Annual Conversation Piece

Ozstream’s Second Annual Conversation Piece You can’t fix a problem you can’t see… Reading Time: 30 minutes | Word Count: 5252 What our creative and performing sector can learn from a scoreboard it no longer has.   Introduction Let’s get you up to speed… If you read my annual thought piece from last year (Connecting the Dots Between Talent and Opportunity) you’ll know that I’d spent the better part of two and a half years having conversations with people across Australia’s creative and performing industries. Over the course of the the last twelve months, developing GigBridge has seen my focus turn more to the needs of musicians, venue owners, and booking agents. Each conversation has added and connected another dot to the overall picture (and product roadmap) that continues to be drawn (and developed). This year, a few of those dots connected in ways I genuinely didn’t see coming. The most unexpected came through my work with The Vocal Muster. A remarkable organisation doing brilliant things in the Southern Highlands of NSW. My role there began modestly enough: website maintenance, digital support, the kind of behind-the-scenes work that helps to keep my own existence ticking along. But the more work I was doing for them, the more I found myself listening. Really listening. Buried amongst the many conversations being had inside The Vocal Muster were the same threads of conversations I was already having inside my own network of contacts. Threads I’d been hearing in past conversations were now surfacing themselves again in new conversations. Talented emerging performers, driven, and serious about building a career. Finding themselves without the support or guidance to help them understand the business side of what they were trying to do. No guidance on contracts. No help with invoicing. No one to explain how the industry actually works before it works them over. Here, in The Vocal Muster, I found experienced industry professionals who genuinely wanted to give back, but had no way of organising to doing so. Those threads have been pulled together, and have become the genesis of something new. Introducing TIGO – aka The Incubator Go-Op… TIGO will be a not-for-profit organisation, working within a co-operative framework, an incubator providing help and support for emerging and early-career artists, musicians, singers and performers across Australia. The name is deliberate. Go-Op is a play on Co-Op, but with forward momentum baked in. Every member, whether an industry professional, or an emerging artist, will all hold an equal vote. TIGO is not a service provider with clients. It is a community of people invested in each other’s success. And here’s where it gets interesting. The moment TIGO started taking shape, something shifted in how we were thinking about ways to build momentum for Ozstream and GigBridge. For months (okay, years), the conversations inside the Ozstream network had been: How do we build momentum? How do we get this moving? How do we build GigBridge at the same time as establishing ourselves as a social enterprise? How do we get people on board? And, how do we create enough energy to make something real? Almost overnight, the question flipped, along with the problem we were facing. Okay, this is a new problem. How do I slow momentum down? If you’ve ever been part of something that suddenly starts moving faster than you expected, you’ll know exactly what that moment feels like. It’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. The temptation is to just hang on and enjoy the ride. The discipline is to pump the brakes long enough to make sure the foundations are solid. Because the higher you build, the further you can fall, and the more those foundations you’re building begin to take on greater significance. That discipline is where we are with TIGO right now. Our 10 Point Plan has recently been circulated amongst our small group of stakeholders. The structure is being formalised, carefully, and deliberately, because this is the kind of organisation that only works if we’ve engaged the right people, and it’s built on solid foundations from the very beginning. Meanwhile, GigBridge, has been doing some growing up of its own. Last year, I spoke about GigBridge as a platform looking for its first wave of early adopters – venues and performers. The product soft-launched as a MVP in early 2025, as you do, we learnt much from that three month period. Whilst GigBridge has been in a state of hiatus following the MVP soft-launch, the product itself has evolved significantly, shaped by something I didn’t fully appreciate when I started: just how important booking agents and managers actually are to the fabric of this industry. The more conversations I’ve had with the good ones (and there are some genuinely brilliant ones out there) the more I’ve come to understand that the relationship between a great agent and their artists or venues isn’t just transactional. It’s often the difference between a career that flourishes and one that fades. The good agents and managers are professionals who carry real responsibility, operate with genuine integrity, carry a wealth of expertise, and they deserve to be celebrated and supported alongside everyone else. So that’s exactly what we’re doing. GigBridge is now being built to support and amplify the agents and managers who are doing right by this industry. And for those who the industry likes to refer to as gatekeepers, those who treat performers and venues as leverage rather than partners? Well. The beautiful thing about a well-designed platform is that it has a quiet way of making certain business models… redundant. We’re not here to pick fights. We’re here to build something better. And sometimes, building something better is the most effective response of all. The aim is for TIGO to become the very first user of GigBridge in 2027. The aim here is to ensure everything is working as intended. And with that milestone reached, GigBridge will be re-launched as a booking platform for everyone in Australia’s Live Music industry. Regardless of