Today is an important day for the Australian music industry and fans of the country’s rich, diverse music scenes.
TheMusic.com.au, Australia’s most visited Australian music title, launches a historic archive through street press history today, allowing you to read and enjoy exploring decades of the country’s music history.
In addition to The Music’s ten-year print archive, readers can browse titles including Drum Media, Inpress, 3D World, Rave Magazine, and many more, with the archive stretching back to the 1970s.
Creating the archive has taken over a year, with The Music going through digital versions of magazines and scanning thousands of paper titles.
The magazine archive can be browsed on TheMusic.com.au with free registration.
By registering with The Music, readers will have access to the expansive magazine archive, manage newsletter subscriptions to The Music’s daily newsletter and industry newsletter, as well as newsletters for sister titles Purple Sneakers and Countrytown, and personalise their experiences on The Music by logging their location and sorting content via their favourite music genres.
Brisbane publisher SGC Media acquired The Music, Purple Sneakers, and Countrytown in October 2021 and has since witnessed rapid growth on all websites. The Music welcomes 300,000 unique visitors per month and over 50,000 public daily newsletter subscribers.
In a statement, SGC Media publisher and CEO Stephen Green said today’s launch is a result of The Music’s dedication to sharing Australian music stories.
“The Music has delivered Australian music news to our readers every week through its street press titles for decades and now delivers it daily through our continually growing newsletter, but it’s the respect for our past that’s the guiding force for our future,” Green said.
While looking to the past to inform the future, Green acknowledges that launching a digital archive isn’t a task to be taken lightly. We’ll need your help to find the missing issues and nurture the archive.
“There are still massive gaps in our collection as archives have gone missing over the years,” Green added, “While we have over 6,000 magazines available in our reading room, we are committed to continue to track down the missing links.”
The archive will “continue to grow” as more editions are found. Green states that The Music will work with industry figures and readers to “track down copies that are sitting in garages and attics around Australia and open up that journalism to generations to come.”
Green concluded, “It’s not just the stories, but also the ads and gig guides of the times that remind us of how strong the music industry has been at various points of the last forty years.
“For older readers, they may find stories on bands they were in when they were younger or reviews of shows they attended. For younger readers, the astounding number of live events every week and the general chronicling of our local music scenes, particularly in the 90s and 00s, are a great history lesson.”
If you want to visit the archive, visit TheMusic.com.au, find “Street Press Archive” in the main menu and register to start your journey through Australian music history. Happy reading!
Can you help us fill the gaps in our collection? Click here for details on how to add to our archive.
