Made here. Heard everywhere. National Cultural Policy submission

Made Here. Heard Everywhere. is a roadmap for the next chapter for Australian music

The submission spans Australia’s creative IP, live music, streaming discoverability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music infrastructure, screen music, education and export

APRA AMCOS has released its National Cultural Policy submission Made Here. Heard Everywhere. A roadmap to build an Australian music powerhouse over the next decade.

The submission spans Australia’s creative IP, live music, streaming discoverability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music infrastructure, screen music, education and export.

The headline proposals include a refundable tax incentive scheme for live music venues, festivals and touring artists; an urgent Green Paper on the algorithmic barriers preventing Australian music from being found on streaming services; a national investment strategy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music built on the model that transformed Indigenous visual arts communities; a National Song Academy at AFTRS as the apex training institution for contemporary music; a National Songbook to permanently recognise Australia’s greatest songs; and renewed investment of $180 million over four years into Music Australia for artist, industry and export development.

APRA AMCOS CEO, Dean Ormson, explains: “Australian music is extraordinary, and the opportunity in front of us matches it. We are living through a moment of profound change and that is precisely why this matters. Music teaches children to think, to collaborate, to make something from nothing. It holds communities together. It carries Australian culture to every corner of the world. It earns for this nation long after it is first made. Contemporary music can be the foundation of Australia’s creative century. This submission is the blueprint.”

In August 2020, just months after the beginning of the COVID lockdown, APRA Chair Jenny Morris stood at the National Press Club and asked the industry to look up from the crisis and imagine the future potential of the industry; a net exporter of music, music education in every school, live music protected, Australian music visible on every platform.

Successive governments have begun building the foundations and the release of the National Cultural Policy - Revive - established Music Australia, the first national music development agency. Australia then set a global standard rejecting a copyright exception for AI training. A live music tax offset became the first recommendation of a House of Representatives inquiry. The Australian music industry now generates almost $11 billion to the economy, with over $1 billion in exports, an industry that supports more than 40,000 workers. 

Made Here. Heard Everywhere.is a roadmap for the next chapter for Australian music, for the artists who make it, the audiences who love it, and the communities who need it to ensure Australia not only embeds conditions for sustainability and artist livelihoods, but also to reach the nation’s full potential as a music powerhouse in the Indo-Asian-Pacific. 

Ormston adds: “Jenny Morris’s vision is no longer aspirational; it is a credible vision. We now have the opportunity to finish the job. This submission is our answer. Every recommendation passes a single test: does it serve the artist, and does it serve the audience? The songwriter who needs to know her work will be protected. The kid who needs to hear a live show. The First Nations musician whose songs carry his community’s lore across generations. The teenager in a regional town who has never had a music lesson but can hear something in herself that needs to come out.”

Made Here. Heard Everywhere. is the next chapter and is informed by a member survey spanning every state and territory, every genre and every career stage. Key priorities include:

• Creator rights and AI: embed a voluntary licensing framework built on transparency, consent and remuneration, with an ICIP carve-out to protect First Nations cultural authority, a Cultural Provenance Register, and a dedicated ICIP Protection Fund.
• Live music: a live music tax incentive for venues, festivals and touring artists with flow-on benefits for tourism, hospitality and communities across the country, and a national adoption of Michael's Rule requiring major international touring artists to program local support acts.
• Streaming: local music has fallen to just 9.5% of streams in Australia, a 31% collapse over five years, and this while we are seeing year-on-year growth in the international appetite for our music. The submission calls for an urgent Green Paper on algorithmic discoverability to protect and promote Australian music and ensure Australians can find and experience the music that reflects their own culture across every platform where they listen.
• Radio: legislated local content obligations for commercial radio, extended to digital radio for the first time.
• Education: a National Song Academy at AFTRS, mandatory sequential music education in all Australian primary schools, and national investment in the SongMakers program.
• Export: National Music Export Strategy targeting India, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Mexico with Austrade called on to urgently reform its approach to music as a high-value export sector, and a Music as Development program through DFAT, sharing Australia's century of music infrastructure expertise with our Pacific neighbours.
• The National Songbook: a living collection and annual ceremony of national significance, established with the National Film and Sound Archive, inducting the great Australian songs into a permanent record of cultural achievement.
• Music Australia: $180 million over four years to sustain the institution through which Australian artists are developed and Australia’s music policy is built.

The response is a whole-of-government opportunity. The policy recommendations reach across the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Austrade, the Departments of Education, Health, Small Business, Treasury and Finance, the Attorney-General's Department, Regional Development and Local Government. Australian music generates economic value, builds social connection, opens diplomatic doors and equips the next generation. This submission invites every part of government to be part of that success.

“The Creative Century is not an aspiration. It is a decision,” concludes Ormston. “A decision that the next generation of Australian creators gets to stand on a foundation that was built for them. The world is not waiting for Australia to prove itself. It is waiting for Australia to back itself.”

Read the full submission at apraamcos.com.au.