Australia’s community radio sector contributes an estimated A$153.1 million to the country’s struggling music industries each year.

Our new research findings show community radio airs an estimated 390,960 hours of Australian music each year. This is more than double commercial radio’s 160,000 hours.

And for every $1 invested in the community radio sector, up to $5.55 is returned to the music industries – a direct financial benefit to musicians, record companies, live venues, agents, songwriters and other industry stakeholders.

The community radio sector as a whole boasts 450 not-for-profit stations across the country that hold “community radio” licences, and we assessed stations that were identified as music intensive. These included well-known stations such as 3RRR in Melbourne, FBi in Sydney, and the popular youth station 6RTR-FM in Perth.

These findings come as one of the nation’s oldest community stations, Sydney’s 2SER, faces closure. One of its university partners, Macquarie University, has indicated it will withdraw funding over the next few months.

Our research was based on financial and interview data from ten case study stations, coupled with a net value analysis of the 292 community radio stations identified as being “music-intensive”.

We also added some questions into the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia’s National Listener Survey, to survey about 9,900 Australians over the........

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