OZ Music Moments as an innovation from the minute it was conceptualised was to serve one primary goal, ‘to help the Australian music industry which has seen a major decline in recent years, in conjunction with COVID-19 has increased this rate of decline.’ When we came together as a group of Five we looked to other industries for inspiration and came across NBA TOP Shots, which sparked all of our interests in the Non-fungible token (NFT) phenomenon that was transcending country borders.
Because of this unique scenario in the industry along with how new-fangled NFTs are, finding any kind of in-depth research on the subject matters can be quite a daunting task. But one extremely recent story by the ABC posted on 4 Jun 2021, which is 2 days ago has provided me with an extremely detailed perspective of the music industry from the perspective of Australian musicians.
Comments like “I’ve had those moments where I wonder if I’ll ever get back to the point that I was at” said Harriette Pilbeam (2021) and “It also plays on your mind how hard it is to not be able to earn money to feed your child, through no fault of your own.” (James Tidswell 2021) is extremely saddening for people involved in such an important part of Australia’s identity. This really reinforced my ideas of the need for an innovation like our OZ Music moments.
When doing research, I found out that the government is still limiting venues for live music performances but are allowing events like the AFL and NFL Grand finals to play with 80,000 thousand people attending. (Donoughue, P, 2021) This is even more distressing when you consider that “Almost 70 percent of businesses the ALMBC polled in early March said their revenue was down by as much as 100 percent since coronavirus lockdowns were first introduced this time last year.” (Donoughue, P, 2021) This issue goes beyond just the musicians it affects almost everybody involved in not only helping musicians but also get help from musicians in a mutual way for example holding a concert which brings people into your business to listen to the music which pays the musician but also the sales of drinks, food, and other services.
Because of this, I’ve wanted to incorporate businesses like clubs, and pubs into the ‘Oz music moments’ innovation through the similar concept that was brought up in assignment 2 with charities working with artists to make NFTs to support a cause. This could be easily applied to businesses as well and could be split fifty fifty between both parties continuing that mutual relationship these two parties often share.
My primary goal for the 60-second video was to create an awareness-like campaign/ad. NFT’s and our innovation Oz music moments are in my opinion are quite a hard thing to understand and in some aspects explain to somebody who has not spent much time in doing their own individual research, so through this video, I wanted to provide the fundamentals of what NFTs are, why they are popular and examples of that popularity then introduce this innovation into our own world of the Australian music industry. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with how our group performed during the creation of this innovation and I feel like my Digital Artefact has come out extremely well! (even if it went a little bit over the time limit)
Reference list:
Donoughue, P and Shneier, L (2021) ‘The gig economy’ [Online] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-04/covid-music-industry-lockdown-australia-talks/100178172 [Accessed 5th of June]
Donoughue, P (2021) ‘Coronavirus capacity restrictions for live music venues must be raised, industry says’ [Online] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-22/music-industry-calls-for-raised-venue-capacity/100020952 [Accessed 5th of June]
Butler, J (2021) ‘Desperation’: Ailing live music venues plead for eased COVID rules to allow bigger crowds’ [Online] https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/03/25/desperation-live-music-pleads-for-more-crowds-as-venues-face-shutdown/ [Accessed 5th of June]
Griffiths, N (2020) ‘How Coronavirus Is Impacting The Music & Entertainment Industry’ [Online] https://themusic.com.au/news/coronavirus-travel-ban-australia-music/X917c3J1dHc/06-03-20/ [Accessed 5th of June]
Jacob Suter 
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