Where are you based?
Melbourne, Australia.
Where do you work? What do you do?
I’m the Chief Operating Officer at Gig Life Pro. We build purposeful networking, and educational and showcase opportunities for our curated global music community. We also have a standalone ability to create authentic, bespoke B2B experiences in collaboration with festivals, conferences, brands, government agencies and service providers, plus we curate industry panels, workshops, online and in real life mixers/networking events, intimate dinners and trade missions to exchange highly specialised knowledge of a rapidly expanding market across APAC.
What are you listening to?
Little Simz, Surprise Chef (Melbourne band), Soullette (new Korean artist) Masia One, KEYANA, Lewloh, Alanis Morissette (I recently saw Jagged Little Pill the theatre show and it reinvigorated my love for her album), the really awesome new demos that Kuya James recently sent me.
How do you discover new music?
So, I don’t use streaming services very often. Yes, that’s right a person in the music industry who doesn’t stream music, my Spotify wrap each year usually amounts to around 4 hours… Although I do view YouTube regularly, I love a good music video.
I listen to community radio stations RRR, PBS, RTR, FBi, 2SER, 3CR, and Joy in Australia, or stream international radio shows out of the UK like NTS or Worldwide FM, and Jeff The Fish who is on Soho Radio. My other source of finding new music is from indie record store owners, my hairdresser Paul owns Record Paradise with his partner Renae in Brunswick, so you generally walk out with the record they were playing whilst getting your hair cut. I’m also a big lover of discovering new music at Festivals or saying yes to pretty much any gig that I’m invited to.
“I’m also a big lover of discovering new music at Festivals or saying yes to pretty much any gig that I’m invited to.”
What formats do you usually listen to? LP, CD, Cassette, Digital, Streaming Services? Why?
I’m 100% a vinyl person for sure. I still own a lot of CDs for sentimental reasons, albums I worked on, or albums that represent, a relationship, a time and a place etc, plus I DJ and I haven’t moved over to USBs as yet as I’m a visual person and don’t plan my sets. I like to take everything I can fit into one bag and go with the flow and the vibe of the crowd or sometimes just be self-indulgent.
Where do you do most of your music listening?
Most of my listening is at work, in the car, or occasionally when I exercise, plus casual listening, we have vinyl turntables with a mixer set up in our house (we actually have 4 turntables, a mixture of an old pioneer, Audio Technica and a couple of others). The turntable to set up is with fancy studio-style speakers, my partner is a musician so good sound is important in our household.
How do you find and listen to pre-release music?
Outside of Gig Life Pro, I also own a PR agency called This Much Talent and we work with a lot of emerging artists and receive pre-released music. Through GLP we’re attending conferences and showcases regularly, and met musicians and managers and labels and hear pre-release music that way.
What are your frustrations with listening to music digitally? Any benefits?
My biggest pet hate is being sent an EP or album in google drive or dropbox where you can’t listen to it continually. I love apps like Byta, Disco and SoundCloud as they are private and you can include all the relevant information. I don’t download demos into my iTunes. Obviously, the downside to this is that we’re mostly now listening to music via our laptop speakers or on our phones…
How do you keep track of everything you are listening to?
I’m really bad with keeping way too many tabs open on my desktop, so I generally just leave music open and then go back to it at different times as I like to listen multiple times in different capacities.
Do you tip other people off to new music? How?
I think it’s hard not to tip other people off in the music industry, because when you hear something truly amazing and special you can’t help but share it. Plus I’m a publicist too, so it’s my job to tip people off 😉
Anything you want to “promote”?
So many, so I would say head on over to giglifepro.com and check out our Press Play curated playlists, they are located in our articles section and are curated by APAC artists and our GLP staff. The artists, events, and projects we work with at This Much Talent can be found here: thismuchtalentau.com
