MINISTER TONY BURKE - TRANSCRIPT - SPEECH, SPOTIFY LOUD & CLEAR EVENT – MONDAY, 24 JUNE 2024

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SPOTIFY LOUD & CLEAR EVENT

MONDAY, 24 JUNE 2024

TONY BURKE MP, MINISTER FOR THE ARTS: Thanks so much, Mikaela and thank you, Uncle Warren, for such a generous Welcome to Country. I acknowledge all my Parliamentary colleagues but in particular, the Shadow Minister, Paul Fletcher, who's here, and the spokesperson for the Greens Party, Sarah Hanson-Young.

Can I start by acknowledging with Spotify, the incredible opportunities that are now there. When you mentioned the band, you mentioned, ‘I used to be fun’ as a standard refrain of people once they start working here. We tend to lose it once we're here. The opportunities that are there with Spotify are phenomenal. We had that brief moment of international sharing with Napster, where people could suddenly get access to any music they could imagine, but the artist got nothing. To have a system where you can still imagine and get access to any music that you want, that you can think of, is an incredible opportunity and being done in a way where the principle of artist royalties is still there.

I'm also very grateful to the Australian team for everything that's being done to promote Australian artists. There is an extraordinary story there for ‘Tones and I’, in particular. I do want to say I hope that we can work together. The algorithm still tends to take us offshore and it's something that I really want us to work on. I did a little test and put Dance Monkey into my own music, which is overwhelmingly Australian. It took eight songs before I got to the next Australian song, which was Tones and I. 10 more before I got to the next Australian song, which was Tones and I. Five later, I got The Kid LAROI, but it was his duet with Justin Bieber. And three after that I got Vance Joy.

I know a lot of work's being done to promote Australian artists. A lot of fantastic work's being done to start to look at the curated lists. Ultimately, as a Government, the algorithm itself will always be commercial in confidence. I get that. But what can ever be done to be able to make sure that when we start on Australian music, we can stay there for as long as possible. And when we start somewhere else, and there's a really similar band that we can be brought through using that concept of the music that you've worked out what style of music we love and create those new opportunities for Australian artists, we want that, too.

Very grateful for everything Spotify has done. I think their presence here today is a real symbol of that and very grateful for the Australian team. I just put down that there is more work to do, and we want to be able to do that together because, just like Mikaela said, we want Australian music to be the soundtrack to life here and we want our artists to also be able to have those incredible opportunities of being able to have audiences all throughout the world. So, that when they then turn up to a festival somewhere, be it in Asia, be it in North America, be it in Europe, the crowd already knows the words to their songs and they’re singing in time. And for so many Australian artists, that's something we possible because of services like Spotify.

But probably no artist in Australia, just like for Tash Sultana, that song Jungle took off on YouTube and suddenly there was an international following. To see international records - and records not in the vinyl sense, records in terms of how many people were listening - that just went beyond expectations with that one song, Dance Monkey, that has then launched the career in so many ways of Tones and I - being one of the most recognised Australian voices that you'll hear around the world. 

Somebody who has gone from strength to strength by being a great performer, a great recording artist and a phenomenal songwriter. I have no right to be the one giving the introduction, but I'm here, I've been given the microphone, and this will be the most fun thing I get to do all week. Can we please give, not a traditional Parliament House welcome, because we're bad at that. Can we give an overwhelming welcome, please to Tones and I.

ENDS