Listen Out


Listen Out is an annual Australian music festival held in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane since September 2013. In 2018, an inaugural alternative version of Listen Out, titled Listen In took place in South Australia and New Zealand. The standard festival is held from late September to early October. Each Listen Out concert is a one-day event attracting both domestic and international hip-hop, indie, and electronic musicians. Listen Out uses three stages; Atari stage, 909 stage and Third base.
Listen Out has been organised since inception by Fuzzy. It attracted over 68,000 attendees during its 2016 festival tour. In parallel with the festival national youth radio Triple J runs an Unearthed competition, where the state winner performs at their capital's venue. The 2020 and 2021 festivals were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. It resumed in 2022 and continues to the present.

History

Listen Out was created by Fuzzy after they had cancelled another music festival, Parklife. The new festival has an emphasis on "intelligent strains of dance music". Listen Out's inaugural tour commenced on 28 September 2013 in Sydney, before proceeding to Perth and then Melbourne and finishing in Brisbane. and continued as an annual event. It consists of three stages, two of which have identical artist line-ups. The Atari stage is the festival's main stage and features the head-liners of the festival. The 2013 and 2014 tour allocated only electronic music acts to perform on the Atari stage, with Indie and Hip-hop acts taking place on the 909 stage. theMusic.com.aus writer described the 2014 festival, "boutique national dance music event. bringing quality dance music to four spectacular inner city venues."
From 2015 onward, these roles were changed as Hip-Hop acts now exclusively occurred on the Atari stage and the 909 stage became exclusively electronic music. Unlike these stages, Third base stage is used to showcase local upcoming talent from each state, with different line-ups for each leg of the show. In more recent iterations of the event, these line-ups now contain acts that tour with the festival over multiple venues, however minor tweaks are made to each state's line-up to continue showcasing local talent for each. From 2013 to 2015 the festival's third stage was sponsored by Red Bull as the Crate Diggers stage. In 2016 after Fuzzy lost its Red Bull sponsorship, the stage was sponsored by Universal Store and re-branded the Young Bloods stage. In 2017 Fuzzy formally changed it to 3rd Base, without financial support of any sponsor.
Each year the winners of the annual Triple J Unearthed competition for each state were given a time slot for the related Listen Out concert. The winner performed on either the Atari or 909 stage depending on the year. In 2018 Fuzzy began a new, smaller version of Listen Out named Listen In to reach audiences in South Australia and New Zealand featuring a smaller selection of six acts from the longer Listen Out version of the tour. In 2019 the South Australian Listen In festival was announced but the New Zealand leg of the tour is yet to be announced. The 2020 and 2021 Listen Out festivals were all cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. They resumed in 2022 and continues to the present.

Artist line-up by year

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2022

Sources:
Sources:
Listen Out has had a history of drug related controversies. During the Melbourne leg of the inaugural Listen Out tour, police arrested 13 people in relation to drug related offences. Police were also able to seize $10,000 worth of cocaine, ecstasy and prescription drugs. At the Sydney leg of the same tour 94 were charged by police for drug related offences. The 2014 version of listen had 37 festival attendees arrested in Melbourne for drug offences. The Sydney leg of the 2015 tour had seven people were arrested due to drug supply, with one carrying over 100 MDMA pills. A further 114 revellers were charged with drug possession at the same show.
In the 2016 run of the Listen Out, during the Victorian leg of the tour a woman aged 27 died of a suspected drug overdose. As a result, the Victorian police allocated more resources to the event for following years including additional passive alert drug detection dogs tat the following year's tour. Perth's 2017 leg of the tour had nine people charged with drug related offences. The Melbourne leg had 38 people arrested on similar grounds. Sydney's leg also lead to the arrest of 116 people relating to drug offences.
In 2018 following the deaths of two teenagers at the Defqon.1 festival, the NSW government heightened police presence at festivals, as Listen Out was the next festival to occur in New South Wales after Defqon.1 media attention gravitated towards it. As a result of the increased police presence, 159 people were charged with drug offences and 5 charged with drug supply. 12 people were taken to hospital at the NSW festival and 7 of these were found to be drug related issues. At the Melbourne leg of the tour in the same year 30 were charged with drug possession and one charged with trafficking cocaine.
Following a successful drug checking trial at Groovin' the Moo earlier in 2018, the Australian Festival Association suggested to implement this at more festivals as a preventative measure to lessen deaths at music festivals, this was met with a "no tolerance policy" from New South Wale's premier Gladys Berejiklian. Fuzzy representatives replied that governments should be more open to pill testing in order to create safer festivals.