Mornington Peninsula Music Industry Summit addresses challenging issues

Mornington Peninsula Shire’s Music Industry Summit, held on 12th August delivered opportunities for the music industry to collaborate and connect in addressing an array of challenging issues.

The event was held across five venues in Mornington and brought together prominent musicians, music venues, and industry professionals who shared their invaluable insights and expertise in workshops and panel discussions throughout the day.

Attracting some heavy hitters from the Australian music industry, such as Frontier Touring director Gerard Schlaghake, Brad Hinds from OzTix, singer-songwriter Katie Noonan, rocker Dallas Frasca, and Something for Kate's Clint Hyndman, delegates learned about current trends and opportunities.

Panel discussions were lively and centred on various issues currently facing the Australian music industry, such as the lack of national radio airplay, festivals being cancelled, and challenges in selling tickets to events.

The songwriting workshops attracted a diverse cross-section of the community, including students from Advance College and Flinders Christian Community College, youth, and emerging and established artists.

The Hot Seat one-on-one chats, which featured well over 50 industry professionals - including Music Victoria, One Music, MP Regional Tourism, Impakt FreeZA, the Shire’s panellists, and more provided a valuable opportunity for knowledge exchange.

Quote of the day was from Frontier's Gerard Shchlaghake who hadn't visited Mornington in over a decade and after spending the day talking to students and musicians, said sincerely "Musically, you can feel something is definitely happening in the Shire right now. I'll be back!" 

Mornington Shire Mayor Simon Brooks added "Council is proud to officially launch our ‘Make Music Matter: MP Music Industry’ initiative. This initiative has come about through some wonderful collaborations with our local music industry over the past 12 months and is part of our commitment to our Music Plan. Local government has an important role to play in the health and wellbeing of our community and that includes doing what we can to support our local music industry to thrive.

“The summit was a fantastic and informative day, the results of which I’m sure will become evident in the weeks and months to come. I want to thank all our industry professionals who attended, providing their knowledge and experience. 

“Music enriches our lives. It inspires us and brings us together by creating shared experiences. Our society would be immeasurably poorer without it.”