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SongHubs celebrates 100th session at SXSW Sydney

Published Friday 11 October 2024

Flagship collaborative songwriting program is celebrating its 100th session this month

Taking place at Sydney’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival with some of Australia’s leading songwriters and producers, plus international guests

A short SongHubs documentary will be released later this year


APRA AMCOS’s flagship collaborative songwriting program, SongHubs, is celebrating its 100th session this month, cementing its position as one of the region’s most exciting and innovative programs for music creators.

The 100th session will take place as part of Sydney’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival and will feature some of Australia’s leading songwriters and producers including Dann Hume, Konstantin Kersting and Peach PRC.

They’ll be joined by Grammy-nominated international guests Calle Lehmann (Sweden) and JBACH (LA) to collaborate with a group of music creators from across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and produce a series of new works.

Since its inception in 2013, SongHubs has provided opportunities for over 2,000 Australian and New Zealand songwriters across over 30 locations worldwide, pairing them with local, national and global creatives in a collaborative, professional studio setting.

It’s evolved from a straight-forward writing camp to a highly sought after collaborative writing program, providing participants with new skills and connections to help build their career and produce commercially successful music.

To date, more than 6,000 tracks have been produced in several different languages (including Brazilian, Indian, Korean, Māori and First Nations languages) from collaborators including Briggs, Chaii, Courtney Barnett, GFlip, Lindsay Rimes, Sarah Aarons and Troye Sivan.

Adam Townsend, Director of Writer Services at APRA AMCOS, explains: “SongHubs has been an absolute labour of love over the past decade and we’re incredibly excited to announce we’ve reached our 100th session! The program provides a learning experience like no other that’s vital to exploring overseas opportunities for local music creators that they may not otherwise be exposed to.

“It’s great to both look back on its success and also look forward to the future with some exciting new developments to be announced soon, including SongHubs Academy and our first ever Sony Music SongHubs coming in November.”

A short SongHubs documentary will be released later this year, celebrating some of the program’s pivotal songwriting pairings and giving a rare insight into the collaborations of the past 11 years. It will feature songwriters and producers from Auckland, London, Melbourne and Sydney including Alice Ivy, Bic Runga, Jordan Rakei and Telenova, who met and formed at a SongHubs in Melbourne in 2019 and went on to sign with EMI.

Angeline Armstrong from Telenova, says: “It’s really funny to think about what if we weren’t put in a room together or I just wasn’t free the day that we were going to be doing a session and then I met up with someone else. I’m so glad that we did because I’m so proud of the music that we make.

“I feel that in the first few hours of the SongHubs session, it felt like all of us were as excited about the song that was getting written and it felt like it was speaking something about our own voice or taste or creativity. There was something about what we were all bringing that we all had a real shared ownership creatively over it, which was really special and what you need in a band.”

Dean Ormston, CEO of APRA AMCOS, adds: “Over the past 11 years, SongHubs has firmly cemented Australasia as a centre of excellence for songwriting, giving some of our finest talent the tools to reach great heights, both artistically and commercially. We’re so proud to be able to both celebrate this program and look to the future to some exciting new offerings for our members. Here’s to the next 100 sessions!”

For all the latest updates, follow @SongHubs on Instagram.