshine Coast in partnership with the team up there. And having two venue options in the heart of Sydney’s CBD will allow us to offer our partners inner city options to add to our more regional offerings.”

Telling The Music that while entering the Victorian live music market is only new but feels positive, Tillman added that The Thornbury Theatre is “a beautiful room, and it seems like everyone is excited to see it be used more and live up to its potential.

“I guess when something is important to you, and you want to do a good job, there’s always going to be nerves, but hopefully, in time, it proves to have been a good move and something that everyone benefits from in the long run.”

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Elaborating on the expansion on the Sunshine Coast and Sydney, Tillman described The Station as an “incredible venue” that offers flexibility in the shows it puts on – “suitable from anything from 600 to 3,000 punters” – and is run by a “really great team.” To Yours & Owls, adding The Station to their roster was a “no-brainer.”

“The UTS is also another university-run space, so long term, alongside some of our other university rooms, we're hoping this is the beginnings of a bit of a 'university circuit' - similar to what the US does with their college runs, which will be great in helping break bands in the future,” Tillman said.

“Collectively, I guess we're trying to offer a suite of venues that make it easy for agents, artists, and promoters to get a whole chunk of their East Coast touring done in the one email. Nice and easy with the same processes and hopefully nice and streamlined, helped along with quick and good communication.”

While the general feeling around music venues and festivals this year has been doom and gloom, with the skyrocketing costs of insurance (and other unseen costs) affecting venues and the cost-of-living crisis making punters more picky with their money, Tillman is seeing the light.

Tillman explains, “Whilst things are definitely tougher in some respects, i.e. it’s harder to predict which act will pop and do really well, on the whole, it does feel like things are getting better.

“People are buying tickets to ticketed shows in venues – festivals [are] a whole other story) – and on the whole, we're selling more tickets than we ever have right now, but the things that are making it hard are the potential paradigm shifts in everything else alongside that, i.e. increasing costs, supplier and artist expectations, poor Aussie dollar and then, of course, coupled with the fact that drinking patterns, on the whole, are significantly down.

“There is a bit of an ongoing juggling act going on to ensure everyone is happy, getting what they need and continuing to grow (or at the very least surviving). I do think the general feel of things is largely positive.”