BRINGING YOU MUSIC FROM YOUR 'HOOD, MADE BY YOUR PACK
Our
Vision
Our Vision is to empower local musicians, support local businesses, and enrich the community through a fair and sustainable music streaming service that values creation over content and community over capitalism.
Our
Mission
Our Mission is to build a co-operative music streaming platform that ensures artists receive fair compensation for their work, promotes meaningful connections between artists, listeners, and businesses, and nurtures a culture of mutual support and collaboration.
The stark reality
While global music streaming promised to be an accessible distribution channel with almost unlimited global reach, the average song play nets an artist around $0.003.
One million streams generates between $700 and $7000 on most major platforms.
Streaming has also rendered physical product and digital downloads obsolete, decimating key recording revenue streams.
The average unsigned Australian musician earns less than $7,000 a year from their music practice, and it's hitting our artists hard. Mental health issues in the music industry are significant, and one of the main causes cited is financial insecurity.
While the net worth of the CEOs of global streaming services can reach into the billions, independent Australian artists are struggling to survive, and we want to change that.
It's not just about money - it's about fairness
65% of Australian musicians and music industry workers suffer depression or anxiety with financial stresses cited as one of the major causes.
To make back the cost of an average coffee in and Australian city on a major streaming service, a song must be streamed more than 1000 times.
Music streamed in our retail, commercial and hospitality spaces is mostly international, so royalties that should be retained by our industry are instead flowing out of it.
How will we change things?
The Pack will demonstrate that streaming services can encourage resilience by generating sustainable revenue and local exposure for musicians and don’t have to add new layers of inequity to an already imbalanced music economy.
It's not streaming that's broken - it's the 'profit is king' business model that drives its owners and investors. Our project is designed as a co-operative social enterprise, that will help artists reclaim the value of their own creative work - to truly own it, and the distribution systems on which people engage with it. It inverts the pro-rata model of the major, globalised streaming services; works only with unsigned, original artists; and localises for meaningful exposure in partnership with local listeners, business and governments.
The great thing about being music lovers is that we can show what we value simply by changing our habits as consumers, and becoming conscious of the impact our streaming choices have on independent music creators.
Our music creators are the writers of the soundtrack of our lives; the makers of music that makes us dance, and songs that make us cry. As a community of local musicians, local businesses, local music lovers and local governments, we can use our purchasing power to keep them creating the music we love, for generations to come.