Stu Watters (CEO of the AIR AWARDS)

A lot of people are happy to sit at home and whine about the state of modern music. As the CEO of the AIR Awards, Stu Watters is one person who has decided to do something for Australia's truly independent artists.

He was kind enough to answer these questions for us...

Interview w/ Stu Watters (CEO

of the AIR AWARDS)

By Cameron Chambers 

Cam, this is Stu.  

Hey man, we really appreciate

your time today Stu.  

Oh yeah, that's part of what

it's all about. You've got to make time for these things and ensure

that we're doing the job we're supposed to be doing. 

First up, for those who

history of what they are all about? 

Absolutely! 

The AIR awards are in their

second year. The awards are aimed at celebrating the excellence and

diversity of our content... which is music that's Australian made and

owned and independently released.  

We use this as an opportunity

to celebrate amongst ourselves but at the same time we are creating

a platform that will hopefully push independent music back to the music.

I guess we are trying to create something of a spotlight or profile

piece.  

What’s your involvement

with the Awards?   

Well, I'm the CEO of the organization

and to a certain extent I'm the producer of the event. I get involved

in all facets, ranging from nominations right through to making sure

that the spelling is right on the awards, ha ha. 

I'm not alone though... there's

a whole team of us involved in the process! At the moment there's a

cast of around 20 people who are all running around to make this happen. 

What inspired you to get

involved with the awards? 

To give you some background,

AIR is the Australian Independent Recording Association. It's been operating

since 1997 but it's been pretty solid since 2000. We kicked off a new

version of the charts in 2000 and we are the only independent charts

in the country. 

The awards have always been

the long term goal though. A couple of years ago we thought that the

charts had earnt a permanent place in the recording industry and we

felt that they were becoming integral to the environment. On the back

of that we felt it was time to develop the awards.  

Last year was the first where

we had four awards... it was a small step. 

We wanted to encapsulate some

of the great artists out there and this year we've increased the pool

of awards from four to eight to ensure that we take in and represent

the genres that our charts cater for. 

We have the dedicated genre

charts and we've now added another four awards for country, jazz, blues

& roots and dance & electronic. There'll also be announcement

at the awards which will be letting everyone know that there will be

another two charts next year which will result in another two awards.  

What have you got in store

for this years event?  

There will be four performances

taking place. We plan on keeping it short and sharp so we'll start at

6:30pm and hopefully be done by around 8:45pm... just knock out some

good awards and then have four performances.  

Who'll be performing? 

Blue King Brown, Earth Boy,

Ben Winkleman Trio and British India.  

It's obvious that everyone

on?  

It's our business really. Parochial

is a word that's thrown around negatively, but we are parochial and

happy to be that because it ensures that we are representing the interests

of the Australian owned recording artists. Time is a motivating driver...

that's why we're in the business.   

We make sure we provide a space

and an opportunity for artists that make the choice, or in some cases

they don't make the choice, but either way they don't go down the major

label route. 

Majors are very adept at securing

the attention of the public through their access to media. They have

more resources which are more often than not out of reach to the independent

sector, so it's important to hold hands with other brands and companies

as they provide us with the resources that enable us to reach more people.  

Our involvement by virtue with

companies like Jagermeister has enabled these things to happen. 

How important do you think

the account the rise of the internet and decrease in CD sales? 

There's always a place for

us to be. It's not so much about how important it is to be an independent

artists but it's more integral for Australia to have a thriving independent

community. It gives Australians a choice of listening to a whole range

of quality artists who are developed here locally and they represent

our own voice.  

That's the stuff that makes

it important! In regards to being an independent artist... it's up to

the artists to make those choices. It's certainly a hard slog in the

independent scene but the rewards can be phenomenal and the sales achievements

have both financial and performance successes which are much

less strenuous than a major.  

It's certainly a good space

to be in. 

Do you think more artists

than trying to get on the biggest major label possible?  

I think it's really up to the

individual. The point is that there is a choice... a really viable choice

for the independent artists. Say ten years ago, most artists were thinking

along the lines of “we need a major label to help us make it”.  

Australia has had a very long

history of supporting it's own talent and their companies and lots of

companies are all for supporting Australian talent. That's always been

the case but there's more of a focus now... well, more in the mainstream

as a concept.  

People didn't really understand

it and they'd say “oh, I'm going to buy an indie record”. But now

they have a more intuitive understanding of that as a brand.  

I don't want to overstate it

but with the success of artists like Jon Butler it's made it more understood

that artists can do it on their own. Jon Butler is a flagship artists

and people who are fans of music in Australia have a good understanding

of what it actually means to be independent.  

I guess it’s safe to say

label?  

The terms, ha ha. It really

depends. It's a horses for courses process. The kinds of things that

I would point out to an artist that may have those options of front

of them is that “is there a long term solution for your career with

one of these companies”? 

One thing that an independent

label does well is develop and maintain the interest of the artists

in the long term. Now, that can happen with majors... there's been many

examples, but in the independent sector we have a long track record

of having long term relationships with our artists.  

How do you think Australian

music stands up to the rest of the world?  

It's fantastic! The only difference

is that the rest of the world hasn't cottoned on yet. There's a growth

of understanding that there's some great music coming out of Australia

but at the end of the day we're at the arse end of the world so we have

a long development period before our artists are exposed to a large

audiences.  

By the time our acts hit the

world stage they're match fit. Look at the Hilltop Hoods. They've been

doing it for ten years and it's only in the last few years that the

rest of the world has taken notice.  

I also think that the exposure

that an artists like Wolfmother gets is beneficial for everyone, because

that level of exposure has a flow on effect and then people see that

there's a whole bunch of artists lurking in the soft light of the shadows.  

Who votes for the nominees

and how do they win?  

The nomination process is in

essence voted for by the people but we do make a selection of the artists

at the top. 

We get through three stages

before the final nominations. The top pool of people are numerically

listed artists from our charts, so they are drawn from retails from

punters handing over their hard earned for independent music. So you've

got to perform well at retail level to show that there's a demand for

you.  

We try to keep it to four or

five but sometimes we end up with six nominees. It gets distilled down

to the top order based on who's performed well and the process is bashed

around at board level. This is the process we elected to do for the

first two years of the awards while we establish and grow them.  

Next year there'll be a transformation

which will involve a number of peer assessed processes. It will be the

industry, the media and the artists making those judgment calls. 

Some awards will always be

determined by how well an album sells... like best album and best single

will be determined by who has had the good sales track record.  

In your opinion, who are

right now?  

All the ones who are the nominees!

Ha ha 

My opinion doesn't matter on

that. I listen to a lot of music and I um... I like it all. That's actually

a lie, I don't like it all! There's too much music out there! Ha ha 

It comes with the territory.

There's shit and sugar and you've got to sift through it. I've got broad

tastes and I really do like a lot of our members music and I am very

impressed with all the artists that are nominees in all the categories

this year. They are all class acts and they're all having domestic success

and a good majority of them are having extensive international success

as well! 

Ash Grunwald, Macromantics,

Midnight Juggernauts and even Blue King Brown are all having huge success

overseas in terms of tours with Spearhead.  

Now, if we could only nail

Jon Butler down in the country for long enough... ha ha. 

What can we expect from

the AIR Awards in the future?  

We'll see a roll out of new

awards! We don't want it to be too over the top though you know? We

don't want people saying “how many awards are there”? 

We want to keep it lean and

clean and mean and we want to cover all areas. We want to stay in Melbourne

but we want to make it a bigger event. We're looking at making it open

to the general public on the back of the amount of phone calls we're

getting this year from people wanting to buy tickets.  

We need a play button to say

“sorry, it's a closed event this year”. On the back of that we'll

go to a general administration process next year and engage with the

media to make it more of a long term affair.  

That pretty much wraps it

up Stu, any final words? 

Nah, that's pretty good. I

think we've covered a fair bit of territory! 

It's great from our perspective

to be able to grow the awards in the way that we have but it's all dependent

on finding the right commercial partners to be involved.  

Partners like Jagermeister

and V are critical. Most of those guys make it possible to do it all

but like I said, I think we've covered a lot of territory though.  

I think we’ve covered a lot

of territory though. 

Awesome man. Well, every

your profile. 

Definitely mate. Thanks a lot! 

For more information on the

AIR Awards head to: http://www.air.org.au