Welcome to SWOT by Sound Story, your inside track on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats looming for the creative industries.
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⚡ Trending: Here’s why Jack Black cancelled Tenacious D’s tour after Kyle Gass’ controversial Trump joke. Words by Rachel Joy. Source: Pedestrian.
🎵 Music: Vivienne Mellish is the new president of QMusic, Queensland’s trade body for the contemporary music industry, with John “JC” Collins confirmed as vice president. Words by Lars Brandle Source: The Music Network.
📰 Media: Cost-conscious broadcasters are set to overhaul their new season show reveals – champagne-fuelled events known as upfronts. Words by Sam Buckingham-Jones. Source: The AFR.
💰 Advertising: The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has issued 21 infringement notices totaling $319,260 for the alleged unlawful advertising of prescription-only weight loss medicines. Words by Ashley Regan. Source: AdNews.
📲 Tech: Nine has outlined its “Principles for AI Use” to staff, stating that the principles are “underpinned by the expertise of our people, and focus on delivering the very best content for our audiences.” Words by Jasper Baumann. Source: Mediaweek.
📜 Government: The WA Government spent $8 million on Coldplay – but this tourism sugar hit comes at the expense of local music. Words by Sam Whiting & Justin O'Connor. Source: The Conversation.
🌶️ Spicy: It’s rare that a piece of art comes along that is so monumentally bad it unites almost everyone in their hatred for it, and it’s even rarer for this to come from one of the world’s most accomplished and beloved pop stars. But with her new, much-anticipated single Woman’s World, Katy Perry has done it. Words by Meg Watson. Source: The SMH.
Strength: Music To Our Ears
New data and announcements are proving good news still abounds in the local and international music industries.
👉 Sales of physical music are on the rise!
👉 The Official Charts Company and BPI reported that physical album sales had experienced a 3.2% increase in the first six months of the year in the UK.
👉 According to the BPI’s analysis, the “ever-rising demand for vinyl albums and other music releases on physical format” reflects a “thriving market for music on the high street”.
👉 In other good news, SXSW Sydney has revealed more of its programming, including the unveiling of a large new piece of research into the Australian music and streaming landscape.
👉 The research will be undertaken and presented by Will Page, one of the most respected and globally recognised experts in music and economics, and is co-sponsored by Spotify Music and UNIFIED Music Group.
Weakness: When It Hasn’t Been Your Day, Your Week, Your Month, Or Even Your Year
It’s hard to keep up with the news about the news at the moment – and it’s tough to find a good story to tell!
👉 We’ve reached the point where even one of newspapers’ biggest champions – Rupert Murdoch – has put a timeline on their ultimate demise.
👉 That timeline is 15 years.
👉 As Unmade’s Tim Burrowes posits: “The biggest challenge for the publishers of news mastheads as they make their transition out of print, is how to avoid cutting into the thing that gives them their real point of difference – the quality. Excellence and curation is the point of difference when it comes to news. Even after print, that has to be the starting point.”
👉 In television, Nine continues its uphill battle to get some positive news to market, with CEO Mike Sneesby insisting its investment in the Olympics is tracking better than other outlets are reporting.
👉 And after a shake-up that just keeps shaking, Seven is trying various new initiatives with its news output. One such initiative – putting horoscopes on the nightly TV news – has raised some eyebrows (although it seems others are on board with Seven’s “see what sticks” strategy).
Opportunity: From The Ground Up…
The comparisons between sports and the arts can be difficult to avoid when it comes to political discourse, debates about policies, and consumer attitudes and habits. Despite the well-trodden path, there could still be something to learn.
👉 A piece in The Conversation this week looked at sports’ long-term investment in grassroots initiatives, clubs, players and volunteers, and asked whether arts policies needed to take a similar approach.
👉 The piece argued that: “Absent from most of these [Government] plans are explicit policies to foster the many arts and culture activities that community members participate in. Community theatre, choirs, bands, dance studios and local art classes operate under the radar and are little recognised in government bureaucracies. They are better known to local governments, which often provide cash or in kind support.”
👉 In Revive – Australia’s National Cultural Policy, released last year – one of the Actions was “Invest in local arts and cultural infrastructure across Australia”.
👉 The Labor Party's Revive policy document also noted that significant funding cuts under previous regimes had "severely limited the investment that [the Australia Council] has been able to provide to artists and small to medium arts organisations in specific areas of the sector in particular, including youth arts, community and experimental arts..."
👉 The almost-18-month-old policy did also make a commitment to introduce requirements for Australian screen content on streaming platforms, which was to commence no later than 1 July. It has, however, missed this deadline.
Threat: More AI Moves
Much like bad news stories about the media, it’s hard to keep up with the announcements, investments, hot takes and threats emerging from the world of AI news right now.
👉 The local media union, the MEAA, has fronted the Senate to demand action on AI training.
👉 “What we’re seeing is the biggest corporate swindle in history. It is theft, plain and simple – theft of people’s voices, their faces, their music, their stories and art. For the big Silicon Valley tech companies that own these machines, their business model is built on taking others’ work and selling it as their own and what we’ve seen so far is the thin end of the wedge,” MEAA Chief Executive, Erin Madeley, said.
👉 Madeley continued: “If left unchecked, the increased use of AI tools in the media, arts, and creative industries will lead to mass job losses and the end of intellectual property as we know it. “It will also drive the erosion of our news and information to the point where the community cannot tell fact from fiction.”
👉 Nine's Chief Data Officer, Suzie Cardwell, attempted to stem the tide of anxiety this week, promising that FY25 will see Nine deliver a formal AI strategy.
👉 In music, Soundcloud’s CEO, Eliah Seton, was more optimistic than most, telling MBW: “Generative AI tooling is potentially going to be the great democratiser of music creation because all of us across the planet who have access to a smartphone will have access to music creation tools, whether it’s writing a lyric or dropping a beat or collaborating with someone, writing a hook or remixing something, whatever.”
The Fun Stuff
Quote of the Week: “We prefer they didn't exit the market entirely, but if they're not prepared to pay for the news that's unquestionably an important part of their service – all of the research says that, and our data says that – then we don't think it's sustainable for them to operate in this market,” News Corp’s MD of Tech Platform Partnerships at News Corp, Nicholas Gray, on the Unmade podcast.
📺 Show(s) of the Week: A number of locally made dramas and comedies – including Love Me, The Twelve and Colin From Accounts – appear to be getting traction overseas. So if you haven’t already discovered them for yourself, why not give them a go?
🐋Team Tidbit: Sound Story team member Viv has spent the last week or so Scuba Diving in the Southern Visayas in the Philippines. Here she is swimming past a Whale Shark, putting a few things in perspective!
