Music Australia, the government agency for contemporary music, has released a landmark report on the value of the Australian music industry. Read more

The Bass Line establishes the first nationally consistent methodology and analysis of the direct economic contribution of Australia’s music industry. It provides:

• a definition of Australia’s music industry suitable for the purpose of economic analysis
• a credible methodology to estimate direct economic contribution now and over time
• estimates of the direct economic contribution, direct employment, and value of export revenues of the Australian music industry

The study finds that the Australian music industry generated revenues of $8.78 billion and contributed $2.82 billion in direct gross value added, or GVA, to the Australian economy in 2023-24.

It also shows strong international demand for Australian music with music exports contributing an estimated $975 million to the total Australian music industry revenue.

The Bass Line also estimates the economic contribution of music industry subsectors in 2023-24:

• Live music performance contributed $4.83 billion in revenue and $1.44 billion in direct GVA
• Music recording, production, label services and distribution contributed $790 million in revenue and $350 million in direct GVA
• Composition, songwriting and music publishing contributed $470 million in revenue and $155 million in direct GVA.
• Artist Management contributed $195 million in revenue and $92 million in direct GVA.
• Music retail contributed $2.73 billion in revenue and $515 million in direct GVA

The Australian Music Association provided data for the Music Retail section of the report, the second largest subsector after live music, with music products being the largest part of the ‘retail’ total alongside recorded music and artist merchandise.

The AMA now publishes its detailed Market Report for members, a publicly available Executive Summary, contributes the same data to the NAMM Global Report for a global comparison of the Australian market to other countries, and now contributes to The Bass Line for a comparison of different sectors within the Australian music industry. The Bass Line is on a fiscal year basis, with the recently published report being for the 2024 fiscal year.