Sending out an SOS for our Beloved Performers

The hard-working people who provide the soundtrack to Australian life need your help, right now.

Sound Of Silence (SOS) is a national initiative from a Music Industry Taskforce* that represent our diverse music industry to bring immediate relief for an industry at the existential brink.

Through a raft of targeted activity, we hope to alleviate the severe haemorrhaging of income that has come with widespread cancellations of festivals, concerts, shows and local gigs.

The music industry and those at its peripheries cannot survive without an alternative source of revenue that has disappeared along with live shows, a figure that has literally gone from 100 to zero in a matter of days.

The workers in our industry live from gig to gig. Shows are their lifeblood, and it will take more than the containment of COVID19 to return them to economic stability. The ramifications are far-reaching and seriously long-term.

The music industry has historically banded together to donate time and money to those in need, as seen recently with bushfire relief efforts. In essence, it is always there to lend a helping hand. Now it needs the Australian music-loving public to do the same.

This is a real and present crisis, and this is a genuine SOS. If we don’t act now, the soundtrack to Aussie life will stop, and all we will hear is the sound of silence.

SENDING OUT AN SOS – THIS IS HOW TO HELP

• Visit www.thesoundofsilence.com.au and if you are in a financial position to do so, please donate to Support Act – which is a music charity that provides crisis relief services to artists, roadies and music workers who are directly affected during this time.

• In the absence of touring, merchandise is the most instant investment you can make into any artists career. You can support by visiting any number of the artists' stores directly through the store links on the SOS online superstore. Or create an equally lasting connection by purchasing the Sound Of Silence special custom tee designed by Jack Irvine (Billie Eilish, Skeggs) with all proceeds going to Support Act (see one of the designs below).