OUR STORY
We are The Pack Australia.
And you are too.
We’re a community dedicated to creating a web based streaming platform and app which facilitate direct connection between local, original musicians; any Australian business which holds a licence to play recorded music; and any Australian who wants to hear it.
We're a social enterprise on a mission to become Australia’s leading enabling technology designed to foster and facilitate a healthy local music ecology.
The Pack Australia aims to make our music industry fair again for local, original unsigned musicians with the help of a supportive business community and individual subscribers.
In other words - we want to fix what the big boys and their streaming services have broken.
We’re kind of like a localised Spotify, with a social conscience.
The Pack's Alphas are Harry Deluxe and Melanie Bainbridge - partners in life, love, arts, and business. We're both independent musicians, and we're mad about our industry.
THE PROBLEM
We came up with the idea for The Pack Australia as we were trying to work out whether the major streaming platforms were going to work for us as an avenue to monetise our music. Like every musician, we were trying to find that elusive paycheck from our music, and discovering our options as recording artists pretty limited.The 'streaming’ of music was sold to us as an amazing way for independent recording artists to engage directly with an almost unlimited, global audience. What we realised is it has not created an even playing field for musicians.
WHY?
- Famous artists have major labels and marketing giants behind them... but local, unsigned artists... not so much...
- They allow listeners access to our music without needing to invest in it in any way.
- The average song play on global streaming platforms nets an artist about 0.005 cents which means to make back the cost of a coffee in Perth, you have to get your song played 1000 times. And that’s if listeners can even find you.
- Streaming has also stripped away the few revenue streams that independent artists have been able to monetise in the past - the selling of physical product at gigs has traditionally been one of our few real sources of revenue. Fewer and fewer music listeners want their music tangibly. Many people under 25 have never personally purchased a CD. Digital downloads were a thing for a while… but now few people even want to buy a song – they’d rather just stream it on a low cost or free streaming service.
Because of this last point, we came to understand that the market had moved, and local musicians like us were unable to even get in front of our listeners.
WHY IT MATTERS
Musicians are some of the best qualified, but most poorly paid, workers in Australia. The average earnings of a working, unsigned Australian musician is around $7500 per year. That’s not a living wage.
Strangely though, musicians are seldom considered ‘disadvantaged’. We are rarely referred to as ‘the working poor’.
Recording and marketing music costs significant money, which local, original bands seldom make back through gigs or album sales, so most musicians have a ‘day job’ to make ends meet. This doesn’t leave them much time to be creatively productive.
It’s worth considering the long term impacts that this situation will have on the Australian music industry if left unchallenged.
If most unsigned musicians are barely earning enough money to cover the cost of recording an album (most professional studio recordings will set an artist back between $5,000 and $10,000 - in some cases much more), and cannot afford to work solidly on their craft, how then will the Australian music industry survive, thrive, and position Australian music on the global stage into the future?
Bottom line – our local, original artists are creatively starving in an era of apparent musical prosperity.
OUR SOLUTION
While many of our awesome cafes, venues, businesses and retailers have a 'buy local' ethic for their food and produce, this doesn’t seem to extend to their music choices. Most businesses stream playlists (many illegally) which tend to consist largely, if not entirely, of imported music.
We aim to reverse this trend by building a streaming service that localises what other major streaming services have globalised.
We will do this by creating a streaming service that develops sector or industry specific, curated playlists entirely from local, original artists - creating multiple income possibilities for recording artists through online sales, licensing fees, and direct royalty allocation – which The Pack will guarantee by collecting and communicating real-time play data to licensing bodies to ensure that every artist who gets played gets paid.
We will create opportunities for The Pack listener members to influence playlists algorithmically by interacting with member businesses via a location based check-in system, ensuring that the business’s individual playlist is always tailored to its clientele, and providing direct customer data to businesses – good for clients, and good for business!
OUR ULTIMATE GOAL
- When we see royalties from recorded music going directly into the pockets of our local, original artists - we will know we have succeeded in our mission.
- When we see local businesses supporting the 'buy local (music)' ethos - we will know we have succeeded in our mission.
- When we see passionate Australians jumping on our platform and supporting local, original music - and interacting and engaging directly with local artists and businesses via The Pack - we will know we have succeeded in our mission.
We want to reach our first 5000 businesses and 16000+ individual customers in our first operating year - and reach 75000+ within three. From there - the sky's the limit.
We're calling on our supporters to help us disrupt the music industry disruptors, because they have inadvertently created a system which disables and disadvantages our community - the talented, worthy and hard-working unsigned musicians of Australia.
You can help us to make sure that local, original artists are being paid fairly and directly for their music - this will be the measure by which we define our success.
OUR PACK - PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS
All of our contributors are game changers in the industry, from arts lawyers to advocates, musicians to broadcasters - this is just a snapshot of some of the movers and shakers behind The Pack Australia.
We're also working with stellar start-up app developer and end-to-end enterprise partner Hyper Apps - who are on standby to kick this project into high gear as soon as we reach our funding target.
And if you want to see some seriously saucy testimonials from some of our Pack of supporters you can check them out on our website here.
GO ON - GIVE US A SHARE!
One of the best ways you could possibly support The Pack Australia is to like, follow, stalk, and share us with reckless abandon. We know you understand how hard we're working to make this dream for Australian musicians a reality - and the more people who know about it, support it, back it and shout about it - the more likely it is that we'll be able to hit the ground running within the next six months. That's our goal - and you can help us get there!
