And before everyone starts throwing violin bows at each other, I am curious that there may be another conversation we need to have. Because I absolutely believe we should keep music live. I’ve spent most of my working life in live music. But there is something pretty important missing from this debate.

The market.

Companies generally don’t remove expensive components from productions because somebody woke up one morning and thought: You know what would be fun? Employing fewer musicians.

They are dealing with budgets. Venue Hires. Freight. Travel. Accommodation. Production. Wages. Insurance. Ticket sales. And the increasingly uncomfortable question facing every single corner of the Australian live entertainment industry: How much will the audience actually pay?

The Australian Ballet says its use of recorded music on regional touring is driven by logistics and the physical limitations of some venues. That’s reasonable.

The economic reality sitting underneath the entire performing arts sector is that all productions have to be financially viable. You can calculate what something needs to cost until the cows come home. The market does not care about your spreadsheet.

It will pay what it believes the experience is worth.

So what is it that we are actually selling here? Well, most people buying a ticket to The Australian Ballet are primarily buying, well… the ballet. The dancers. The choreography. The costumes. The spectacle. The story. The Australian Ballet itself.

The orchestra is an extraordinary part of that experience. But does the average ticket buyer understand just how extraordinary?

Because if audiences don’t understand the difference between ballet performed with a live orchestra and ballet performed to a recording, demanding that companies carry the additional cost of musicians won’t help. We have to inspire the audience to want the orchestra. Not because they have been lectured about protecting musicians’ jobs. Because the live orchestra makes the experience better.

A live orchestra forms an integral part of the live experience ecosystem.

A recording is fixed. A live orchestra breathes. Musicians respond to conductors. Conductors respond to dancers. Tempo can move. Energy can shift. A phrase can stretch. A moment can hang in the room fractionally longer.

Then there is something else happening that is much harder to put on a balance sheet. Human beings respond differently to live performance. Research has found measurable physiological changes associated with attending live concerts, including changes consistent with reduced biological stress. More recent research comparing audiences experiencing musicians live with audiences watching the same performance via livestream found those physically present with the musicians reported greater appreciation, stronger emotional responses and greater positive affect.

In other words: Live is different.

Thanks to the COVID lockdowns and the thousands of digital shows that followed, we viscerally know the difference. Science tells us why. It is why 2,000 strangers can walk into a room individually and, two hours later, feel as though they have experienced something together. Music is social glue. Live music adds another living organism to the room.

Which is precisely why we shouldn’t market the orchestra as an employment obligation. Instead, we should market it as part of the premium experience.

Here is where I think Keep Music Live could become genuinely powerful.

Don’t simply campaign to companies. Instead campaign to audiences. Don’t hide the orchestra in the pit. Make the orchestra visible. Put the conductor in the marketing. Introduce the musicians. Show rehearsals between dancers and orchestra. Film what happens when a conductor adjusts to movement on stage. Explain why tonight’s performance can never be precisely replicated tomorrow night. Give audiences behind-the-scenes access. Create pre-show talks. Create orchestra experiences for children. Create short social content around individual instruments. Let audiences meet the people making the sound.

Sell the experience of live ballet with a live orchestra.

Not every touring production necessarily needs the same model. Could regional productions use smaller ensembles? Could arrangements be specifically commissioned for 10 or 15 musicians rather than 40? Could local professional musicians supplement touring musicians? Could conservatoriums and professional orchestras collaborate? Could selected performances carry a live orchestra while others use recorded accompaniment, with the difference clearly marketed? Could audiences pay a modest premium for the live-orchestra performance? Could sponsors underwrite the orchestra?

Imagine: Tonight’s Orchestra proudly presented by [Sponsor]. There’s a sponsorship asset sitting right there. Could government support specifically fund regional live-music components rather than underwriting an entire production? Could audiences contribute through a Keep This Orchestra Live ticket option? Could schools attending ballet performances meet the musicians beforehand? Could an orchestra rehearsal become a separately ticketed experience?

There are dozens of possibilities once we stop treating this as a binary choice between 40 musicians or a recording.

Test What The Market Values.

Same ballet. Same venue. Two performances. One with recorded orchestral accompaniment. One with a live orchestra. Clearly identify the difference. Then measure it. Which sells first? What premium will audiences tolerate? Does live music increase conversion? Does it increase repeat attendance? Does it attract different demographics? Does behind-the-scenes orchestra content improve ticket sales? Does introducing audiences to musicians increase perceived value? Does sponsorship work?

Adding dozens of touring musicians means adding substantial cost somewhere. So before declaring that every production should carry that cost, we need to know: Will audiences buy it? And if they won’t yet, our job is to figure out how to inspire them to want to.

Someone is always talking about live music as though its survival depends entirely upon protecting supply. Musicians need jobs. Venues need support. Orchestras need funding. Artists need grants.

All true.

But sustainable industries aren’t built only by protecting supply. They are built by creating demand.

Inspire more Australians to buy tickets to experience live musicians. Teach children what an orchestra feels like. Make audiences understand what happens between a dancer and a conductor. Show them the human beings behind the sound. Turn musicians into part of the story. Build experiences around them. Make the difference visible. Make it desirable. Make it worth paying for. And then something interesting happens.

Companies don’t need to be told to employ musicians. Employing musicians helps them sell tickets. That is a completely different economic proposition.

Keep Music Live. Absolutely. But let’s not stop at protecting the job. Let’s build the market that pays for it. Because the strongest protection any musician can have isn’t a petition demanding somebody employ them. It is an audience saying: Hang on. Where’s the orchestra?

Nichola Burton has spent 35 years in the Australian live music industry as co-founder and CEO of The Pushworth Group. Agent, music business strategist and professional stirrer of comfortable assumptions, she writes about the business behind live entertainment — where artists, venues, audiences and economics collide. Her view is simple: if we want to keep music live, we need to give audiences a bloody good reason to buy the ticket.

In between incredulous tears, I have been asking myself why that is.

There are some people in this world whose presence quietly makes the world feel safer.

He was one of them.

I recently wrote about bullying in the Australian music industry. About the aggression. The egos. The power plays. The people who mistake intimidation for authority and bad behaviour for strength.

But, every now and again, you meet someone who is none of those things. And he was one of them.

A true gentleman. A consummate professional. An extraordinary resource for the artists he managed over many years. Someone who fully grasped the business, understood people and, perhaps most importantly, completely fathomed the psychology of what all of us were dealing with every day.

He would call the office and, if I happened to answer the phone, whatever we were supposed to be talking about could wait. There would be a good twenty-minute chinwag first. Grandchildren. Ageing parents. Health. Politics. The industry. The latest madness. Life.

He was one of those rare humans who made you feel safe around him. And safe working with him. In an industry where so many people spend their energy establishing how important they are, he never seemed to need to. His professionalism spoke for him.

But there was one experience we shared that cemented my respect for him forever.

My children were very young and still at school. One day, I received a text message. “I know where your children go to school.” It included specific threats against their lives.

That moment - I will never forget. Terror. Rage. Horror.

The police were called. An investigation began. The message had been sent from a burner phone, but eventually the person responsible was tracked, located and charged.

The circumstances surrounding it were desperately sad and complicated. We had been booking an act whose work had begun to dry up because venues were repeatedly refusing to have them back due to a series of incidents. There were serious substance abuse and mental health issues involved and, ultimately, tragedy struck. It was just awful for everyone involved.

I could understand grief. And anger. And someone desperately needing somebody to blame. But threatening children? That crossed a line that could never be crossed.

From the first phone call, through the investigations and out the other side, there was a car sitting outside our house. It stayed there for weeks. Protection for our family.

He had organised it.

He didn’t make a performance of helping us. He didn’t need applause for it. He just saw that a mother was terrified and he did something about it. I will never forget that. He helped make my family feel safe again.

Perhaps that is why today’s news of his loss has shocked me to the core.

Over decades in this industry, you accumulate thousands of conversations. Contracts. Deals. Arguments. Shows. Tours. Problems. Victories. Disasters. People arrive loudly and disappear just as loudly.

And then there are the quiet constants. The people whose phone number appears on the screen and you’re genuinely pleased to see it. The people you trust. The people you know will behave decently when things become indecent. The people who don’t have to tell you they have your back. They just do.

He was one of those people. And there aren’t enough of them.

Today I keep thinking about all those twenty-minute phone calls that probably should have been five.

I am thinking about his family, whom he spoke about so often and loved so deeply.

I am thinking about all the artists whose careers were steadier because he was standing beside them.

And I’m thinking about a car sitting quietly outside our family home many years ago, placed there by a man who decided that our safety mattered to him.

There are people who leave behind careers. There are people who leave behind achievements. And there are a rare few who leave behind something much more difficult to measure. The memory of how safe you felt when they were in the world.

Today, the world feels heavier without him.

And, for me at least, a little less safe.

Rest in Peace now Sir. Thank you. I will never forget you.

love, Nic xx

Then I read: “Strengthen the live music ecosystem through incentives for local artist exposure.” And I thought, here we go. Which local artists? Because if we are going to spend the next six years strengthening the live music ecosystem, can we please make sure we are talking about the whole ecosystem?

There is an enormous workforce sitting in plain sight that has been consistently overlooked in these conversations. I call them Soundtrackers. These are the soloists, duos, bands, DJs, tribute acts and working musicians who play in Queensland pubs, clubs, hotels, RSLs, resorts, breweries, festivals and regional venues every week. They play the songs people know.

But apparently, that makes them less interesting in some parts of the music industry. It certainly shouldn’t make them less important. Because these musicians do something incredibly valuable. They build audiences that Queensland on Tour will need to tap into.

Audiences don’t just magically materialise because somebody releases an original song. People develop habits. They know there is music at their local on Friday night, so they meet their friends there. Sunday afternoon there is a band in the beer garden. They stay for dinner. Have a drink. Hear a song. Follow an act. Come back next week. Do that often enough and you have a music culture. Soundtrackers do this week in and week out. They tune audiences to live music. And that audience is incredibly important to every other part of the music market.

Because where exactly do we think the audience for original music comes from? Where do we think people develop the habit of buying tickets, following bands and going out to see live entertainment? There seems to be an odd idea that soundtrack music and original music exist on opposite sides of some cultural fence. They don’t. The same musicians often work in both. The guitarist playing covers at a hotel on Friday may be recording an original project on Monday. And the money from Friday’s gig may very well be paying for Monday’s recording session.

That’s the actual music economy.

Hospitality venues are not arts organisations. They are businesses. They have wages, food costs, insurance, electricity, compliance, rent and a fairly spectacular collection of other expenses before someone suggests adding a band to Friday night. So entertainment has to work. When it does, the venue books again. One regular Friday gig creates 52 performances a year. Add Saturday and Sunday and suddenly one venue is providing more than 150 performance opportunities. Multiply that across Queensland.

That’s a serious market force. I won’t call it an industry because “spoiler alert” I do not believe there is one. There are lots of different music markets and sectors with completely different economics, customers and challenges. Pretending they are all the same is partly how we got here.

A fairly confronting experience during the COVID shutdowns left its mark on me. I was endlessly sourcing funding opportunities for musicians whose work had disappeared overnight. These weren’t people who had lost a couple of original gigs. For many of them, their entire annual income vanished in a second. I hounded Local, State and Federal MPs and vigourously campaigned State and Federal bodies to find whatever funding was available. One Queensland State Body mentioned that Arts Queensland had a packet of funding not yet allocated. I made a submission providing them with decades of data and metrics to support my case. Their response shocked me. Sound Tracker musicians, the ones that work week in and week out, were virtually invisible to these funding organisations. There was no understanding of the workforce size, their invaluable contributions to a healthy local hospitality bottom line and , honestly, no interest in the value at all. They would rather hand out $5000.00 each to original artists living in other countries than the actual Queensland artists who built the local scene to accommodate those original artists when they toured once in a blue moon.

Pre COVID lockdowns, we ran a label, curated releases, managed a small roster of original artists and toured a number of well known Australian recording artists across the country. We also worked closely with hospitality chains and promoters to book a consistent high standard of local sound tracking artists to build those business bottom lines. There was also a noticeable frostiness when it became apparent that we represented soundtrack acts as well as original artists - who ironically also sound tracked as it supported their original brand business.

There are no words…….

These musicians weren’t somehow less professional because they played songs people already knew. They were working musicians who had just lost their businesses. So when I now read about “targeted live music incentives”, my immediate question is: What data are we targeting them with? Do we actually know how many musicians are working every week in Queensland? How many gigs? Where? What are venues paying? Which markets are growing? Which are disappearing? Why are venues dropping entertainment? What stops a venue putting music on another night? What does it cost to keep a professional band on the road? How many musicians use soundtrack work to finance original projects? What happens to a regional music market when one key venue closes?

These aren’t academic questions. They determine whether an incentive actually grows something or simply pays for something until the funding runs out.

Which brings me to Queensland on Tour. I love the sound of this. Queensland absolutely should have stronger touring circuits. But putting venues on a map doesn’t create a touring circuit. A healthy local market does. If Townsville, Cairns, Mackay, Rockhampton, Bundaberg or Toowoomba has venues employing musicians every week, audiences become accustomed to consuming live entertainment.

Local musicians grow brands. Production develops. Venues learn what works. Audiences become more adventurous. Then you have somewhere meaningful to send a touring show. A touring circuit is only as healthy as the local markets it connects. And those little local gigs matter far more than they are given credit for. Because something else grows out of them.

Soundtrackers develop Queensland’s roster of touring Feature Tribute Shows. Metrics demonstrate very clearly that in 90% of cases, audiences prefer them to emerging artist shows. I know this because I have spent 35 years tracking what audiences will actually buy. Not what we think they should buy.

People want to hear the soundtrack to their lives. The song they fell in love to. The album they flogged to death when they were 19. The band they saw at Festival Hall. The song their dad played in the car. The one that instantly takes them back to somewhere they had forgotten existed.

There is nothing culturally inferior about that response. Music is memory. And memory sells a lot of tickets. A good Feature Tribute Show takes that relationship and turns it into a live experience. I don’t mean someone in a dodgy wig standing in front of a banner. I mean properly developed, beautifully produced Feature Shows performed by exceptional musicians who understand the material and know how to deliver it.

Those shows take years to build. They start with working musicians. Someone has an idea. They find the players. They test the repertoire. Some of it works. Some of it bombs. They change the arrangements. They work out what the audience actually wants. They improve the production. They design art that connects. They build a brand. Eventually, if they are good enough and commercially smart enough, they have a touring product.

That is the artist development that sound trackers self finance week after week and year after year.

When people arrive in Queensland for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, they aren’t only going to want to experience what Queensland sounds like in 2032. There is an extraordinary Queensland and Australian musical history sitting behind us. By 2032, many of the legacy artists who created that soundtrack may not be touring. Some won’t want to. Some won’t be able to. Some will no longer be with us. But people will still want to hear those songs.

Why wouldn’t Queensland start developing the shows capable of celebrating that history now?

Imagine high-quality Queensland productions celebrating different eras and stories of our music, touring Brisbane and regional Queensland during the Olympic period. Our musicians. Our producers. Our crews. Our venues. Our music history. And visitors from around the world experiencing it.

But we need to sow those seeds today. Not in 2031.

A Feature Show starting development today has six years before the Olympics. Six years to find its feet. To play some terrible gigs. To discover what doesn’t work. To get better. To build an audience. To develop the production. To tour regional Queensland. To work out the economics. To build the brand. To become genuinely bloody good.

This is where I think “incentives for local artist exposure” could become much more interesting. Don’t simply fund another gig. Build capacity into the musicians who are already working. Help them develop stronger music businesses. Help with production. Marketing. Touring costs. Digital assets. Business systems. Audience development. Professional standards. Insurance.

Help venues take chances on new Feature Shows and give those shows somewhere to develop. And please collect the data while we’re doing it. Find out what works. Find out what audiences buy. Find out what creates another 20 gigs rather than one subsidised gig. Then invest again.

As Queensland starts implementing this Action Plan, please make sure the people designing the future of the live music economy understand the people already keeping it alive. Talk to Soundtrackers. Talk to the venues that employ them. Look at their metrics. Understand how they work. Understand how many of them also create original music. Understand how local acts become Feature Shows and how Feature Shows become touring businesses. Understand what audiences are actually buying. Then decide where the incentives should go.

Because we don’t have six years to spend rediscovering a workforce that has been standing in front of us for decades. Queensland already has the musicians. We already have the venues. We already have audiences who love live music. And buried inside thousands of ordinary gigs happening across this state are probably some extraordinary shows that don’t exist yet.

2032 gives us a reason to start growing them now.

Reference:

https://www.nlec.qld.gov.au/

Nichola Burton has spent 35 years at the coalface of Queensland’s live music economy as co-founder and CEO of The Pushworth Group, working across thousands of gigs, tours, venues, artists and music brands. Now through Musoverse, she is turning that market knowledge towards the future: exploring how better data, stronger business skills and smarter systems can build capacity in the musicians who keep our venues playing week after week. She celebrates the Soundtrackers — the working musicians who build audiences, grow local markets and create the conditions from which great shows emerge. Because music culture isn’t built from the top down. It starts with the gig happening tonight.

The Australian music industry is built on stories. Some are sung from centre stage under blinding lights. Others are lived quietly at the back of the stage, in the studio, or behind the scenes where decisions shape destinies. Few figures embody all of these vantage points as completely as Graham “Buzz” Bidstrup.

Buzz is more than a drummer, songwriter, or producer—he is a living archive of Australian rock culture. His career spans decades of the nation’s most formative music movements: from his tenure with The Angels during the thunderous rise of pub rock, to The Party Boys and GANGgajang, to his work in management, mentorship, and philanthropy. He has collaborated with names etched into our cultural memory—Jimmy Barnes, Mondo Rock, Australian Crawl—and stewarded artists like Jimmy Little, Nathan Cavaleri and Diana Ah Naid. He has stood on festival stages where the ground itself shook with the pulse of youth culture, and later sat at board tables, shaping the industry’s response to the challenges of health, sustainability, and legacy.

From the back of the stage, Buzz cultivated a perspective few ever glimpse. The drummer’s vantage point is a privileged one: watching the entire story unfold while holding the band’s heartbeat steady. Buzz knew the exact moment a song lifted a crowd into euphoria, the tempo shifts that made a room erupt, and the cracks in performance invisible to the singer but obvious to the watcher at the kit. This dual gift—of timing and vision—became his signature. It informed not just his playing, but his producing, engineering, and artist development. He understood music not only as sound, but as movement, as energy, as psychology.

That holistic view permeates his memoir, No Secrets. Named after the hit he co-wrote and co-produced with The Angels, the book is more than an autobiography. It is an Oz-rock blueprint, capturing the mayhem, resilience, and brilliance of an industry that grew out of sweaty pubs, unrelenting tours, and an audience hungry for authenticity. Buzz was there in the mid-1970s through the late 1980s when the pub-rock scene was less an entertainment option and more a rite of passage. His recollections remind us that what became iconic was once fragile, experimental, and fuelled by sheer determination.

But Buzz’s story doesn’t end with the anthems. His work as CEO of the Jimmy Little Foundation and founder of Uncle Jimmy Thumbs Up Ltd speaks to a vision beyond music: a belief in cultural health, community connection, and the responsibility of artists to give back. His legacy is not only in the songs that defined a generation but in the pathways he carved for others—both on stage and in life.

For those of us in the business of music, No Secrets is required reading. It is both cautionary tale and inspiration, offering a rare combination of grit, grace, and generosity. It reminds us that behind every anthem is a craftsman, behind every career a mentor, and behind every legend a man who chose to live his art fully. Buzz Bidstrup’s footprint is pressed deep into the sands of our history, and with No Secrets, he has finally given us the map.

No Secrets by Graham “Buzz” Bidstrup is out now through HarperCollins.

Written by Nichola Burton. I work in partnership with Agents, Artist Managers and Event Producers, who juggle a diverse range of relationships in the Musoverse, to curate, manage and measure data in systems, experience, creative and content to support the entire Musoverse operation in my enterprise A Little Pitchy Copyright 2025

“To support artists. To build a better industry. To give venues a clear path to great live music.”

Which is all true.

But the real answer?

I wanted to fix it.

Yes—me. A young mama with a newborn. Freshly minted Private Agents Licence on 17 July 1991. A baby on one hip, contract in the other.

Convinced that the entire music industry was broken, corrupt, or at least stupidly inefficient, and that I—classically trained, award-winning vocalist, Conservatorium nerd turned rock-chick band-wrangler—was going to whip it into shape.

Because that’s what you do when you are green and young and have no idea but think that you do.

And you know what? Thirty-four years on, I’m not sure I was wrong.

Manny and I started with that shared vision—even if, on paper, you couldn’t find two more different resumes.

He was the award winning Double Bass guy. Eclectic Jazz. Punk. Cabaret. Touring the country, managing the Queensland circuit for Graham Hutchinson, running national rosters for Austotel back before ALH was even a twinkle in Woolworths’ eye. He could tell you the occupancy rates for half the pubs in Queensland by memory.

Me? I was the geeky kid in the lemon dress who sold vocal arrangements in Year 9, managed production for school events, writing and recording songs since I was single digits and played church organ on Sunday. Who, as a young singer, spent every spare minute corralling musos in various bands across SE Qld like an off-brand Cleopatra trying to herd cats.

But somehow this unexpected combination worked. We had this idea that it wasn’t enough to just book gigs. You had to engineer the environment—so artists and venues could both make money without wanting to murder each other.

People think the music industry is all green rooms, awards, and Instagram reels with moody stage lighting.

Sure. Sometimes.

But it’s also:

• Restraining rock stars who tried to punch the caterer because there were no green MnMs on their rider.

• Holding back hair for pop stars vomiting up their rider.

• Getting death threats because we couldn’t book truly terrible cover bands.

• Mopping up green-room toilets you wish you hadn’t looked in.

• Chauffeuring coked up comedians who forget their own names.
  

We’ve burned through the midnight oil, the dawn oil, the three-days-later oil trying to get that final show locked, the artwork approved, the contract signed before someone changed their mind.

We’ve had artists crash in our spare room when their accommodation fell through. Taken calls during weddings, funerals, kids’ birthdays to save a last-minute show catastrophe.

Because the show. Must. Go. On.

We’ve worked with hundreds of employees, thousands of artists and promoters. Managed careers. Designed brands. Delivered everything from festival programs to local cover gigs to national tours.

And through all of it?

Our team.
Our partners.
Our family.

Michael and Mark—honestly, they’re not just partners. They are blood. Watching them talk artists down off ledges, celebrate hard won sold-out nights, go that extra mile to write that award nomination for that venue, sell in a new artist nobody’s heard of yet—that’s the work. That’s the craft. That’s the real industry.

And then there’s our actual family.

Our kids grew up in this business. They didn’t get a normal childhood—they lived the show life in microcosm.

• Cue to me standing in the public bar of the Albion Hotel waiting for a meeting, holding a baby capsule and two little kids hands, while the manager at the time organised a line of punters jokingly denying they were the father. (Thanks Steve!)

• Me again sitting in the reception of countless venues refusing to pay their Artists, giving my four young children sticky lollies and chocolates and letting them loose hoping that the ensuing chaos would encourage the venue to give me a cheque so I would go away. (it always worked)

• Christmas Days spent with Granny ironing Elf costumes and then each of us in the car driving from gig to gig.

• Manny in a Santa suit because the real one overslept.

• Me doing a 2am dash to The Valley to collect door takings because the door person was asleep in the corner after one too many rums.

• Christenings with musos barging into the church trying to pitch a new show

• Funerals crashed by tour managers who lost their worksheets

• Family dinners interrupted by desperate venue managers looking for a last-minute act.

Our children loved it. And they hated it. Sometimes both on the same day.

And the two of us, as parents, we missed things. Important things. And they let us know. And yet they still love us….mostly. :-)

Because this business wasn’t just our career—it was their environment. Their school. Their childhood.

And today, 34 years in, the deepest, truest thank you we can offer is to them.

If I’m honest now, decades later, I see that my big need to “fix” the industry was all about me. My childhood. I needed to commit a neatness.

And let me tell you—there is nothing neat and tidy about this business.

It’s messy. It’s chaotic. It’s a swirling mess of unhealed trauma, undiluted genius, desperate hope, massive egos, incredible raw courage, and the occasional miraculous moment of real human connection.

You can’t “fix” it.

You can only witness it.

Here’s the thing:

Art is a gift.

Standing on a stage and making strangers feel something? That takes a rare kind of nerve.

And so does being the promoter who bets their own cash and reputation on making that moment happen.

Front of house. Side of stage. Back of house.

None of it works without people who give a shit. Really give a shit …..not just phone it in.

People who want to make something real for an audience.

So thank you.

Thank you to every artist, every venue, every manager, every promoter who gave us their trust—even when the shit hit the fan. Because those moments, the shit hitting the fan moments, that is the hallmark of life…..and this industry.

Thank you for 34 years of showing us what it means to be human—at our most glorious and our most terrible.

We were so green when we started.

And now?

Now we’re just grateful….and a nicer shade of pink with much better hair. 🙂

34 years. 34 blinks. 34 Thank Yous.

Here’s to the next one.

Written by Nichola Burton. I work in partnership with Agents, Artist Managers and Event Producers, who juggle a diverse range of relationships in the Musoverse, to curate, manage and measure data in systems, experience, creative and content to support the entire Musoverse operation in my enterprise A Little Pitchy Copyright 2025

Image Courtesy of Light Field Studios

The performing bug stretched its little wings early for me. My parents were horrified that I would never get a REAL job. They did not value the creative expression of a musician as a career option and saw no possible reward in any kind of financial fair exchange. Predictably I, of course, ignored their wishes, and now this genealogy is well reflected in the voices of millions of musicians and performers around the globe.

How many people in this industry have felt creatively stifled in their quest for legitimization of their choice to conduct an enterprise in this fashion? How many people field the relentless question “When are you going to get a Real Job?” 🙂

So let’s have a look at this real job from the perspective of someone who has managed a Music Agency since 1991.

Writing and performing music is a creative outlet and a channel for personal development. If you want to be paid for it, then it becomes a business. I love taking photographs and spend hours on the weekends locating the perfect shot and then fidgeting with Photoshop. It’s a hobby — a creative outlet and a channel for personal development. If I want to be paid for it, then I need to do a whole lot of other activities to transform my hobby into a business.

So how can you leverage the perception of who you are up on that stage or streaming out from that stereo? Artists and Musicians and Entertainers seek audiences and markets who desire to purchase their products. They seek audiences for their creative expression.

In this current ecosystem, we choose how we wish to run our business in the Music Industry. Challenges are only symptoms of the expansion of the business and the opportunity to create whatever you choose. Creativity promotes innovation.

We used to work in an industry where supply of product (CDs, Merchandise etc) were limited due to shelf space, shipping, storage etc. Now our market has an unlimited choice of what to buy and where to buy from. Product, thanks to our digital existence, can have a global impact instead of a local one. Anyone can set up a website, register a domain name, register any free social media platform, create an on line shop, set up a shopping cart and create a digital shop and brand.

The contrast between the digital and analogue worlds that we inhabit offers both creative resistance and tension for the majority of music artists. We may believe that music is to be created and performed on stage and in the studio but let’s be honest. We all live predominantly in a digital world. More device options, channels, platforms and bandwidth. Faster processors. Limitless data storage. Greater options for search engines and platforms than ever before. We live here. Our digital behaviour are the verbs that our days exist in. We swipe left, tweet, tik tok, Insta, post, google, do a live, stream, follow and zoom. Lockdowns moved us out of shopping centres and into on line orders, we uber eats instead of drive thru take outs, we uber instead of fighting for a car park, we replaced the local GP with a telehealth and subscribed to a variety of streaming services instead of going out to the cinemas. For businesses to survive, they had to create their digital pivot.

So as much as you would love to simply play music, without a digital presence to match your stage presence, your music business is doomed.

Darwin noted that “It is not the strongest or most intelligent that survives, but the ones most adaptive to change.”

By adapting to a digital landscape and working with the mostly free tools that are at your fingertips right now, you expand your capacity and resource your music brand to be able to complete with access to more data, more advertising avenues, product feedback and income potential. Private groups on Facebook, Telegram, Patreon and Discord offer a far greater capacity to build an audience than any global tour ever could. We can effectively create a new ecosystem for ourselves.

Let’s face it. The rapid expansion of the internet caught traditional music business companies with their collective pants down and as they struggle to iron out the various Digital Rights Management issues, telling your music business story via a digital conduit is the greatest opportunity your brand will ever have.

You have everything you need right here right now.

You are only limited by your imagination.

And Imagination is what inspired you to become a musician in the first place.

So get out there and create your real job.😊

Written by Nichola Burton. I work in partnership with Agents, Artist Managers and Event Producers, who juggle a diverse  range of relationships in the Musoverse, to curate, manage and measure data in systems, experience, creative and content to support the entire Musoverse operation in my enterprise A Little Pitchy Copyright 2024