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: Blunder as election accidentally announced. Words by Samantha Maiden. Source: News.com.au.
🎵 Music: Young Franco, Amy Shark, Troy Cassar-Daley win big at 2025 QMAs. Words by Lars Brandle. Source: The Music Network.
📰 Media: Online youth news service The Daily Aus has diversified its offerings with two new verticals, a new video series, and a move into the live event space. Words by Lauren McNamara. Source: Mumbrella.
💰 Advertising: ‘Advertising is lazy marketing’: The creative veteran pushing long-form video. Words by Lauren McNamara. Source: Mumbrella.
📲 Tech: Big tech giants Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon and Elon Musk’s X have lodged a formal complaint urging the Trump administration to target “coercive and discriminatory” Australian media laws. Words by Natasha May. Source: The Guardian.
📜 Government: APRA AMCOS has welcomed the Albanese Government’s 2025-26 Federal Budget, while urging the “next Parliament to finish the job – and lock in the future of great Australian music for good.” Words by Conor Lochrie. Source: Rolling Stone Australia.
🌶️ Spicy: Dead fish finds way into parliament. Words by Sally Sara. Source: ABC.
Strength: Radio Refresh
Imagine being publicly assessed eight times per year…
👉 Ever feel like the radio ratings come around more frequently than you’re ready for? Well, somehow, we’re already at Survey 1 (of eight) for 2025.
👉 It’s nigh impossible for everyone to have a good report card every time, however the ratings are effective at getting radio, its performance, its programmers and its personalities in the headlines.
👉 It’s too soon just yet to gauge the real impact of significant changes we’ve discussed previously – such as triple j overhauling its song rotation standards, and Sydney’s 1041 2Day FM switching up its format.
👉 Survey 1, however, is a completely fresh data set, and enables us to set the benchmark for the year, track trends, and of course argue about headlines.
👉 So far, the media’s definitive takeaway seem to be that Kyle and Jackie O are still in trouble in Melbourne (and, as of this morning, with ACMA), but other trends might take longer to become apparent.
Weakness: Another Day, Another Data Breach
Remember when data breaches, cyberattacks and spam/scam messages were a rarity?
👉 Well those days are now even further away, with yet another data breach hitting one of Australia’s biggest companies.
👉 Crikey has revealed that thousands of subscribers to The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review (all owned by Nine) had their personal information left exposed online, including their names, contact details, addresses and information about payments.
👉The piece points out that “after the tech giants, Australia’s major media companies have some of the largest collections of personal data about Australians”.
👉 This personal data is used to form the basis of their advertising business, the strength of which they have previously boasted about, noting that they can create “rich, detailed, real-time profiles of audience members”.
👉 It’s not yet clear if any nefarious actors accessed the available information, but it will no doubt have an impact on audience trust and faith in the media brands.
Opportunity: Time to Transform Music Education
There’s lots of (valid) debate unfolding about how to solve various crises in Australian music, but one solution takes it right back to the start.
👉 That is: transforming music education, and ensuring everyone – even those in remote and regional communities – has access to top-tier lessons.
👉 This week, ARIA held its inaugural ARIA Innovator event, which brought together a full house of Australian music professionals to explore new pathways in creativity, business and innovation.
👉 Two speakers at the event were Natalie and Ricky Kradolfer, the Co-Founders of Sound Story client Amplify – a technology platform which enables any teacher in any classroom to act as a conduit to quality music education, ensuring better outcomes for students, and a stronger and more sustainable performing arts industry.
👉Natalie spoke to The Music Network earlier this month, saying: “As someone whose life has been centred around music for so long, I wasn’t okay with the fact that 80% of primary school students in Australia weren’t learning music at primary school. Research proves that primary school is the most important time in a person’s life to be exposed to music.”
👉 Plus, it could soon go global. She added: “The problem that we are solving is not unique to Australia, so we are also looking at expansion into classrooms all over the world. After all, music is a universal language."
Threat: 👊🇺🇸🔥
What more can be said about the US group chat debacle? ICYMI, let us add you to the chat.
👉 US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was at the centre of international intrigue, global think pieces and the birth of countless memes when he penned a piece for The Atlantic this week titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans”.
👉 The Trump administration’s comms tactic to combat this monumental f*ck up was to downplay the importance of the text messages, and claim “this entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin”.
👉 So, Goldberg released more texts, which had initially been withheld in the interests of national sensitivities and security.
👉 The follow-up piece is pretty direct in its title: “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal”.
👉 We’re not sure what happens from here, but we know that for years to come, people will be discussing and dissecting the many and varied threats this situation has posed, as well as the comms tactics everyone employed.
The Fun Stuff
Quote of the Week: “I didn't want to play it safe. I watch a lot of the competitive reality shows, and I want to see someone that comes in and swings really big, does crazy stuff and maybe fails and then succeeds. I want to root for someone. I try to be that for people watching at home, and I think I nailed it this time,” David Genat after winning US$5.8 million (AU$9.1 million) on US reality competition show Deal or No Deal Island.
🎧 Podcast of the Week: This week’s episode of Inherited from Shameless Media is disarming and devastating. It features Vicky Andrews being interviewed by her daughter, Michelle Andrews, who is the Co-Founder of Shameless Media and Co-Host of its flagship podcast Shameless. Vicky has recently been diagnosed with incurable brain cancer, which carries an average prognosis of 12 to 14 months. It’s a tough but rewarding listen. You can listen here.
🏆 Client Tidbit: The 2025 American Apparel Rolling Stone Australia Awards have announced this year’s host – The Hot Hits’ Nic Kelly – along with performers including Icehouse, Becca Hatch and 3%. The exclusive event will take place in April, and there’s still (limited) time to vote in the Readers’ Choice category.
