A Yarra Ranges local has taken on a mammoth task and is out to even the playing field for Australian talent, launching an all Australian radio channel earlier this month.
Giving Aussie musicians the chance to be radio stars once more, Upwey musician and 3MDR radio show host Brett ‘Freo’ Freeman has launched an online platform which plays exclusively Australian content
“We officially went live two weeks ago, once we got our license,” said Freo.
As a musician with a passion for local talent, Freo launched the Local Australian Music Platform (LAMP) not-for-profit after noticing a lack of exposure for Australian artists and decided to do something about it.
“There’s nowhere else for people to get Australian music – so why aren’t we championing it?” he said.
“I’m standing at my local bakery, and they’ve got background music playing through some streaming service, it’s cheesy 80s music that everyone’s heard a million times before, or I watch the football coverage and they cross to the Foo Fighters again.”
“What if your local barbershop didn’t have a Spotify playlist, what if they were playing 100 per cent Australian music all the time?”
Aiming to work in partnership with Australian businesses to broadcast pure Australian music in places where it can be discovered by new listeners, LAMP was born from both passion and frustration.
With commercial radio stations, streaming and social media algorithms more geared for international content, Freo said he began LAMP when he couldn’t find a place to listen to pure Aussie content.
“Looking around, you’ve got FM commercial radio, but commercial radio is stuck in the past – they don’t play a great deal of new music, and any of the new music they do play, it’s usually international,” he said.
Freo said he didn’t want to be another business taking advantage and has launched LAMP with funding coming from donations, grants and out of his own pocket.
“There’s enough music in Australia to play music on the platform all week,” he said.
“Ultimately, we want to have five different stations with five different genres, so that if you if or your business is playing LAMP music in to your customers to hear you get to choose what sort of music that is, whether it’s hard rock or folk or whatever it might be.”
The journey to LAMP began when Freo took up a regular spot with his local broadcaster 3MDR 97.1FM and dedicated his show The Mad Mile Music Club, completely to Australian music.
When the broadcaster began to score high profile musician interviews, from well known artists from all over Australia, the idea for LAMP began to take shape.
“The show was only two hours a week on one community radio station in one corner of Australia – these people really should be celebrated more in the mainstream,” he said.
“I realised just how widespread the issue of not being able to get music from Australian musicians into the ears of the average punter or the average listener was.”
As reported by the Australasian Performing Right Association Limited (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS) Aussies are hearing and discovering less local music.
In their latest report, the APRA AMCOS data reflects a large increase in year-on-year consumption of music in Australia, both on music streaming and User Generated Content (UGC) services, growing 50 per cent since the financial year of 2021.
However, the percentage of that consumption that relates to local songwriter and composer content in that same period has dramatically declined from 31 per cent to just 9.5 per cent in music streaming over the past five years and 25.4 per cent in UGC over the past three years, highlighting the urgent need to advocate for local content obligations for local music to be seen and heard across all platforms.
Dean Ormston, chief executive of APRA AMCOS said in a recent media release that this doesn’t mean our music isn’t good enough; our surging export revenues prove our artists are among the best in the world.
“They’re writing hits, filling venues internationally and competing at the highest level,” he said.
“The talent is undeniable – our platforms are borderless, but algorithms favour scale and international repertoire dominate by default.”
With ongoing AI and ethical concerns surrounding both the production and consumption of music, Melbourne band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard pulled their music from Spotify in July this year.
The band wrote in a statement posted to Instagram: “Hello friends. A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology. We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.”
APRA AMCOS also welcomed the Australian Government’s decision to rule out a Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception and maintain strong copyright act protections in the AI age in a press release on Monday 27 October.
“Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has confirmed today the Government has no plans to weaken copyright laws, closing the door on a TDM exception that would have legitimised the industrial-scale theft of music and other cultural and creative sector intellectual property,” it read.
LAMP is an online radio platform, not a streaming service, but Freo said it will deliver better exposure for musicians.
“As an artist this is where you get authentic exposure for your brand, for your product, for your music. You get an authentic connection for your music with an audience that’s interested in digesting music ethically,” he said.
For now, Freo plans continue to raise awareness for LAMP, continuing to campaign for funding and get more Australian music broadcasting.
“There’s way more than enough good Australian music to be listening to Australian music all the time,” he said.
