Hi everyone, it’s Joe here.

It’s been a bit over a week since we announced we’d be closing down SydneyMusic.net.

The news came at the end of a difficult six months for the organisation. We really thought we had a shot at survival — and honestly, in any given moment I still find myself thinking we still do. As many people have correctly assumed, yes: making the decision was difficult and we did it super reluctantly.

The outpouring of love has meant a lot. Really — our hearts, DMs, emails, phones and real life interactions have been inundated with love. We know this little project means a lot to you, and it means heaps to us too.

A lot of people have asked if there’s any way the organisation or its work can continue.

We basically have two options other than shutdown:

• Secure sufficient funding and continue the organisation ourselves

• Hand the organisation, its data and work to someone else

We have had many conversations about these options, and we’ve had some really generous expressions of support. At this stage, we have not yet arrived at a solution (but I will say now that we won’t be exploring handing the organisation’s data and accounts over to any for-profit operators)

The prospect of embarking on another fundraising campaign to carry on under our own steam is not something we feel we have the mental or emotional energy for right now. Our efforts to date have not been successful. If we could find the funding then yes, absolutely, we’d continue to do this without question. We’re grateful to the parties that have offered their support, but we still haven’t arrived at a complete solution for this.

So, to the other option: some kind of transition is still a live possibility, and in light of those conversations we’ve made the decision to extend SydneyMusic’s shutdown date to Sunday the 13th of July. This gives us some time to figure out the best option for the project, and also gives us a little more time to celebrate what we’ve achieved and our scene.

We also don’t feel it’d be right for the guide to go offline without a proper party as well (more on that soon).

From now until 13/7, we will be continuing to update the guide — just Caitlin and me, the way we used to with what hours we can. It’ll only be available via this website: there’ll be limitations to our coverage, and there won’t be Instagram Stories or Gig Guide Playlist updates, but while we’re in this transition phase we would like extend the life of the guide to continue as long as we can.

There are still reasons for a hard date to work towards: on the 17th of July our data platform containing the gig guide data is up for its annual renewal, which will be $1,500. As a result, we will need to find a solution or shut down the website by then.

In the meantime we’ll see what we can figure out and hopefully in some way or another the work we’ve done can live on.

Thank you again to everyone for your expressions of support and love. Overwhelmingly, people tell us that SydneyMusic has changed their lives, been the catalyst for friendships, helped them fall in love with music again, and so much else besides. We know we did good work, and we’re proud of the work we did.

We could use some help on this last mile. To help us do this transition as well as possible and to support the service we continue to provide: if you would like to continue supporting the organisation during this transition period, donations to SydneyMusic continue to be tax deductible. Donate here.

Many thanks,

Joe