Sync The Music Launch - 30th November Bellingen 2025

On Sunday 30 November 2025, Sync the Music, a social enterprise born out of thirteen years of Grow the Music's work in studios, communities and Country officially launched to the world.

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What is Sync the Music?

Sync the Music is Australia's largest catalogue of music from regional and remote communities, an ethical music licensing platform connecting filmmakers, advertisers, and content creators with authentic music from First Nations, culturally diverse, and disadvantaged artists.

Over 13 years of recording on Country and in the studio, the catalogue has grown to over 10,000 tracks from more than 800 artists. From desert reggae to traditional language songs, from the NT/WA border to the NSW coast, this is a body of music unlike anything else available to the screen industry.

Co-founded by Grow the Music's own Lizzy Rutten and Alt Collective's Courtney Tune, Sync the Music is the natural evolution of everything GTM has built since 2012.

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The launch featured live performances and a Q&A with some of the most respected names in Australian music and film.

Jack Thompson AM is a central figure of the 1970s Australian film renaissance, known for iconic roles in Sunday Too Far Away, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, and Breaker Morant, for which he won both an AFI Award and a Cannes Award. A long-time champion of Australian storytelling, Jack's involvement speaks to the cultural weight this project carries.

Bart Willoughby is a pioneering Pitjantjatjara and Mirning singer-songwriter who founded Australia's first Indigenous rock band, No Fixed Address, in 1978 — fusing reggae with traditional Indigenous influences in a way that changed Australian music forever. Their protest song "We Have Survived" remains an enduring classic.

Shane Howard is the acclaimed founder of Goanna and creator of the 1982 anthem "Solid Rock" — one of the first mainstream Australian songs to centre Aboriginal rights. Shane has also produced albums for Archie Roach and is a founding member of The Black Arm Band, making him one of Australia's most important musical voices for justice and Country.

Emma Donovan is a celebrated Aboriginal Australian singer-songwriter from the renowned Donovan musical family, with Gumbaynggirr/Danggali and Naaguja/Yamatji heritage. Co-founder of the trio Stiff Gins and acclaimed for her work with soul band The Putbacks, Emma has toured alongside Archie Roach, Paul Kelly, and The Black Arm Band. Her powerful voice and fearless artistry represent the very best of what Australian music has to offer.

The Docker River Band hails from the remote community of Kaltukatjara (Docker River) near the NT/WA border. Led by Anangu man Roy Jugadai, their five-piece desert reggae sound, sung in Pitjantjatjara language and English, draws from the Central Desert, with songs about family, land, longing and pride. They are exactly the kind of artist Sync the Music exists for.

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For more than a 15 years, Grow the Music has travelled over 400,000 kilometres of remote roads, built eight band rooms, donated over 1,000 instruments and delivered more than 2,000 workshops. That work has created something extraordinary a body of recorded music unlike anything else in Australia.

The artists we've worked alongside have always deserved a platform, not just for the music, but for the stories behind it, the culture within it and the communities it comes from. Ethical sync licensing means those artists are fairly represented and fairly paid when their music appears on screen.

When a filmmaker searches for a sound that feels true to this country, when a brand wants to connect authentically with Australian audiences, when a documentary needs music that carries the weight of real lived experience Sync the Music is the answer.

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If you're a filmmaker, creative director, or brand looking for music that tells a true story, get in touch at hello@syncthemusic.org or call 0481 167 555.

And if you believe in what Grow the Music and Sync the Music are building, the best thing you can do is share this with someone who needs to hear it.

Explore the catalogue at syncthemusic.org

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