Introducing Global Music Match!

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The NT’s Colin Lillie Connects With Artists Around the World

Global Music Match unites 14 Music Export Programs for a world first! Centralian artist Colin Lillie spoke exclusively to Foldback Media NT about this exiting project commencing August 31st, 2020

Created in a world first collaboration between founding partners Sounds Australia, Showcase Scotland Expo and Canada’s East Coast Music Association (ECMA), along with 11 other export organisations and showcase events from around the world, Global Music Match is a pilot initiative created to continue raising the profile of local artists in international music markets within the challenging parameters of the COVID-19 pandemic. In essence, artists around the world will take turns to promote each other’s music in their own geographical area in lieu of being able to travel to perform.

The program is a unique response to the limitations imposed on the music industry, that makes use of one of the only available platforms – social media and peer-to-peer collaboration – to increase networks and exposure for export-ready artists internationally. Colin Lillie explains how he was approached to be a part of this project following the Folk Alliance International Conference in New Orleans at the beginning of the year, after COVID-19 put the brakes on live performances around the world:

“They (Global Music Match) got in touch with me and invited me to be part of it, I think with me being part of the Folk Alliance International Conference at the beginning of the year in New Orleans. A lot of artists I am seeing were part of that because we were all, a lot of things had been planned and created, I was actually meant to be heading to Canada for a four-month tour, I was meant to be in the UK for a three week tour. I think it’s just keeping those people that were scheduled to be doing a lot of things this year, keeping them busy so when things are back up and running (post COVID-19) there is already a system, a network and international touring can kick off again like. This is the first time this have ever been done.”

“Once you’ve got the relationships, countries are going be going ‘well, show us the evidence that you’ve got a reason to be here’. It’s about building up those relationships, ensuring that we can continue working with other countries – not just being there but also on this online presence as well.”

“The way the Global Music Match works is that there is ninety-six artists from all over the world with fourteen export agencies from fourteen different countries. Then we take the artists and put them in different groups so there’s sixteen groups of six artists. So I’m in Group 6 in Week 4 so in my group I have an artist from the US, an artist from Canada, an artist from Finland, an artist from England, and an artist from Italy, and then there’s myself.”

The groups focus on one artist a week for the 6 weeks – all the artists in the group promote the one artist over that week on their social media, doing interviews, live-streamed performances, so each artist’s fans can connect with the other artists over the 6 week period. As Colin says: “We just start building their audience here in Australia through my audience (and so on and vice versa). In my week, I’ll have five different countries promoting my music for a whole week.”

For the pilot edition of Global Music Match, artists are steeped in the acoustic, folk, roots, traditional and world music genres.

Lisa Whytock of Showcase Scotland Expo, one of the founding organisations said: “The idea came about on a zoom call between myself and Millie Millgate of Sounds Australia several months ago. We have since seen it grow to include so many export organisations and all of us have been meeting regularly to develop the initiative. It’s great that we can all still connect through social media and we are really looking forward to seeing how all the artists work together. Most of them will never have met and many never have toured in the other countries, so it really is going to establish new international connections”

Search for the hashtag #globalmusicmatch to see some of the examples of the content each act shared during the pilot initiative – or head to http://www.globalmusicmatch.com to learn more and see examples.

Global Music Match is supported by the following export organisations: Catalan Arts (Spain), East Coast Music Association, ECMA (Canada), English Folk Expo, FOCUS Wales, Folk Alliance International, Iceland Music, LUCfest Taiwan, Music Estonia, Music Finland, Music Norway, Puglia Sounds (Italy), Showcase Scotland Expo, Sounds Australia and Spectaclevivant Bretagne (Brittany, France).