As the New South Wales music scene grapples with declining all-ages live gigs, the state government says it's changing laws to make them easier to go ahead. It previously announced changes to make all-age festivals more viable and now wants to encourage more licensed venues to host them.
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00:00For Aussie band Hockey Dad, playing all ages gigs helped them get their start.
00:07It's so good to constantly have just fresh faces come in and be like, wow, never heard
00:12of this, this is awesome.
00:14But these shows have been in decline across New South Wales.
00:18Too hard to the point where you really just can't even put them on and make money as a
00:22band.
00:23It's gotta work.
00:24While demand for all ages shows remains, the venues to hold them are in short supply.
00:28We're planning a tour for next year and actively trying to find what venues are able to support
00:33an all ages audience and there's not many.
00:36We all are coming together on this because we need to keep our industry growing.
00:43We need to give the publicans and the club owners and other people who have venues we
00:49can use the encouragement and the ability to be able to do it.
00:56Now the state government wants to make it easier for young music fans to see the acts
01:00they love.
01:02It's become so hard to run a venue, so hard to be an artist, to be a working musician
01:07in New South Wales.
01:08We've almost made it impossible.
01:11Now we're trying to turn the tide back.
01:13It'll include support for young promoters to deliver their own events and an all ages
01:18live music program to relieve some of the costs.
01:21We used to run a dedicated under 18s program called Access All Ages and in that program
01:25we didn't serve alcohol for example.
01:27So viably to make that work is really tricky.
01:31You know venues really do rely on sales of alcohol to make the business model work.
01:37There's no random artificial line drawn between a 17 year old sports fan and an 18 year old
01:43sports fan.
01:44It's philosophically indefensible that art isn't available and actively promoted for
01:50young people.
01:52Making live music a tradition for all to enjoy.