Yarra City Council to roll out Live Music Precincts, here’s why they’re important
New Yarra City Council planning policy delivers win-win for venues, developers and residents in Melbourne's music heartland.
In the last Yarra City Council meeting of last year, it unanimously voted to introduce Live Music Precincts into the Yarra Planning Scheme, including listing all live music venues outside of these precincts. They also voted to write and implement a Live Music Action Plan.
At the meeting, Mayor Steve Jolly said this policy had resonated with Yarra residents, particularly among younger constituents.
Having looked at the detail, the policy looks robust and well thought out – and right on the money. The maps and venue list appear to be accurate. A lot of work by council officers has clearly gone into producing such a detailed and well-rounded policy.
Yarra is now the second council, after the City of Port Phillip, to define Live Music Precincts and write the associated planning policy.
What these precincts mean on the ground is better protection for both live music venues and residents alike. By extension, live music precincts protect the live music ecosystem that supports musicians’ ability to play and good news for residents who choose to live, sleep and enjoy live music in Melbourne’s culturally rich and dynamic inner city.
Yarra City Council Live Music Precincts
Yarra Council voted to introduce Live Music Precincts, Victoria’s second council after Port Phillip
Precincts require developers to soundproof new apartments near existing venues via Agent of Change principle
Victorian government developing Cultural Overlay for early 2026 to streamline precinct rollout
This represents the most significant council initiative to support live music culture
Primarily, they protect live music venues from encroaching residential developments by placing the responsibility of soundproofing on the residential developer through the Agent of Change principle, which was introduced into the Victorian Planning Scheme in an apparent world first after lobbying by the music industry.
Any proposed residential development in a live music precinct must be soundproofed, which is good news for anyone wanting to move into an inner city apartment, live close to bars, restaurants, venues and buskers, but still get a good night’s sleep.
It will also protect them from actual noise pollution – traffic noise, sirens, garbage collection and street noise. But the key policy objective here is also protection from any live music sounds present within the soundscape.
There’s a reason why inner city councils are embracing this policy. It is a win-win for the entire community with no downsides.
What this plan does is increase the precision of the existing planning laws (s53.06 and 13.07-3s of the Victorian Planning Provisions) by documenting the location of existing venues and mapping venue clusters.
Why planning maps matter for live music
Since the initial live music venues clause in the VPP was introduced in 2015, council planners have had no reference tools to locate live music venues, to assist them in determining whether the Agent of Change principle should be applied to a proposed development or not. In the past, major mistakes have been made, resulting in expensive VCAT cases that venues had to fund and run to have the law applied where it should have been automatically.
As part of the State Governments’ push to fast-track housing supply, third-party appeal rights have been drastically curtailed. So, the music industry can no longer rely on VCAT to fix planning assessment errors, whether by deliberate omissions by developers in their applications or genuine oversight by council planners.
The Port Phillip and Yarra Live Music Precinct policies now deliver the required information through maps and a list of live music venue locations that council planners need to do their job. This gives live music venues (current and future) the certainty to continue doing what we do without being dragged into expensive court disputes. The policy underpins investment in the sector, particularly considering the Covid hangover and cost-of-living crisis, which has devastated the grassroots live music sector in the last 5 years.
There have been criticisms of Live Music Precincts, but I believe these criticisms are unfounded.
First, in The Age last Saturday, Cath Evans of the Property Council of Australia stated that this proposal to create Live Music Precincts in Yarra and Port Phillip will increase housing costs and complexity.
The Agent of Change provisions in the live music clause of the VPP have existed in the planning scheme for 10 years It’s existing law, so it is already costed into projects. If there are projects that haven’t costed it in, then it should be.
Yarra Mayor Stephen Jolly expressed it best. “Get the violin strings out …
“The people who will want to live in the inner city in an apartment next to a nightclub, they won’t mind paying a little bit over the odds [for soundproofing].”
Defined Live Music Precincts will assist developers in their due diligence when assessing potential development sites by helping them determine whether to cost sound attenuation into their builds. This, in fact, takes the guesswork out of the equation.
Secondly, there is a fear held by a vocal few that Live Music Precincts will create live music ghettos, accelerate gentrification and that venues and events outside precincts will somehow be disadvantaged or discouraged.
This again is not the case because the Agent of Change principle in the Live Music Clause (53.06) applies statewide. In precincts, the Agent of Change is applied by default where there are existing clusters of venues. Live music may move from premise to premise within a precinct.
An example of this is the Punters Club in Fitzroy. It had been a live music venue for 12 years, then wasn’t, as Bimbos/Kewpie it served pizzas for over a decade, and in its current Mark II form, it is again a respected live music venue.
New venues open and close within existing hospitality uses, as you would expect in a pulsating, culturally engaged community such as Yarra and St Kilda. The effect of creating Live Music Precincts is benign for venue location decisions made by future operators, as they are protected either by a precinct definition or the Agent of Change principle outside of defined precincts.
Live music precincts and the listing of venue locations just apply the existing laws more thoroughly and efficiently.
That’s it! There are no edicts requiring live music to be allowed only in designated precincts. So, there is nothing to fear here.
The economic impact of protecting live music
Live Music Precincts have long been a feature of planning schemes interstate, such as Fortitude Valley, The Gold Coast, and Nambour in Queensland, Canberra, Northbridge in WA and a dozen, either designated or about to be, in NSW.
Little work has been done on the economic impact of live music precincts. In the oldest Live Music Precinct, Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, there has been a significant increase in venues and live music activity since 2000, it’s doubled according to an APRA AMCOS statement. This would obviously increase the number of gigs and audience attendance in a precinct.
Other research from the University of Tasmania indicates that every dollar spent on live music results in three dollars spent in related businesses such as restaurants, takeaway establishments, and taxis. Live music is a driver of the nighttime economy, so if it’s growing, so do other proximate retail, hospitality and service businesses.
One caveat to consider: in interstate Live Music Precincts, live music venues outside the polygon are not protected by the Agent of Change mechanism, which would incentivise aspiring live music operators to establish themselves only within the polygon, thereby amplifying venue growth as seen in The Valley. It is therefore unlikely that we will see such a significant uplift in live music activity in Yarra’s and Port Phillip’s Live Music Precincts compared to The Valley in Brisbane.
No research has been done on the gentrification effect of Live Music Precincts on residential housing costs. What is known is that real estate value is overwhelmingly driven by proximity to the CBD, public transport, good schools, etc. There are plenty of gentrified, expensive, affluent suburbs with no live music venues, such as Toorak, South Yarra, Armadale, Hawksburn, Clifton Hill, Camberwell and Parkville.
Also, live music venues have been slowly moving out of the inner city, to less expensive suburbs along High St and Sydney Rd towards the cheaper northern suburbs, where commercial rents are cheaper, and larger audiences are concentrated as groups of students, musicians and younger people who tend to live there. A case for a correlation between live music precincts and gentrification can’t be made on the available evidence.
What happens next for Yarra City Council, live music policy
It’s great to see both the Yarra City Council (promised and delivered by Mayor Steve Jolly) and Port Phillip have been listening to the local music industry and are falling into line to support contemporary national live music policy trends that also happen to deliver broader economic benefit.
The State Government, however, has been slow to respond. The planning amendment necessary for the Port Phillip precincts in St Kilda and South Melbourne to become a reality has been awaiting the minister’s signature for nearly two years, and it’s now five years since live music precincts were introduced into the planning scheme.
However, in the last few months, the State Government has begun working on the promised new Cultural Overlay to better implement live music precincts and locate live music venues in the planning system. An overlay would replace the schedules in the existing Live Music Venues clause (53.06). We hope to see these changes early in 2026, followed, fingers crossed, by the rapid implementation of Live Music Precinct in Fitzroy, Collingwood, Abbotsford, Richmond and St Kilda once signed off by the Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny. It is an election year after all.
Under the new overlay provisions, councils can then create their own complementary internal live music policies for their live music precincts, such as Live Music Action and Economic Development Plans that enhance marketing activity, plan for micro festivals, co-develop best practice guides and compliance policies that help mitigate vexatious complainants and manage the soundscape in a more nuanced, socially and culturally balanced manner.
Hopefully, the momentum will inspire other councils, such as Darebin. Merry-bek, Stonnington, Geelong and others to follow Port Phillip’s and Yarra’s lead.
Finally, it’s also important to remember that live music is not just any industry.
It’s a major part of our culture. It’s a human right to be able to expect that this community can participate in its culture both as a musician playing a gig in a band or as an audience member (Article 27 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights). This is why I believe it’s essential to protect our vibrant and unique live music scene and, importantly, the spaces in which it occurs.
This Yarra City Council live music precinct policy initiative represents the most important initiative the City of Yarra and the City of Port Phillip have ever undertaken to date to support and nurture live music.
That’s music to this old live music lover’s ears.
This article was also published in Beam magazine. https://beat.com.au/yarra-city-council-to-roll-out-live-music-precincts-heres-why-theyre-important/
For more information, see also https://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/about-us/news-and-media/yarra-locks-its-live-music-heartlands-venues-feel-squeeze