Australian culture under attack

Written by: Duncan B. on 16 February 2025

(Progressive Australian culture has had its ups and downs: the 1890s, 1930s and 1970s. The above is the front cover of the SA-based Australian Cultural Association’s 67-page history of its 1975-1980 activities. Maybe it’s time for another upsurge!)

Australian culture has come under attack on several fronts lately. In the past six months, two big multinational publishers have taken over two independent Australian publishing houses.

Simon & Schuster took over Affirm Press and Penguin Random House took over Text Publishing. The big five overseas publishing companies (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan) now control a large chunk of the Australian publishing industry. 

These take-over deals are bad for Australian authors, Australian readers and Australian literature. We risk losing more Australian culture because of them. The big companies are cautious about what they take on, while independent publishers take more risks and support innovative and experimental writing. Text Publishing has authors who have been short-listed for the Nobel, Booker and Pulitzer prizes. Other Text authors have won the Miles Franklin and Stella Prizes. Text has also reprinted books by past Australian authors, bringing them to a new generation of Australian readers.

The Australian Music industry is also facing a crisis thanks to Spotify. This Swedish-owned streaming platform with global revenues of $25 billion per year, controls 70% of the Australian audio streaming market. Australian music is suffering as a result.

Many people now  get their music from Spotify instead of buying CDs or listening to radio stations such as Triple J. American pop stars dominate the music played on Spotify, which is not subject to any local content rules, despite promises by the Labor Party to introduce them. Three major record labels, Warner, Sony and Universal, released 95% of the music on the Australian top-100 in 2023.

Only five Australian songs made it to the ARIA top 100 for 2024. Only 18 Australian artists made it into Triple J’s Hottest 100 for 2025. Triple J’s ratings have dropped to 4.3% nationally. This is a sad result for a radio station which has done so much to promote Australian music in its 50 years of operation.

The Triple J playlist has always featured a much higher level of Australian music than the commercial stations. Programmes such as Unearthed and the One Night Stand travelling live music shows have allowed many Australian musicians to gain recognition.

Live music in Australia is dominated by overseas multinationals such as the US-based Live Nation. The three top video streamers in Australia are foreign-owned-Netflix, Amazon and Disney. Video streamers are also not subject to local content quotas.

The government is being urged to introduce local content quotas of at least 25% for streaming services. This would be a start. Much more action is needed to seize back control of our culture from the multinationals and return it to Australian authors, performers and audiences.

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