The Decade of 2000- 2009.
Musically the decade 2000-09 was not as fluid as the 1990’s where a dizzying range of popular genres came and went, and some even came round again – Grunge, Alternative Rock, Hip-Hop, Gangster Rap, Bubblegum Pop, Boy Bands/Girl Groups, Pop-Punk, Metal, Ska, Contemporary R&B, Country-Pop, Britpop, New Jack Swing, Singer-Songwriter, Electronic Dance, and Hard Rock.
Globally the period was dominated by music from several genres, namely Pop, Electronic Dance Music (EDM), Contemporary R&B. and Hip Hop/Rap, while guitar-based Rock continued to lose market share. Numerous sub-genres emerged which were a convergence of alternative genres to create new sounds, such as – emo, liquid funk, grime, trap, reggaeton, chillwave, dubstep, electropop, pop punk, power pop, K-Pop, J-Pop, southern hip hop, nu-metal, house and many more.
Critical elements attributable to the decade from a musical point of view, were the common and mainstream usage of pitch correction software Auto-Tune which was a logical extension of the early vocoders used in the 70’s and 80’s. The rise of the internet, and the demise of analog systems occurred simultaneously, as new digital applications surged; hastened by the arrival of media player programmes such as iTunes and Spotify, and music and video sharing websites like YouTube, which began to proliferate, and all became gamechangers. The Internet allowed unprecedented access to music and allowed artists to distribute music freely without record label backing, innumerable online outlets and the sheer volume of music, offered musicians more musical influences to draw from than ever before, but the financial returns to artists in a digital world would become increasingly tenuous.
Technology – Sound Tools, Pro Tools, Garage Band, Soundcloud, YouTube, iPod, iPhone.
In 2001 Apple released the iPod, it wasn’t the first portable entertainment system, Walkmans and Discmans had preceded it, but they quickly became obsolete, along with the voluminous CD wallets people needed to carry to access their favourite music. As MP3s mushroomed, the iPod enabled users to access thousands of songs on 3GB of collated, alphabetized, prioritized, albums, songs, and playlists, all available and scrollable via a touch-sensitive pinwheel, ultimately the iPod’s capabilities would be merged with telecommunications via the iPhone, and for a time it seemed like Apple ruled the world. Below – Shawn Fanning.
There was also a dramatic shift in attitude by record labels, who had started the decade mounting litigation against pioneer file-sharing systems like Shawn Fanning’s Napster, as well as the users of such shared content, but with the rapid absorption of iPod technology, the genie was out of the bottle. They ultimately conceded that there was no point in litigating against their customers, who had already decided how they wanted to access their music, and the labels duly followed the lead of the innovators, Fanning would go on to establish a string of successful tech-startup companies including Snocap, Rupture, Path, Airtime, and Helium Systems, and at the age of 40 was a tech billionaire. Below – Digidesign Soundtools
The means by which music was created would also evolve in a way that empowered performers to create their own recordings, outside a record label’s large recording studio. Digidesign founders Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks had released Sound Tools in 1989, a completely digital recording and editing system for Apple Macintosh. Below Digidesign – ProTools
But it would be the reboot of this system as Pro Tools in 1991, with a graphical interface, multitrack capabilities and faster processing, that revolutionized the recording industry, and made possible the first Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Digital power would not only give producers and musicians more opportunities to mix sounds, but DAWs would eventually host digital instrument and special effects plug-ins, like Auto-Tune. Below – Apple Garage Band
In 2004 Apple responded with GarageBand, which allowed musicians to become expert overnight in digital recording and mastering, and by the end of the decade Pro Tools and Garage Band had emboldened previously tech-averse artists to create their own recordings at home. Below- Centre L-R Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss
Distribution and streaming were the next stages of music production to be impacted by technology, when the Swedes Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss launched Soundcloud in 2007, it was an online platform designed to allow artists to share and release music more simply than via MySpace, and to bypass record labels and formal distribution channels. There were 160,000 registered users in 2009, four years later their user base had exploded to over 200 million, and it would become one of the largest music-streaming services in the world, with a library of over 300 million tracks.
In 2005 YouTube was launched by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawad Karim, and quickly became the go-to video-sharing site on the web, aspiring performers became vloggers, many were natural digital natives – Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Troy Syvan, 5 Seconds of Summer and others, initially bypassed major labels and went on to organically create a global fanbase via blogging homemade videos on line. YouTube not only facilitated instant fame in the here and now, but also became a treasure trove of nostalgia, putting legendary performances and music videos at our fingertips, and re-animating the soundtracks of our past lives. Below L-R – Troy Syvan, Five Seconds of Summer, Justin Bieber.
Career Karaoke or Idol Fame
The Idol franchise was ubiquitous across the world during the decade, screened in over 100 countries it created instant chart toppers for the winners and even the runners-up in the early years of the decade, and increased the local content of record sales in this country. But the effect was short-lived and by the end of the decade Australian Idol had disappeared from our screens, replaced by ever-more manipulative, scripted, karaoke-style replacements like The Voice, X-Factor, and Australia’s Got Talent, but the public were no longer buying into the fantasy of instant superstars emerging from such talent show competitions, and ratings for these shows plummeted.
By the end of the decade TV network/record company syndicates that had overseen the growth of reality music television, had blatantly jettisoned any pretence of actually nurturing the talent of their participants, and breathlessly congratulated themselves when one or two performers actually emerged from the emasculating elimination process, to have a hit record. But too frequently they quickly disappeared from the firmament into which they had been temporarily propelled, once they had reached their one hit wonder use-by date, and the closing credits had rolled on the latest season of Idol, AGT, The Voice, or X-Factor. (See Career Karaoke or Idol Fame Parts 1 and 2 in 4therecord, June 26 2021, and Feb 15, 2022, for a more detailed analysis of the impact of such shows on performers and the music industry)
Local performers who chose to develop a fanbase organically, continued to write, record and tour tirelessly, and push themselves to make music that was on the cutting edge, and often headlined festivals, topped the charts, and got their share of radio exposure. Australia was the 7th largest market for recorded music sales in the world in this decade, with a market value of $800 million, larger than Brazil, Spain, and Italy, and would continue to grow until the Covid pandemic adversely impacted on sales and recording late in the next decade.
Hits, Charts, Performers, Market Share
The flood of product from the US consistently skewed the local charts in favour of the overseas competition, and this trend continued. The three major record labels in the country, Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music, accounted for 70% of sales here and the remainder were shared between several hundred smaller independent labels. Mushroom Records had been sold to Rupert Murdoch in 1998 but Michael Gudinski retained certain components of the business which subsequently enabled him to establish six new indie labels, and these provided opportunities for such local; acts as Bliss ’n’ Esso, Vance Joy, The Temper Trap and The Rubens, to make records and hit the charts.
Over the decade major US label artists accounted for over 60% of the songs on Australian charts, while local artists secured just 16% of the hits, followed by UK artists and others. Pop music accounted for 32% of genre sales, Electronic Dance Music (EDM) 34%, Rock 15%, Contemporary R&B 12%, and Hip Hop/Rap and Other 7%. The two biggest-selling local singles for the decade in Australia were Angels Brought Me Here (Guy Sebastian, 360,000) and The Prayer (Anthony Callea, 280,000), followed closely by Delta Goodrem’s Born To Try, Shannon Noll’s What About Me, and Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head (210,000 here, but sold 5 million globally). Below L-R – Gurrumul, Empire of The Sun, Delta Goodrem
Of the 199 #1 singles in the decade 68% were American, 21 % Australian, and the remainder were from UK, Europe, and South America, the locals who climbed to #1 were – Delta Goodrem (9 times). Kylie Minogue (7 times), Guy Sebastian (4 times), Shannon Noll (3 times), Missy Higgins (2 times), and Spiderbait, Kasey Chambers, Silverchair, Casey Donovan, Natalie Gauci, Paulini, Damian Leith, Youth Group, Cosima, Gabrielle Cilmi, Wes Carr, Bardot, Madison Avenue, Holly Valance, Kate De Araugo, TV Rock ft Seany B, and Jessica Mauboy who all notched up one #1 hit. – 42 #1 hits or 21% of the total chart toppers for the decade. The impact that Idol alumni had on the charts was significant in the first half of the decade, with 17 #1 hits attributable to these performers (including Bardot’s pre-Idol hit Poison from 2000), but as these shows began to tank and the fans ceased to believe that they could create newly-minted stars, their chart presence ebbed away and the associated sales nosedived, post 2005.
Australian acts would continue to storm the charts globally throughout the decade- Kylie Minogue, Delta Goodrem, Madison Avenue, Silverchair, Sam Sparro, Vanessa Amorosi, The Avalanches, Holly Valance, The Vines, Danii Minogue, Jet, Rogue Traders, Wolfmother, The Veronicas, Empire of the Sun, Gurrumul, The Wiggles, AC/DC and the Bee Gees, would all continue the evolution of Ausmusic and imbue it with a discernible spirit and dynamism, unique to this country, and successfully transport their music into global markets.
Mixtape vs Playlist, CD vs Streaming, iTunes/Spotify vs Virgin/Tower/ Borders/Sanity.
The most dramatic paradigm shift during the decade was the virtual obliteration of the physical record and CD market in the second half of the decade, as digital formats continued to evolve from simple ringtones to become commercially recorded music; the value of CDs dropped, and CD singles sales tanked, and had virtually disappeared by 2011. The CD album market was also in freefall by 2009, attributable to several factors – the advent of file-sharing, MP3s, and private CD burning initially fuelled by the rise of Napster, Limewire, Kaza and other file-sharing systems; allied with a shift in consumer taste from album-based music to track-based music consumption.
This shift was further facilitated by the proliferation of such streaming services as iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, KK Box, Soundcloud, YouTube, and many more. ARIA reported digital sales of music for the first time in 2005 at AUD$9.9m and by 2011 this had grown to AUD$145.5m, other growth areas were in music videos, digital ringtones, and music streams, since mid-decade consumers increasingly pivoted away from downloading to streaming, as unit prices for streaming content continued to fall, and streaming options multiplied. Below L-R Spotify Founders – Martin Lorenzton and Daniel Ek.
Spotify was one of the fastest movers, established in 2006 by two Swedes Daniel Ek and Martin Lorenzton, it captured 2 million paid subscibers by 2011 and by 2014 its global reach had expanded to 40 million users and 10 million paid subscribers, the number of times a song was “streamed” was now of great importance to both record companies and their artists.
The collapse of physical format music sales (CDs and vinyl) triggered a collapse in big box music retail chains like Virgin Megastores, Warner Brothers Music Stores, Tower Records, Borders Books and Music, Sanity, and Sam Goody Music (US), while JB Hi-Fi here in Australia acquired the Clive Anthony stores (Qld) and the Hill and Stewart chain (NZ) and pivoted towards consumer electronics, and small/major appliances in a diversification strategy that ensured their continued profitability. Performers became increasingly aware of the brutal reality that talent show success and a record label contract did not necessarily translate into a living wage in the streaming era, where recording artists received only a fraction of one cent per stream, and more recent US data has confirmed that 90% of the streams go to less than 5% of the artists, and in the first decade of the new millennium this would have been Eminem, ‘NSYNC, Kanye West, Beyonce, Rihanna, Coldplay, and Outkast. Below L-R – Eminem, Beyonce, Kanye West.
Artists deprived of a fair share of income from the commercialisation of their intellectual property increasingly looked for ways to step outside the standard major label and streaming powerhouse arrangements, to market their own product in a way that allowed them to retain ownership and importantly control the exploitation of their product, and the resultant income stream.
Music Genre Trends
Locally the decade would see the continued expansion and popularization of alternative music which would be taken into the mainstream, by such bands as Powderfinger, The Vines, Something for Kate, Superjesus, The Living End, Spiderbait, Killing Heidi, Eskimo Joe, John Butler Trio, Augie March, Hilltop Hoods, and Joel Turner, while Silverchair continued to produce grunge hits until Daniel Johns emerged as a more complex and nuanced songwriter and ultimately went solo in 2007. The glory days of pub rock had passed but occasional echoes of that era could be heard in the music of Jimmy Barnes, Rogue Traders, The Living End, and a re-formed Cold Chisel. Below L-R – John Butler Trio, Killing Heidi, Hilltop Hoods.
Retro-rock was in full swing in Australia in the noughties, Jet successfully re-invented the sounds of the Beatles and Motown, the Rogue Traders artfully appropriated the power chords of Elvis Costello, The Knack, and Tears For Fears, the Vines plumbed the angsty depths of Pearl Jam, and Wolfmother were tearing up the charts here and overseas with chords, riffs, psychedelic lyrics, a mystical persona, and hard rock pretensions reminiscent of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
The baby boomers rock scene would be re-interpreted to become the adult contemporary genre with Jimmy Barnes, a reformed-Cold Chisel, John Farnham, and Paul Kelly, all finding success, while electronic dance music (EDM) thrived, as Kylie Minogue re-invented herself in the most extraordinary way. With 17 top twenty singles including 7 #1s and six top forty albums including 4 #1’s locally, she also dominated charts in the UK and Europe and would take ten songs to the top of the US Dance Charts, she was by any measure the country’s most successful recording artist of the decade, as her career record sales nudged closer to 100 million. Other EDM/dance-pop artists to produce hits included Madison Avenue, Danii Minogue, the Presets, Sneaky Sound System, The Veronicas, and Nicky Webster, while the songs of Pete Murray, Missy Higgins and Ben Lee, (below L-R) resonated with those who preferred their acoustic/folkie songs to reside at the poppier end of the music spectrum.
Stellar performers in the pop field included Delta Goodrem whose debut album Innocent Eyes sold 1.2 million copies and she would take nine singles to #1 in the period for total sales of 4 million. Vanessa Amorosi would bookend the decade with her #1 album The Power and the singles Absolutely Everybody, and Shine, and later in the decade take the albums Somewhere in the Real World and Hazardous into top ten along with the singles Perfect and This Is Who I Am. First Nations’ music would also continue to claim its place in the sun during the decade with Casey Donovan, Christine Anu, Jessica Mauboy, and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunipingu, taking songs onto the charts, and carrying the torch forward for the next generation of First Nation artists including Dan Sultan, and Isiah Firebrace, and Baker Boy – L-R Below.
The decade was also the battleground for what was described as the “Loudness Wars”, as digital signal processing of music enabled producers to experiment with dynamic range compression and equalization techniques. “Brickwalling” or the creation of solid blocks of sound, to which tape delays and harmonizer effects on drums, guitars, and other instruments could be added, produced a booming sound, but often with inferior audio quality. In the 1990’s seminal albums like What’s the Story Morning Glory (Oasis) and Californication (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) used this technique and in the 2000’s Death Magnetic (Metallica), Invincible(Michael Jackson), Bring Me To Life (Evanescence), and others also used the technique to varying degrees; death metal groups frequently brickwalled their albums, and in so doing mimiced Nigel of Spinal Tap’s desire to push the speakers “up to 11”.
Festivals, Music Videos, Music Media, One-Hit Wonders
The live music festival scene which had almost disappeared in the 1980’s, roared back to life in the 90’s and continued to expand over the following decade, such festival titans as Homebake, Big Day Out, Falls Festival, (L-R above) and Splendour in the Grass endured, and were augmented by Parklife, The Pushover Festival, Good Vibrations, The Harvest Festival and others, as fans made the pilgrimage to their favourite festival locations around the country – however rising costs, particularly public liability insurance, and the impact of Covid, would seriously derail the festival scene by the end of the next decade.
Australians had been leaders in the field of music video production globally since the 1980’s – Russell Mulcahy (Duran Duran, The Buggles, Kim Carnes, Rod Stewart, a-ha, Fleetwood Mac, Ultravox, etc), Richard Lowenstein (U2, Cold Chisel, Pete Townshend, INXS), and Richard Proyas (Crowded House, Sting), had set the pace followed through in the 90’s by John Hillcoat (Frente, Crowded House), Greg Melville (TISM, Magic Dirt), and Brett Sullivan (Robert Plant, Seal, James Blunt, Phil Collins), and momentum was maintained into the 2000’s by Kris Moyes (Wolfmother, Presets, Sia, Franz Ferdinand), Aya Tanimura (Katy Perry), and Nabel Elderkin (Frank Ocean, Kanye West, Seal).
Some of the best music videos of the decade created by local artists included – Since I Left You (The Avalanches), Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Kylie Minogue), My People (The Presets), Straight Lines (Silverchair), Are You Gonna Be My Girl (Jet), Somewhere Down the Barrel (The Dissociatives), My Delirium (Ladyhawke), Mr. Mysterious (Vanessa Amorosi), Come Into My World (Kylie Minogue), Pictures (Sneaky Sound System), Where I Stood (Missy Higgins), and a sentimental farewell from the Bee Bees – This Is Where I Came In.
Music coverage on television had already triggered the demise of many music magazines like RAM, and Juke, and Go-Set had disappeared in 1974 about the time that Countdown was launched by the ABC. But throughout the decade small hard copy and on-line music publications survived,
The Music Network provided weekly coverage of music news, charts, statistics, tours, and events; Australian Rolling Stone continued to publish quarterly articles about music, popular culture, and politics, Triple J Magazine published music news bi-monthly, and Limelight which was founded in 2003 after operating previously as ABC Radio 24 Hours, also focused on music, arts and culture. On-line zines came and went, and several dedicated to electronic music, such as Resident Advisor and Cyclic Defrost survived.
Video clip shows predominated on television throughout the decade, including The House of Hits (Channel 10, 2000, Leah McLeod and Ian Meldrum), AMV (Seven Network 2000-present), So Fresh (Nine Network 2003-2006, David Campbell and Elysia Platt), Eclipse Music TV (Seven Network /Go! 2005-09), Underground Sounds (Ch 31 2004- present, Shane McNamara and Kell McDonald), itv (ABC 2006- current, Rosie Beaton et al), The Music Jungle (Nine Network, 2007-08), and MTV Hits (2009- present, Weekly Hot 30 Countdown).The ABC’s Rage has become the venerable stayer amongst music programs throughout the world, commencing in 1987 and embracing a minimalist format of guest comperes, chart countdowns, and occasional specials, it has outlasted such shows as Soul Train, Video Hits, and Top of the Pops, to become the oldest music TV program in the world.
Clearly network television struggled to effectively engage with popular music fans, as most of the aforementioned shows are/were low budget, screened in graveyard timeslots, and often without human comperes, the era of ABC’s Countdown which had captured a market share equivalent to 20% of the entire population of the country in its heyday, are but a distant memory.
Radio formats continued to adapt to meet the needs of various markets and in competition with their AM and FM rivals, as they ranged across Top 40, Gold/heritage hits, news, weather, sports, current affairs, contemporary/cutting edge music, and country music, particularly in regional areas. Formats also catered to specific demographic groups via morning/breakfast radio, early evening drivetime programming, talkback, and Millenial/Gen Z niches. Triple J New England commenced broadcasting in 2000 and a year later DMG launched the Nova Brand in Sydney. The ABC commenced a digital radio service called DIG in 2002 and by 2009 digital radio franchises had been officially launched in all mainland capital cities. Melbourne’s 3AK became an all-sports format under the banner of SEN in 2004, and 3AW and Magic swapped frequencies on the AM band in that city.
Before the decade was over many performers would briefly taste success only to find that pop music and its trends are ephemeral, and sometimes that 15 minutes of fame is all you are going to get, as we remember some of those who briefly soared only to crash back to Earth –Chris Franklin (Bloke, #1 2000, a bogan send-up of Meredith Brooks Bitch), Australian Idol – The Final 12 (Rise Up, #1 2003, Guy, Shannon, Paulini, Millsy, Cosima, and several others that later returned to their day jobs), The Wrights (Evie, #2, 2005, an all-star cover of the Stevie Wright/Vanda and Young classic, by members of Jet, Powderfinger, Grinspoon, The Living End, and Spiderbait), Dean Geyer (If You Don’t Mean It, #10 2007, former Idol alumnus who faded quickly), Faker (This Heart Attack, #9 2007, JJJ indie darlings who took 6 months to pull this one up the charts), Natalie Gauci (Here I Am, #2 2007, an insipid Idol winner single that stalled at #2 and virtually wrecked Gauci’s career), Mr G (Naughty Girl #7 2008, Chris Lilley’s alter ego, attention-seeking teacher, from Summer Heights High, kids were chanting “ecstasy” in the background, and the song was inspired by the series character Annabel Dickson who died of an overdose – tasteless and exploitive – Paul Mac’s thumping dance beat couldn’t save this one, Ladyhawke (My Delirium, #8 in 2008, Kiwi Pip Brown took her fourth song into the charts, decamped to the UK, got married, raised a family, and was not heard from again), Psycho Teddy (Psycho Teddy #5, 2008, a ring-tone inspired hit that mercifully disappeared after 6 weeks, unlike its amphibious incarnation the Crazy Frog, that hit #1 in 2005, hung around for 28 weeks and took another five songs into the top forty, so avoiding one-hit-wonder ignominy).
Axle Whitehead (I Don’t Do Surprises, #8, 2008, former Idol contestant who landed the host gig on Video Hits, but while appearing at the ARIA Awards ceremony, he revealed that he did in fact do surprises, when he exposed himself indecently, and disappeared from the scene faster than you could say OMG). Above – Axle with partner Faustina “Fuzzy” Agolley at the ARIAs.
The Decade and Beyond
The decade 2000-09 was dominated by technological change, the proliferation of digital music and MP3 players saw the demise of the mixtape and the rise of the playlist, YouTubers became vloggers and engaging digital natives, who often segued to superstardom. The iPhone became less a phone and more of a pocket computer, and by unifying such formerly standalone devices like cameras, calculators, and MP3 players into one single, pocket-sized super gadget, it would ultimately cannibalise its own brand mate – the iPod.
Women emerged as a dominant force in popular music globally in this decade, they were writing, recording, and producing hit songs in prodigious numbers, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Sia, Miley Cyrus, Kesha, Kylie Minogue, all emerged as heavy hitters in the worlds of pop, hip hop, and rock, and would be followed in the next decade by Ariana Grande, Adele, Nicki Minaj, Meghan Trainor, Taylor Swift, Tones and I, and Carrie Underwood. Below L-R – Miley Cyrus, Sia, Katy Perry.
The next decade will no doubt reveal an ever-expanding repertoire of technological applications that will continue to trigger shifts in the way that music is created, recorded, stored, accessed, enjoyed, and exploited, as the insatiable Tik Tok /Gen Z under-25s search for what is cool, viral, influential, and impactful in their world. Important too for performers will be how music becomes monetized, how their intellectual property rights can be preserved, and how they will be able to get a fair return for their creative efforts, in a more dynamic and unpredictable future.
4The Record 