It's that time again where we ask you a friendly question – what's up?
Usually we ask what's up in your world, but this time we've gone a little more specific. We wanted to know what's up in Australian music.
Nearly 1300 local bands, artists and music makers answered our big questions, gave their opinions and offered some ideas about the creative industry we all love.
Our boffins have crunched the numbers and tallied the scores, and now we've brought it here to unpack it together.
So let's get into it, shall we?
First and foremost, it's important to know just *who* completed the survey. As mentioned, 1275 Australian artists responded and here's a deeper look at the who / what / where of it all.
Nearly half of all artists thought about bailing on the industry in the last year
Starting things off with an alarming one – 48 per cent of musicians thought about leaving the music industry in the last few years.
Not as shocking when you think about how the 55 per cent of those were women, who outweighed men (44 per cent), attributing these feelings to harassment within the industry.
Some of the most commonly cited reasons for this within the survey included financial pressures, time constraints, mental health and burnout, a lack of opportunities and a lack of support.
Live gigs are still the main source of income in a streaming-obsessed world
For a huge proportion of our respondents, playing live music makes up the most of their earned income. 58 per cent of that income, in fact. Streaming royalties is at around 15 per cent, while merch sales make up around 7 per cent of the average Australian artist's income.
Interestingly, if we dig in demographically, hip hop is the only genre that bucks the trend here with streaming coming in as the #1 source of income for those artists.
Digital downloads, CD and vinyl sales all combine to a mere 6.5 per cent, very much eclipsed by streaming income.
Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) performance royalties and radio airplay makes up 7 per cent of artists' income. If you're an artist and that's something you're not fully up to speed on, it very much might be some income you're leaving on the table.
Don't forget that you can sign up to the APRA if you're an artist! Becoming a member is the key way to go about collecting those royalties. Check out all the details on the association's website.
Most artists are working extra jobs to keep the lights on
A whopping 83 per cent of musicians who have earned money from their music over the past 12 months told us they work outside of the industry too, either with a job or a side hustle.
78 per cent of that group said they earn more from their non-music job than they do from their music.
Only 31 per cent of respondents earning money from their music believe they will eventually earn enough from their music to live on it without needing to have extra work.
Younger artists are more likely to think this way than their older peers – 72 per cent of respondents over 40-years-old believe they will never make a living from their musical craft.
Lots of musicians wants to play a festival but don't know how to make it happen
Getting a set at a festival is high on the bucket list, but not everyone knows how to get themselves up on the stage.
In fact, only 27 per cent of artists said they knew what they needed to do to be booked on a music festival line-up.
This lined up with a common complaint from artists where they felt there's a lack of transparency in the music industry about how festival booking and playlist curation works.
A lack of knowledge and information about the how decisions are made and what artists need to do to influence those decisions is a constant constraint. Many respondents referred to the industry old concept of 'gate-keeping'.
But which festivals are the ones Australian musicians want to be playing?
It's a bit of a mix of local and international fests, actually. Check out the top five below:
- Splendour in the Grass
- Glastonbury Festival
- Laneway Festival
- Coachella Festival
- Groovin The Moo
Is studying music at TAFE, university or a college worth your time?
There's no real differences in the data between those who have studied music at tertiary level and those who haven't.
The only big difference we noticed was tertiary-educated artists were more likely to have played a gig in the last week, and were likely to earn more coin from their music industry work than those without that formal education.
Ultimately, it all comes down to what your goals are as an artist. It's worth remembering that this survey is mostly about contemporary music, so if your dream is to be a red-hot classical composer, that's a whole separate ball game.
Instagram is king when it comes to social media
Aussie artists see Instagram as the most important platform to get their work out, 69 per cent (nice) of them believe this, in fact.
Following that is its endless-scroll cousin TikTok, with 32 per cent of musicians seeing it as a very important space to have a presence in. YouTube is not far behind, with 31 per cent of respondents seeing it as being crucial to their craft.
Each social media platform serves its own purpose in our personal lives, and it's the same for those who use them professionally, too.
Facebook has dipped significantly for younger artists, with only 12 per cent of people 18-24 seeing it as an important platform to promote their music on.
Bands or going solo? What's the preferred pathway?
Bands are actually becoming the less popular route with younger artists. The majority of acts under 24 in the survey are solo artists, while those 25 and over are opting to be part of a band.
So why the big swing towards the creating alone? There's a few reasons things are moving this way, if you stop and think about the last few years.
COVID and lockdowns are a huge influence on how artists worked on perfecting their craft. The simple factor of not being able to physically be with other people meant that bands were just not able to form.
Many artists – both new and established – started working solo as a way to continue their creative work while stuck at home.
A big after-effect of the pandemic is the cost of touring and performing shows, which really stacks up when you're trying to travel around with more people. Some are seeing going solo as a much more appealing and stable option.
This also extends out to making music, with younger artists opting for a solo career to keep recording time and costs down.
That financial aspect also looks at the money coming in from making and touring music, too. A lot of those solo artists told us that having to split income with fewer people made music as a job a much more financially rewarding experience.
However, the enormous improvement and accessibility of music production tech - software and hardware - in recent years has also made it a lot easier for solo artists and bands to DIY their music, too. We've seen it in the rise of bedroom producers and unreal quality uploads to triple j Unearthed.
Supporting Australian music is a team game
We asked whether key media outlets could be doing more to support Australian music and the responses were loud and clear.
Commercial radio, streaming services and us here at triple j ourselves have been told that there's lots more that can be done.
We're looking forward to using the results and feedback in this survey to help inform the content decisions we make to better connect Australian artists with bigger audiences.
It's tough going for a lot of acts at the moment and we're keen to work with all players in the industry to collectively come up with solutions to those challenges.
We're hopeful that this data is just the beginning of an ongoing conversation around how we can better support Australian musicians across the entire music industry.
We want to thank the artists who took the time to share their struggles, their wins, their opinions and their feelings with us through this survey - we don't take that for granted.
Over the months ahead, we'll be diving into different individual elements of the survey to help inform our decision making about the content and things we give our energy to at triple j and triple j Unearthed.
Throughout Ausmusic Month we'll be creating resources that aim to help ease some of these problems that local artists face – for example, we'll ask the question of how *do* you get booked for a music festival? Watch this space!