The Australian music industry is something that I try and keep up to date with, and it’s something that I, being an Australian, am proud of. This article, written by Adam Kelly from Tone Deaf, an Australian website based on local and internation music and culture, was written in response to the article 6 Reasons Why The Australian Music Industry Is Currently The Worst In The World. The original article was posted on the website What Culture, which is a UK website featuring music, film and televison news, among other things.
Tone Deaf describes the article as “Viewed over 135,000 times the piece was written by Aussie Brad Lee, who draws upon his experience as “roadie to frontman, from major distribution to retail”, he explains just why he thinks we haven’t seen an iconic Australian band to breakthrough since the likes AC/DC, Nick Cave and other classic local acts. Lee cites unoriginal local acts, talent shows, Triple J, the Australian public and even poker machines as just some of the reasons why he thinks the local music industry is the world’s worst.” (Kelly, 2014)
Currently, the Australian music industry is proving to be very influential on an international scale, with many young bands fast becoming recognised overseas. A large number of these bands are also independent and rely heavily on their online fan base. Some bands that come to mind are Sticky Fingers, Bad//Dreems, Dune Rats, Violent Soho and Pond. Even though many Australian artists to come out of shows such as the X Factor could be described as copies of every generic teen act in the world, there are so many artists that are making their own way both nationally and internationally.
In the article, Kelly makes a good point in saying “But as much as the Australian music industry isn’t Reese Mastin (and thank God for that), it also isn’t AC/DC. Where as once upon a time Australia relied on a specific type of music in order to garner international success, now we are exporting artists from genres so diverse we couldn’t even name them all if we tried. And that is a good thing!”(Kelly, 2014)
Many of these artists are adding to the musical spectrum, and changing the way people see Australia and the Australian music industry.
