Appendix 6 - International Music Council

Diversity is served inasmuch as a space is reserved for Australian artists and the airspace is
not totally filled with foreign artists. There is pressure, nevertheless, for Australian artists
not to depart very far from the stylistic characteristics that achieve international success and
sales.
Presumably the requirements were introduced because left to their own devices, the
commercial stations were happy to broadcast mostly
imported music, which is heavily
supported by the marketing budgets of the major record companies.
Community radio. Compliance by commercial stations is monitored and on the evidence, is
satisfactory. Compliance by community stations is not monitored, although it is supposed
that they are in fact more strongly committed to local music than are the commercial
stations. There is little objective evidence one way or the other.
There is competition for the award of community radio licences and an
application is
probably assisted by demonstration that the nature of a service will not duplicate an existing
service. In addition, licensees need to demonstrate that they are serving the needs
of their
communities. Both of these factors tend to produce
much greater programming diversity
than is found on the commercial stations. (See Community Broadcasting
Association of
Australia: http://www.cbaa.org.au/ )
There is a large number of community stations based in small indigenous communities in
outback Australia. They serve the interests of local communities and broadcast music by
indigenous performers. An Alice Springs based organisation, CAAMA, not only broadcasts
but also produces recordings of indigenous performers. (See
www.caama.com.au/caama/a8_publish/ modules/publish/content.asp?navgrp=music ) These
recordings are less, however, of traditional tribal music than of rock music and country
music, the two genres that have attracted the most interest from Aboriginal musicians.
Curiously, some of this music is treated as ‘world music’ by the international market.
Public radio. The public, or nationally owned broadcasters are governed by a charter, one
clause of which gives them the responsibility to support the development of Australian
culture. They are
not legally obliged to meet any numerical local content quota, however.
In the 1980s, it was discovered that one of the public broadcast networks broadcast hardly
any locally composed music. It succumbed to a noisy
campaign and since then has set its
own quotas and monitored compliance. This has worked well.
The main broadcaster is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It maintains a
number of radio networks and two of them are specifically devoted to music. ABC Classic
FM broadcasts ‘art music’. In addition to setting a general objective for Australian content,
it offers a number of programs that present Australian music only, (See
http://www.abc.net.au./classic/australianmusic/ ). Triple J specialises in contemporary
music, attempting to broadcast greater genre diversity and good but lesser known artists. It
has projects designed to unearth young local talent. ( http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ )
The Special Broadcasting Service was created to serve the interests of immigrant
communities as an aspect of the policy of multiculturalism and its charter requires
multicultural programming. There is a national television network and a national radio
network, both free to air. The radio network especially broadcasts almost entirely in foreign
languages and many of the programs for different cultural groups include the relevant
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