Playing the Hits. Writing the Future.
A Love Letter to every Musician
Hey Muso,
This one’s for you.
Whether you’re loading in at your Friday night pub residency or loading out after an original gig you booked, promoted, and headlined to a half-full room—this post is for every musician who shows up, every week, for the love of the game.
There’s been a lot of talk over the years—covers vs. originals, commercial vs. indie, easy money vs. real art.
Let’s call time on that.
Because without cover bands, we don’t have venues with live music scenes.
And without original artists, there’d be no songs for those cover bands to play.
It’s one ecosystem. One soundtrack. One big, messy, glorious music industry that only works because both sides show up.
The Working Cover Musician: Keeping the Culture Alive
You’re the ones keeping the pub alive on a Sunday afternoon.
You’re the reason weddings end with a packed dancefloor.
You give punters a reason to stay for one more round.
You make local clubs, surf bars, RSLs, and bowls clubs feel like home.
Your job? It’s not just to play the hits—it’s to bring back memories, make people feel something, and keep the heartbeat of a live room pumping.
And you do it rain, hail, or gastro outbreak.
You gave us back normal after COVID. That first night back in a pub, cold beer in hand, crowd humming along to April Sun in Cuba—you made that moment possible.
You are the memory-makers, the music lifters, the vibe curators.
And every time you walk on stage, you're carrying the legacy of decades of songwriters, singing their stories into the present.
The Original Artist: Writing the Future, One Risk at a Time
And then there’s you—the original muso.
You’re not just performing, you’re creating.
You’re writing the songs that people don’t know they need yet.
You’re funding your own recordings, chasing venues, building fanbases from scratch, selling your own tickets, and hustling online like your rent depends on it—because it usually does.
You do all of it for the chance to one day hear your song sung back to you by a crowd. Or even better—sung by a cover band in a packed pub ten years from now.
You’re the ones who dare to speak the truth before it becomes cool.
You’re building the future set list of the nation.
It’s hard. It’s thankless. It’s often invisible.
And yet—you keep going. Because you have to. It’s who you are.
Here’s the Truth: One Can’t Exist Without the Other
The music industry needs both of you. Equally.
Cover bands keep the venues alive, the culture humming, and the crowds coming back.
Original artists fuel the next generation of songs, voices, and cultural shifts.
Together, you create the full spectrum of what music is meant to be:
Something we remember. Something we feel. Something we discover. Something we believe in.
This isn’t a competition. It’s a collaboration.
The muso playing The Horses on Friday night is reminding the crowd of who they were.
The muso debuting a brand-new track on Saturday night is showing us who we could be.
To Every Gigging Musician Out There
Whether you’re strumming Wonderwall to pay your bills
Or playing your heart out on a track no one’s heard (yet)
You are doing something that matters.
You are the pulse of a community.
The glue of a social ritual.
The engine of Australia’s live music culture.
So cover muso—keep showing up. You carry our musical past and present.
And original muso—don’t stop. You’re building what comes next.
The industry needs both of you.
The audience needs both of you.
The world is better because you’re both still out there, doing the work.
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For the believers, the builders, the lifers, and the legends.
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
