This text started as a video on my band’s TikTok. Someday, I bought a bit fed up with the standard social media methods, and I began speaking to the digital camera about politics, Australia, artwork, and the music scene—the issues our band is about and concerned in.
At first, I centered on the marginally much less mentioned side of the music trade. I began out speaking about media deregulation. Weirdly, our stuff went viral-ish—a minimum of viral for a band that had twelve hundred followers and averaged a few hundred views. Fairly quickly, it grew to become clear we have been going to want to handle among the elephants within the room within the Australian music trade, and there’s no elephant bigger in Australia than triple j.
So, I made a video about triple j. We known as it a love letter to triple j, and we meant it. However loving somebody doesn’t imply you solely say the good, simple issues. Loving somebody means telling the reality.
However first, I’m Mark. I’m in a band known as Strawberry Swing. And now we have opinions. Let’s boogie.
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So, let’s discuss triple j. Triple j is a publicly owned, government-funded radio station that’s turn into Australia’s nationwide youth broadcaster. It was based within the Seventies with the explicitly mandated aim of constructing radio for 18–24-year-olds. And when triple j began, it was PUNK AS F*CK.
It was launched in 1975 by the Whitlam authorities. Initially, it was simply broadcast in Sydney and was known as 2JJ. After they launched, the primary track they ever performed was You Simply Like Me Cos I’m Good In Mattress by the Skyhooks.
This was vital for 2 causes: it was an Australian track when industrial radio wasn’t enjoying a lot Australian music, and it was banned on almost each different radio station within the nation. Enjoying that track first up was an announcement: triple j was PUNK AS F*CK.
And 2JJ, because it was then known as, had a right away impact on the charts. For those who return and have a look at the Australian music charts, you may see precisely when triple j was based. That album by the Skyhooks ended up turning into the highest-selling album in Australia by an Australian artist as much as that time: an album that was banned by almost each different radio station.
So, out of the gate, 2JJ (or triple j) established two key elements of its id: it supported Australian music and didn’t give two s**ts what the outdated folks have been doing. And that punk perspective caught round.
In 1990, triple j had been enjoying NWA’s track, F**okay Tha Police, and nobody had actually observed. Then, an ABC bigwig did discover and instantly banned the track from the station. In response, the employees at triple j protested, and for the following 24 hours, they broadcast NWA’s Categorical Your self on repeat for twenty-four hours. It performed 82 occasions. To this present day, there’s nonetheless an NWA pattern within the triple j information theme.
From the start, triple j sponsored dwell music occasions and had an actual dedication to the Australian dwell scene. There are so, so, so many artists we’d by no means have heard of in Australia have been it not for triple j’s help. Triple j was and stays a massively essential a part of the Australian music scene, and anybody who tries to inform you in any other case is stuffed with s**t.
However, for so long as triple j has been a factor, there’s been folks bitching about it, and that’s what I actually need to discuss.
I don’t need to fear an excessive amount of about historic complaints about triple j. I feel they’re principally, “triple j performs naughty music” and yeah, it’s for 18-24-year-olds. That’s what it ought to be doing. There have been additionally some points up to now with the illustration of ladies and the final range of its employees. Though, I feel the gender difficulty really bought worse after it was based. However quite a lot of that stuff has been addressed extra not too long ago. It’s most likely not good, nevertheless it’s not the white boy membership it was accused of being 10-15 years in the past.
Let’s deal with the right here and now.
I feel there are two predominant headings beneath which you could possibly criticise triple j. There’s a 3rd one as nicely, which is that triple j is ‘woke’. That’s principally simply tradition battle nonsense, and I’m pleased to handle that elsewhere (and have already carried out so on TikTok). However if you happen to suppose triple j being ‘woke’ is new, I don’t suppose you’ve ever actually been paying consideration.
For now, although, the 2 predominant criticisms are that triple j sounds an excessive amount of like High 40 in the intervening time and that there’s a “triple j sound.” Let’s get into these.
First up, the “triple j sound”. The primary time I bear in mind seeing that argument was round 2014. There was an article within the Sydney Morning Herald known as Calling the Tune, and so they interviewed a bunch of artists anonymously about the truth that they felt they needed to conform to the “triple j Sound” to get airplay.
The article argued this was having a homogenising impact on the Australian music trade. What I discover fascinating about this isn’t the article itself however when it got here out. It got here out in 2014, roughly seven years after John Howard’s large media reform or, extra precisely, the deregulation of Aussie media.
If you wish to know extra about this, I mentioned it in an earlier TikTok, however mainly, by 2014, solely two firms owned most of Australia’s radio.
Newspapers and TV are about the identical. Due to comparable legal guidelines within the US, ditto document labels. Actually, Australia has one of the vital concentrated media possession landscapes on the earth. One thing else Howard additionally did was weaken native content material legal guidelines that used to power industrial radio to play native music.
Why does this matter? As a result of I feel there’s most likely at all times been a “triple j Sound”. It’s one radio station; it’s going to undergo traits, and sure, it’s going to be topic to favouritism by the folks answerable for selecting what will get to air. However I feel the explanation why this got here up in 2014 and hasn’t gone away since is as a result of that was lengthy sufficient for Howard’s deregulation to have taken maintain.
By 2014, there have been only a few avenues for Australian acts to interrupt by means of. Previously, a DJ at a neighborhood industrial rock station, for instance, may break an act. By 2014, it was mainly simply triple j. So; these artists have been understandably aggravated by the triple j sound. However triple j isn’t actually the dangerous man right here. The issue is the broader trade. Australian music has undoubtedly turn into homogenous, however I’d argue that it’s due to deregulation and company monopolies, not triple j.
The Australian music trade lacks range when it comes to pathways for artists, so sure, all of them find yourself sounding the identical, making an attempt to evolve to what works for these few pathways left. What I do suppose is an issue with triple j is that they should do a greater job of recognising that they’re one of many few locations left for Australian music. I feel too typically, individuals who work for triple j get defensive on this level and don’t recognise the large energy they’ve over artists’ careers.
Most significantly, if we care in regards to the native music trade and wish it to flourish, we have to struggle a few of these broader, structural points and never simply whine about one radio station.
That brings me to the opposite grievance about triple j: not too long ago, it’s began sounding an terrible lot like a industrial, High 40 radio station. And this one, I feel, might be principally proper.
For context, over the previous few years, triple j has been shedding its core viewers of 18-24-year-olds. It’s additionally failed at getting the older cohort of listeners to “age out” of the station.
Intriguingly, 18-24-year-olds don’t seem like ditching radio altogether, simply triple j. I additionally don’t suppose it’s an enormous deal if older individuals are listening, however I feel it wants to take care of that youth viewers. Not simply because it’s legally required however as a result of there are fewer and fewer cultural areas aimed solely on the demographic. I gained’t get into it right here, however an enormous drawback for younger folks proper now’s how the tradition being created for them simply recycled nostalgia and isn’t distinctive to them.
However the primary level is that triple j has been dropping its core youth viewers, and in response to that, they appear to be chasing them by enjoying extra mainstream “youth” well-liked artists. I feel it is a mistake for a bunch of causes. First up, “chasing” an viewers by no means works; it simply reeks of desperation. Crucially, I feel it reveals administration doesn’t perceive triple j’s id or level of distinction.
Individuals typically complain that triple j presenters have that “triple j voice”. The explanation for that is that triple j doesn’t have the price range of the massive industrial stations. They will’t afford to rent Hamish & Andy or Kyle & Jackie O (not that I’d need them to). However this implies they make use of youthful, up-and-coming radio presenters, which is completely unbelievable, nevertheless it does imply they are going to be a bit rougher and rawer than industrial radio. However that’s a power, not a weak point.
Triple j ought to lean into that. They used to: they have been anarchic and completely different and edgy in a means that industrial radio can’t be as a result of they’ll’t afford to piss off advertisers. Sadly, in the intervening time, it appears like triple j is determined to not piss off ABC’s higher administration.
As for the music, if triple j does play industrial mainstream music, and I’ve seen a couple of large names within the Australian music/radio scene saying they need to, they lose what makes them completely different. Then, their solely aggressive benefit over different stations is that they don’t have any adverts. And to be trustworthy, if it’s the identical playlist, are most individuals going to take heed to triple j play High 40 with uncooked presenters, or will they take heed to polished presenters on industrial radio the place they could be capable of win a automobile on the identical time?
I feel we’re already seeing the reply to that query within the rankings.
Finally, I feel the reply to triple j’s future lies in its previous. And I feel it lies within the first 5 minutes of the printed. That first track instructed us that triple j performs Australian music, and it doesn’t give two s**ts what the institution thinks. That’s the place triple j must be.
Triple j must help Aussie music and be on the vanguard of that, notably when the Australian music trade is in a little bit of disaster and when there aren’t different avenues for native music. They usually additionally want to recollect to be PUNK AS F**Okay. Triple j must piss folks off once more.
They tried that not too long ago with a tweet saying, “Did it damage while you aged out of triple j?” Or one thing like that.
did it damage? while you aged out of the youth radio station
— triple j (@triplej) August 31, 2021
There was a backlash, and so they instantly apologised. Now, it was a dumb tweet for a bunch of causes, particularly given folks aren’t “ageing out” and as a substitute, they’re dropping younger folks. However I preferred the concept behind it, and I feel they need to have doubled down as a substitute of backing down, though ideally with a intelligent tweet.
Being punk and edgy: that’s triple j’s level of distinction. It’s radio that bites. I feel they’ve forgotten that.
We love triple j. It’s been and continues to be a large a part of our music scene. However it’s gotten type of middle-aged, and it’s in a really completely different media panorama from the one it launched in. It wants to seek out its edge once more. It wants to grasp it’s now extra essential for native artists than ever. And it must do not forget that its power is exactly that it isn’t industrial radio. If triple j turns into a industrial radio clone, it would die.
We love triple j. It turns 50 subsequent yr, and we hope it stays round in some type for one more fifty years. However let’s always remember that triple j must be punk.
