The 8 Best Tips From The 'Live Music Frontiers' Panel

Day Two of Face The Music hosted the Live Music Frontiers panel, bringing forth a number of unique, creative and clever initiatives to keep live music sustainable for years to come, at a time where touring and live performances are pivotal in the careers of artists, both emerging and established, and accounting from 60-80% of their incomes (a statistic mentioned in the National Music Issues Forum the day prior). 

Moderated by AAM's Yvette Myhill and led by keynote speaker Ruth Daniel, 123 Agency's Damian Costin, National Live Music Office's Damian Cunningham, Joel Stern of Liquid Architecture and ALH Group's Sharlene Harris, here are the best ideas from the panel to keep live music fresh, interesting and financially viable as we look to the future. 

1. support local content (damian costin)

"We could do with more live content, laws for more Australian music to be played, that would be nice if we could get together and that would make our industry a lot stronger. Canada at the moment has a really great ethos around supporting local content, and that's not between 12am and 6am. I think if we could adopt that we could be even stronger in a lot of ways. We're seeing a lot of music being produced, triple j is being delivered 180 songs every week, that is insane. Where does all that music go? How is it being filtered?" 

2. use unique venues (ruth daniel)

"We use places like car parks, caves, we've used boats before, race courses, so many different places. What I like about it is we work with big bands that would play traditional venues but you'll always remember that [unique] gig more than any other that you went to see. You'll always remember the gig that took place in a cave. A lot of the stuff that we try to do with the live music we program is about something really unique. Getting a big famous band to play with a Zimbabwean male voices choir. Making something new that's completely special."

3. build rapport with your audience (damian costin)

"Really sensible things [to do] is grabbing everyone's information that comes through that door. In terms of ticketing, when you set up your shows with different promoters I suggest if you can grab the data after from everyone who has clicked so you can build a rapport and an email address from the audience ... You can have a direct communication with them, and once you've got that you can give them songs, give them exclusive EPs or merch... As you grow as an artist so does the venue."

4. create supportive neighbourhoods (damian cunningham)

"We've got to create supportive neighbourhoods where noise complaints are a normal thing, but just because of a noise complaint doesn't mean to say it's an issue. It may be an issue for the person so it's recognising how we deal with it. Recognising that we have a cultural attainment that we want in this area, we want this to be a vibrant and musical city, so how do we deal with that? We don't just say, okay we regulate that, it has to be responsive. So when someone really does breach something, that's when we treat it as an issue." 

5. bring the music closer (sharlene harris) 

"There's been a lot of focus on Melbourne city and Victoria regional, and I think we forget about that 50 km radius where probably 80% of our people live. 0.05 laws and all those things started affecting things 20 odd years ago and I think bringing the music closer to people so that they don't have to travel so far is really important." - Sharlene Harris

6. support each other, first and foremost (damian costin)

"If someone is brave enough to open up a venue and engage with live music, we as agents and musicians and publicists, we need to support each other, first and foremost. That's just number one real, it's win win for everyone." 

7. create something temporary that burns bright (joel stern)

"One of the things we haven't really talked about is artist run spaces where you have a group of artists set up a space for performance, that might not aspire to be sustainable, might not want to become a fully fledged venue. It's about creating something temporary that is a site for an explosion of creativity and the idea is that the community that sets it up feels ownership over that space, feels empowered to do whatever they like. [They can] transcend whatever taboos might exist and conventions in other spaces. They act as incubators for a level of creativity that you can't necessarily find in the parts of the industry that have a different kind of bottom line." - Joel Stern

8. support all areas of the industry (damian cunningham)

"Use the infrastructure that's already there, use the pubs, the clubs, the restaurants. Cave shows are wonderful and you can do that but also use the regional rsls, using these options. They are the ones that day to day support the music industry, and it's a tough game to be in. They're not making a phenomenal amount of money, a lot of them are just holding it together. So when you're putting together shows, plan those highlights from an artistic point of view ... But it balances the success of the whole, it's about supporting all areas of the industry."