About The Music

The Music

The Music is an online Australian music magazine, formerly one of the country's major street press titles. Born from the 2013 merger of three of Australia's best-known free music papers — Sydney's Drum Media, Brisbane's Time Off and Melbourne's Inpress — it carried the street press tradition of long-form music journalism, gig guides and artist interviews into the digital era. The print edition was paused in 2020, and since October 2021 the website has been owned by Brisbane-based SGC Group.

Overview

The Music (themusic.com.au) is an online music magazine covering Australian music news, reviews and interviews. In its printed form it was a street press title — free, distributed through live music venues, record stores, cafes and pubs — devoted to long-form music journalism and commentary, music news and artist interviews. Its printed distribution centred on Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle, Canberra and surrounding areas, reflecting its Drum Media inheritance.

History

The magazine's roots run deep in Australian street press history. The earliest of its predecessor titles traced back to September 1990 — the first issue date recorded for the lineage that became The Music. Drum Media was Sydney's street press institution; Inpress was Melbourne's; Time Off was Brisbane's. Together with Perth's Drum Media edition, they were published by Street Press Australia, the company built by Craig and Leigh Treweek into a national network of music press.

The street press era was formidable. Australia's free music papers, at their 1990s peak, were credited with killing off the paid weekly music magazines — Juke and RAM fell to free competitors Beat and Drum Media. The papers were available free, published weekly, and built around gig guides, interviews and reviews: the essential infrastructure of live music culture in every major city.

In 2013, Street Press Australia merged its three eastern titles — Drum Media, Time Off and Inpress — into a single national brand, The Music, incorporating Drum Media. TheMusic.com.au launched the same year as the online arm of the merged business. The consolidation reflected the pressures facing print street press even before the pandemic: a single national title could serve advertisers and readers more efficiently than three city papers.

The COVID-19 pandemic finished what economics had started. In 2020 most street press across Australia closed as venues shut and distribution points disappeared; The Music's print edition was paused that year. The digital brand survived, and on 11 October 2021 it changed hands: Brisbane-based publisher and music company SGC Media — specialists in music and event PR — acquired TheMusic.com.au from Melbourne's Handshake Media (formerly Handshake Group), the successor to Street Press Australia. The acquisition kept one of the street press era's flagship digital brands in Australian music-industry hands.

The editor of The Music is Daniel Cribb. Its publishing lineage — Street Press Australia to Handshake to SGC Group — mirrors the broader consolidation of Australian music media in the 2010s and 2020s.

Drum Media, Inpress and Time Off

Each of the three merged titles had its own fierce local identity. Drum Media was Sydney's street press paper, with a Perth edition extending the brand west; Inpress was Melbourne's weekly, founded in 1988, two years after Beat; Time Off was Brisbane's. All were free papers distributed through the venues, record stores, cafes and pubs where live music happened — and all were part of the street press tradition that began with TAGG – The Alternative Gig Guide, the pocket-sized Melbourne fortnightly founded in 1979 by Helmut Katterl and Mick Pacholli that is recognised as Australia's earliest street press newspaper. The papers' peak in the 1990s coincided with the pub-rock and indie boom: weekly, tabloid-sized, printed on newsprint with glossy covers, they were the gig-goer's bible and the industry's shopfront in one.

The Street Press Australia network

The consolidation of these papers under Street Press Australia was the work of Craig and Leigh Treweek, who built what American-born industry veteran Phil Tripp — after 40 years in the music business — called "the national network of music press." When Tripp sold his Australasian Music Industry Directory to Street Press Australia in 2010 (choosing SPA over five bidders), the deal included the Tripp-operated websites immedia.com.au, musicbusiness.com.au, musicdirectory.net.au and the music industry portal TheMusic.com.au — an early sign of where the merged The Music brand would eventually live. Tripp had started the directory 22 years earlier, he said, "while sitting bored in hospital after a heart attack."

2020: the year the street press died

The pandemic year was catastrophic for street press everywhere in Australia: with venues closed and distribution points — pubs, cafes, record stores, campuses — shuttered, most titles closed in 2020. The Music's print edition was paused that year, ending the paper's physical run. By 2022, the remaining national street press titles were Mixdown and scenestr, while Canberra's BMA had become Australia's longest-running street press after Beat moved completely online. The Music survived as a digital brand — its gig-guide DNA intact — under new ownership from 2021.

Content and Features

As a street press title, The Music's print formula was long-form music journalism and commentary, music news, artist interviews and comprehensive gig guides — the content that made the free papers indispensable to gig-goers. The online magazine continues that tradition digitally: Australian music news, reviews and interviews, with the site describing itself as "Australia's Premier Music News & Reviews Website." The gig guide function — listings of what's on at venues around the country — remains central to its identity, a direct inheritance from the street press days when the papers were the primary way fans found out who was playing where.

Coverage and Audience

The Music serves a national Australian audience of live-music fans, musicians and industry followers. Its print heartland was the east coast — Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle, Canberra and surrounds — while the digital edition reaches readers nationwide. Its audience is the gig-going public: the readers who once picked up Drum Media at the venue door and now check the site for news, reviews and listings.

Ownership

TheMusic.com.au is owned by SGC Group (SGC Media), the Brisbane-based music and event PR publisher that acquired it from Handshake Media in October 2021. Handshake was the successor company to Street Press Australia, the Treweek-built publisher that created The Music from the 2013 merger. Further ownership and financial details are not publicly confirmed.

The brand's digital continuity matters because its archive is a record of three decades of Australian live music — the interviews, reviews and listings that documented the scene from the street press heyday through the streaming era. As an online-only title under SGC Group, it carries that archive forward while publishing new Australian music journalism daily.

Digital Presence

The magazine operates at themusic.com.au — the website Wikipedia lists as the title's official site — as an online-only publication since the 2020 print pause. The site carries music news, reviews, interviews and gig listings. Its social media presence continues the brand's engagement with Australia's live music community.

Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia, "The Music (magazine)" — history, merger, print pause and ownership.
• Mumbrella, "SGC Group acquires TheMusic.com.au from Handshake Group" (October 2021) — the acquisition and the title's origins.
• Pollstar, "Aussie Music Directory Finds New Owner" (2010) — Street Press Australia's national street press network.
• Wikipedia, "Music street press of Australia" — the street press era and its industry impact.