Kathy McCabe: How Sydney’s lockout laws killed live music scene
With Victoria overtaking NSW in music event sales, Sydney needs to take a long and hard look at what its lockout laws have done to a once vibrant music community, writes Kathy McCabe.
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Victoria, you win again.
After all these years of my eyerolls and smirks every time Melbourne mates laid claim to the title of being the Live Music Capital of Australia, they have been proven undeniably correct.
Released this week, the Live Performance Australia report on 2018 ticket attendance and revenue for contemporary music concerts show Victorians are the biggest gig-goers in the land.
NSW recorded tickets sales of 3.2 million, which net $340 million compared to Victoria generating $407 million from almost 3.4 million tickets.
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Even Queensland outstripped the nation’s most populous state in growth of revenue, with the Sunshine state’s take from contemporary music and festivals up 110 per cent between 2015 and 2018 compared to 88 per cent for NSW.
Given that the lockout laws were introduced in Sydney in 2014, it is now impossible to ignore the economic and cultural impact these have had on the city’s live music scene.
Politicians in the Macquarie Street bubble refuse to hear the deafening silence in the city’s entertainment precincts or see the tumbleweed rolling down streets once crowded with night-life lovers heading from gigs to clubs to a quiet late night bar.
Venues have closed. Stadiums demolished.
People have lost jobs in the related hospitality and technical industries.
Musicians spend more time in bedroom studios and less on stages. Or they’ve relocated to Melbourne and Brisbane in the wake of fewer opportunities to get matchfit on the stage, test out their songs and build a fanbase in Sydney’s live scene.
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Artist managers report ticket sales in Sydney across the small to medium gigs are slow.
The lockout laws, combined with the ubiquitous presence of large numbers of police and dogs at venues, have scared off some regular gig goers.
Anecdotal evidence from promoters and managers also suggests the laws have had a curfew effect on our gig going habits. This cultural authoritarianism may have conditioned us to want to be home by midnight. I suspect I may be one of those people now.
Sydney’s reputation as a vibrant night city is in tatters. And it’s not just the Victorians who are laughing at NSW.
Visiting international acts have been victims of our locked venue doors. Madonna couldn’t get into her own after-party on her last Sydney tour. Noel Gallagher joked to me he would be getting his mate Bono on the case to get the situation fixed ahead of U2 and his band arriving for their Joshua Tree gigs in a couple of weeks.
And you can bet the promoters and agents in America and UK who book tours to Australia are aware of the NSW Government’s lack of policy or desire to collaborate with the live music industry to fix the damage.
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Those with the big one-off event gigs every state wants to win must wonder how much harder it is to do music business in Sydney.
And while the NSW Government looks set to reverse some of the lockout laws that strangled the scene in the first place, the sad truth is that for live music, it’s too little to late.
The irony is the Live Performance Australia report showed some bittersweet “good” news for NSW festivals.
In 2018, that sector of the industry made $52 million from more than 417,000 ticket sales in 2018, compared to Victoria scoring only $12 million from more than 148,000 tickets.
The potential for further economic harm to the live industry must be weighed as the NSW Government considers their latest round of kneejerk, non-consultative music festival legislation.
And they would be advised to take note. Even as they seem determined to kill the scene, there are committed, passionate, imaginative and innovative musicians, managers, promoters, agents, venue operators and crew defying their worst efforts.
Acts like Tones and I built her audience on the streets of Byron Bay – no major inner-city venues needed.
Dance and electronic artists are doing what they have always done in Sydney when the fun police clamp down and staging DIY warehouse events or mini festivals on the outskirts of town.
Wollongong continues to become a staple on local and international tours and develop its vibrant festival scene.
Musicians are offering intimate, private gigs in the fan’s home.
And acoustic sets seem to be popping up in cafes and small bars, just like they did in the halcyon ‘90s era of Australian alternative music.
They may not need the support of Gladys Berejiklian to realise their dreams, but they could certainly do without the Government’s determined efforts to stop the music.
Kathy McCabe is a national music writer for News Corp.
Originally published as Kathy McCabe: How Sydney’s lockout laws killed live music scene