This site exists to promote the community that music creates, with a local focus on Sydney, Australia.

Community online is well served by many platforms and services — you can usually find your people somewhere on the internet. So the main goal of this site is to point you to where the good stuff is happening IRL, so you can find your people and your favourite artists, new or old, all in the same place.

At its heart is a simple, no-nonsense gig guide that does exactly what it says on the tin. We’ll also be publishing the occasional bit of writing, including commentary on cultural trends, music reviews, opinion pieces, and round-ups from contributing writers. We also have a Discord, to help foster connections, again in the hope that it will make it easier to find Sydney’s music community and find your place in it.

This site is emphatically not-for-profit.

Everyone’s gotta eat, but Sydney’s music landscape has been made worse for having to put profit before principles more often than not. It’s reflected in our (lack of) music press, the fact that outsider music is having a harder and harder time finding ears and getting attention, and a general lack of risks being taken — resulting in a music scene that plays it safe and takes fewer risks compared to other global music communities.

This site will never attempt to disguise promotional consideration within “native content” or “sponsored content”, run retina-scorching banner ads, or promote artists in exchange for cash or favours. We will never collect data that could be considered PII (personally identifiable information) or profile you in any way.

The site is run by volunteers donating their skills and time. We are registered as a not-for-profit with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission (ACNC) and welcome donations to help us to keep this viable. Other than that, the site is free for all: enjoy it, spread the word, and send us tips on where to find great shows.

The website and initiative was co-founded by:

Joe Hardy

Project and Technology Direction

Will McKinnon

Art Direction and Web Design

Caitlin Welsh

Content Direction

The site was built with substantial help from the following wonderful humans without whom it would not have been possible!

Mike Riethmuller

Front End Architecture and Development

Hugh McKinnon

Illustration

... but most importantly, this site belongs to you. The site's just starting out, but its voice will be shaped by the people that contribute and help it to become as representative as possible for Sydney's diverse and extraordinary music community.

We'd love your ideas, thoughts, comments, questions and constructive criticism to continue evolving this. Do get in touch to chat with us.

The repository containing all of SydneyMusic.net's code can be found on GitHub.

You're welcome to read this code, get inspiration from it, fork it, deploy it or drop a pull request in with some suggestions. We just ask that anything you do be done in the spirit of the community project.

We'll update this when we start getting frequent questions.

In the meantime, drop us a line!