With Australia’s chief medical officer, Professor Paul Kelly, this week warning crowds at live music events are still a long way off and bands cancelling tours both at home and overseas, the move will enable local musicians to play gigs before a live audience and sell tickets worldwide to a high-quality livestream.

Since the pandemic forced the live music industry into effective shutdown, global stars from Miley Cyrus, Chris Martin, John Legend and Andrew Lloyd Webber to Australian musicians like Julia Jacklin, Stella Donnelly and Angie McMahon have contributed to a flood of free music online, livestreaming performances on social media from bedrooms, loungerooms or empty venues.

But between the cancellation of regular gigs, tours and all the free content online, local musicians and bands along with Queensland live music venues have struggled to make money.

However, as a result of unique council zoning, Burleigh-based Mo’s Desert Clubhouse will begin livestreaming gigs that are performed in front of COVID-restricted live audiences of 50 and available to ticketed fans worldwide online through their own Desert TV studio.

Mo’s co-director Kim Ferguson said the venue was the only live music space in southeast Queensland with the special zoning that covered live music, music production, art and creative industry infrastructure in one space.

“While we might sell out the gigs for 50 people, we can host bands and livestream in high-quality production from our studio beside the stage.

“It’s not just something you’re filming on your iPhone from your loungeroom. It will be multiple camera, high-quality audio, studio-produced livestream gigs.”

Ferguson said the live music warehouse space that also serves as an art, music and creative collective opened in 2017, then was shut down as it went through an arduous, two-year zoning battle with Council to reopen in September 2019 under a new ‘creative industry zone.’

But then COVID hit and the venue shut down again in March, only to reopen in the past week under strict pandemic restrictions that meant local bands could again perform to 50 people.

“This is different, but you’ve got to adapt,” Ferguson said.

“This way bands are not only able to perform here to a sold-out show of 50 people while that limitation is on, they can also sell tickets online through our streaming platform and go worldwide and sell more tickets.

“It means they can essentially tour. To have the facilities to tour the bands from one live performance through online platforms in high quality is going to be really great.”

Gold Coast-based Indi band Hussy Hicks will make their livestream debut on Desert TV on Thursday.

Guitarist Julz Parker said if not for coronavirus, the band would have currently been touring Canada, America, Germany, France and England to perform their new album, so it was exciting to be back playing live.

“We’re very much a live band and what we do is play music to people,” Parker said.

“We’ve got a beautiful loyal following in all of those places. It’s a bit of a chance to show our album and this is one way that all of our wonderful people from overseas can at least get a glimpse into what the new songs sound like played live.”

Parker said being able to sell unlimited tickets to livestream “of a decent enough quality to want to share it with the world,” that also had the energy of a live audience would create valuable income for musicians.

“With Spotify and streaming, a lot of the revenue for musicians over the past few years has been tied up in live music, so live music was the last sort of financially viable part of our industry,” she said.

“There is so much content and people are providing content for free. If we can ticket livestream and sell a new album at least we can maintain a small trickle of income.”

This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for journalism and ideas