In the latest news, Music Australia, an Australian government initiative, has released a new campaign to encourage Australians to ‘Ausify Your Algo’.
With a goal to drive people to listen to more local and homegrown music, the basis of #Ausify is to get Aussies listening, sharing, liking, following and saving Australian music and talent in their feeds on social media and streaming platforms. The premise is that if you engage with it online, your algorithm will continue to prioritise it on the platforms you regularly use.
For me, this can be placed in the category of good news stories in a time where things are looking pretty grim.
We know from previous reports completed by Creative Australia that 71% of Australians say they feel a sense of pride when they listen to Australian music, yet only 33% seek out new music by Australian artists and bands. This campaign is targeting those emotions to help lift that 33%.
As we know, in recent years our festivals have been deeply impacted by the aftermath of COVID. We have seen some of our largest festivals, like Splendour in the Grass, cancel events due to a lack of ticket sales and sharply increasing event costs.
In my own conversations with people who used to attend festivals like Splendour, I often hear feedback such as: “the line-up just isn’t that good anymore” or “the line-up doesn’t compare to festivals like Glastonbury or Coachella that have international headliners”. In fact, international artists seem to be what many say Australian festivals are lacking.
From this point, I’ve always questioned: are our festivals lacking international artists, or do we simply not value the local talent making up our line-ups?
I’ve also noticed that once an Australian artist gains global recognition, they seem to be more respected in our own country.
So how did we get here?
In a world where we discover everything through social media, it’s easy to be told what we should like, and therefore we are losing the drive to discover things on our own. We collectively hear and see the same content repeatedly, and it’s difficult to tell whether it’s something we genuinely enjoy or whether we’ve been exposed to it so much that we’ve been conditioned to like it. This is likely why we often end up with the same major US artists in our ears.
On top of this, the social commentary we are exposed to is no longer coming from our own TV, radio and news sources. We aren’t being streamlined information or content from where we are simply located.
Nowadays, we can easily tap into conversations happening around the world simply by looking down at our phones. The benefit of this is that we can broaden our knowledge of music, but this campaign questions whether this has gone too far.
It’s time to get back to our roots.
I am super passionate about Australian music. From a young age I grew up listening to Australian artists, and now I tend to reach for local talent when deciding what to listen to. This is because Australians make great music.
Our lyrics prove us to be great storytellers and our sound represents a level of perfectionism that keeps you coming back.
I believe that because we are a smaller population and so far from the big cities that traditionally see artists take off, like London or L.A., our local talent works extra hard to get their music heard. To be noticed from a small town in Australia is a rarity; it takes confidence and bravery to attempt to make it in the music industry. This effort seeps into the quality of the production of their music.
Ausify Your Algo is an example of the government supporting the arts in a practical and effective way. In other news, Australia is set to introduce laws that will force streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ to contribute at least 10% of their local expenditure, or 7.5% of revenue, to Australian content.
This push to highlight Australian content is another example of the good our lawmakers can do.
Although, I think we can do better. As long as we are not supporting those from disadvantaged backgrounds, we will continue to miss out on hearing from a wide range of demographics across Australia.
Currently, being a musician isn’t a stable career, and we know that 40% of musicians earn income from two to three music jobs. Only one in five derive all their income from their music career, with two-thirds forced to take up work outside the industry.
Most people cannot take chances with odds like that.
The arts are important to our culture and society, and if we don’t continue to demand more from our government to circulate more money and recognition for the talent we have, we will continue to fall behind in the arts industries.
The Ausify Your Algo campaign is an exciting, welcome and extremely important step in the right direction. I fully support it and encourage everyone to get on board. The way you listen to music is political and can create major change for our country.
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