Publisher of Rolling Stone Australia to open new music venue in Marrickville
A live-music venue that promises to pay performers up to three times as much as they get at other clubs is to be opened in Sydney’s inner west by the publisher of magazine Rolling Stone Australia.
Media company The Brag Media, which has also just launched global titles such as Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter and Indie Wire across Australia and New Zealand, recently bought a corner building in Marrickville to house the venue.
It has now revealed details about what intends to do with the building, including a venue with a capacity of 150-300 people, offices for the media company upstairs and possibly even a recording studio.
The business also intends to support artists and the Australian music industry by investing in various projects, including labels, management and events.
“With everything we do, people seem to call us ambitious and crazy,” said Brag Media’s chief executive Luke Girgis.
“When we first bought a bunch of magazine titles that people said were irrelevant and dying and we pulled them up and made them successful again, people didn’t believe us.
“And, now while people might think this is the worst time to launch a new music venue, we hope to prove them wrong again.”
The move into a live entertainment venue, at 248-250 Marrickville Road, follows a rapid expansion of the business. With the launch of the extra digital titles, in addition to Rolling Stone, thebrag.com, Tone Deaf and The Industry Observer, the publisher will now have a reach of 5.4 million monthly views in Australia and New Zealand.
It’s likely to use this to help publicise its gigs, with a business model based on subscriptions.
“That will enable us to create a community and an income stream for artists which means they won’t have to do outside jobs anymore,” Girgis said.
“We aim to pay them three times more than they’d normally be paid, and give them regular, constant work.
“It’s an innovative business model that means we’ll be able to afford to treat our artists like our clients and our customers as our friends. It will also provide the ultimate afterparty jam venue for international touring artists.”
The company says it’s already experimented with the model for putting on gigs, holding events over two nights just at the end of the COVID-19 lockdown, which were sold out in four days. “It shows there is a real appetite for live music still,” Girgis said.
He said he’d been looking for the right venue for a long time and, when the 1150-square-metre property — previously the home of a pharmacy and supermarket — came up, he felt it would be perfect. In the end, 13 bidders pushed the price for the vacant, two-storey commercial and retail building $2 million beyond its reserve to $7.67 million.
Knight Frank agent Demi Carigliano, who was selling the site in conjunction with Adam Bodon, of Adam Charles, did the deal with vendor Honeypie Investments.
“There was a lot of interest in it and the sale was strongly contested,” he said. “There were a lot of people circling, including owner-occupiers, developers and investors because it is in a very prominent corner block with three street frontages.”
The property will be fitted out over the next 12 months and opened next year. “I think artists are going to be very excited to hear about this,” Girgis said. “We’ll be refining our plans in the next few months.”
According to new Roy Morgan data on the national magazine market, Rolling Stone Australia, with its focus on music, politics, television and culture, had 152,000 readers of its March issue, ahead of such staples as Family Circle and Australian Golf Digest.
