How four NSW Districts turned local stages into a state-wide music trail

Live music brings people together, and Great Southern Nights, in partnership with the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), was built to prove exactly that at scale. It was the partnership between Great Southern Nights and four NSW Districts that turned a state-wide program into a genuine district-wide music trail.

• Newtown Enmore

• Midtown Newcastle

• Port Kembla Precinct (PK X)

• Chippendale Collective

Forty venues opened their doors to 115+ local musicians and performers, and close to 9,000 people came out, moved room to room, and connected as one crowd across four precincts.

It's easier than ever to stay home. Live music is one of the few things that still reliably gets people off the couch and out the front door. But it was the partnership with local Districts, not the state-wide program alone, that turned that idea into a trail moving through a whole precinct rather than one room, doing something bigger than filling a venue: getting a community out, together, in the same streets.

Four Districts partnered with Great Southern Nights to run the format independently within the wider program, each shaped around its own character, and each came out with a result worth repeating. The partnership itself has grown fast: the previous year, Great Southern Nights worked with just two Districts to test the format. This year it extended to four, including, NSW regional Districts in Newcastle and Port Kembla.

The energy on the street, you can feel it tonight. People are excited to be out. Live music brings people together. It has done for centuries, and this is such a powerful thing to be able to do.

Dylan Howarth, Owner, Palomino Lounge, Newtown Enmore

Building on its reputation as a live-music heartland, pubs and bars throughout the District opened their stages to local acts across genres. A Mariachi band carried the energy beyond the venues, bringing an unexpected burst of live performance to the streets and adding to the sense of discovery across the precinct.

Connect with Newtown Enmore on Neon Marketplace.

Drawing on its deep roots in Newcastle’s music scene, the precinct became a walkable live-music trail, with audiences moving between venues as activations spilled out onto the street. Live music walking tours and the hugely popular Karaoke Rickshaw added a playful, festival-like energy, creating a connected night out without the need for large-scale event infrastructure.

Connect with Midtown Newcastle on Neon Marketplace.

Industrial character became part of the Port Kembla Great Southern Nights experience, with live venues and pop-up spaces joined by roving musicians, live mural art, markets and interactive performances. The result was a street-wide celebration of Port Kembla’s creative identity, turning one stretch of the precinct into a lively showcase of music, art and community.

Connect with Port Kembla Precinct (PK X) on Neon Marketplace.

The Gig Trail turned Chippendale into a compact, walkable live-music circuit, with performances spilling across pubs, bars and other local venues. On-street activations added to the festival atmosphere, encouraging audiences to move between venues and experience the precinct as a connected night out.

The most artist-dense of the 2026 gig trails featured smaller crowds but the deepest concentration of acts, translating into the strongest per-visitor spend.

Connect with Chippendale Collective on Neon Marketplace.

It got people out. Before anything else, Great Southern Nights gave people a reason to leave the house on a night they might have stayed in. Once out, they stayed out, for hours longer than a single gig ever would.

It brought people together. Locals walked into venues they'd normally pass by, standing shoulder to shoulder with neighbours they'd never met, turning "I didn't know that was there" into "I didn't know they lived two doors down."

It backed local musicians. 115+ artists and performers played to genuinely new audiences and built a live following in their own precinct, powered by Australia's only state-wide live music initiative rather than a one-off local booking.

It delivered real economic return. Every person who left home instead of staying in became direct revenue for a local venue, up to 300% growth in Port Kembla's case, on the back of foot traffic alone.

A District doesn't need to build a music program from scratch to deliver this, and Great Southern Nights doesn't need to run every venue itself. It's the partnership between the two, a state-wide platform and a District's own local knowledge, venues and community, that delivers the result. What started as a two-District pilot has already doubled, and doubled its reach beyond Sydney, in a single year. Four Districts partnered with Great Southern Nights and proved success, four different ways.

You can connect with the Newtown Enmore, Chippendale Collective, Midtown Newcastle and Port Kembla Districts, and see upcoming opportunities across NSW Districts, via Neon Marketplace.

If you're a musician, or partner interested in exploring a District trail format, get in touch with the Neon Marketplace team at the Office of the 24-Hour Economy Commissioner.