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‘This Song Is Yours’ is a bi-weekly podcast of interviews with local, national and international musicians that founder and host Simon Fincke hopes to build into a South Australian music media empire.
A couple of times a week, Simon Finck rearranges the furniture in his Torrensville home office, switches on a microphone, and calls up another of his all-time favourite musicians.
A banker by day, Simon is also the host of This Song Is Yours, a music podcast he launched in October 2020.
The pod has been visited by locals such as Stellie, Teenage Joans and Bad//Dreems; national acts like Katy Steele, Cub Sport, Kingswood, Peach PRC and Kav Temperley (the inaugural guest); as well as the likes of internationals Modest Mouse, The New Pornographers, Yard Act and Samia.
It was a long-held dream for Simon to launch a music media brand, and it was instigated, like so many things, by that recent great upheaval.
“I sat with the idea for two or three years, and then COVID hit,” Simon says.
“I was still working, but more so found myself at home a lot more. And at the time as well, there was a bit of a health thing – separate from COVID – that made me realise, what is it exactly that I’m waiting for to just try doing it?”
Simon had been associated with the music industry previously – he followed Adelaide band Skye Harbour to Melbourne as their manager in the late noughties – but in the decade leading up to TSIY, music was mostly a personal passion.
Simon Fincke
Following conversations with Daniel Gregg, a friend and founder of queer podcast network Lipp Media, about how to get started, Simon collected up some equipment, called in some favours from mates at record labels, and started booking guests.
When the podcast launched, it asked artists to create a playlist, which would form part of the discussion between Simon and his interlocutors. This was ditched not long into its life – partly because it was not always a practical request.
“It is very taxing,” Simon laughs, “on both the publicist and artist. And we’ve found more the mechanics of songwriting seem to resonate with people well.”
Simon initially expected to cater to an Australian music listenership in the 18-to-late-20s demographic, but has attracted a much more diverse listenership than he could’ve planned for.
“I think the initial listener was someone in their mid-20s, because in my mind I thought we’re just going to get acts that are purely hitting that target demographic,” Simon says.
“In our first year, we had KD Lang on the podcast – which I was just gobsmacked at, because that was one of my mum’s favourite artists before she passed.
“And it was funny, because a few weeks after that you saw the stats just flip completely, and you’ve got listeners in the US and UK, from their 30s to 60s to whatever else.
“And since then, it really has maintained this very broad listening range.”
This year, TSIY also branched out into video, for a series called For The Record, which sees Simon shadow artists as they dig through crates in record stores and speak about their influences.
In the sole Adelaide edition to date, Simon interviewed MUNA as they flipped through Clarity Records’ collection.
While TSIY is still a side-gig for Simon, he has hopes of building it into a larger media entity.
“I would like… This Song is Yours to be a music media brand for South Australia,” Simon says.
“Because I know when we’re talking specifically music, we’ve got Milky, who I think are New South Wales based; you’ve got one or two others that are based in Melbourne.
“And while we’ve got publications like CityMag, like a few others – in terms of just music-based media, there’s nothing.
“That’s what I’d like to see, is you could have it as a bit of a music media brand doing a few different things – maybe venturing outside of audio and video content and seeing where we go with that.”
If the pod was to grow to the point of becoming a full-time gig, Simon says a goal would be to have on more South Australian artists, which the host recognises is a shortfall of the series.
“There has been good feedback [from local artists]. A lot of them seem to follow us, or like or comment, and those comments tend to mainly be positive, which is good,” Simon says.
“I feel like, with the opportunity, I could be doing more with the local scene as well. And I think it’s not so much the bands, but… I’ve spoken with Matt and Laura [Horvath] about what we did [at Clarity] with MUNA, and possibly doing more in the future.
“Because there is a really good both music band scene and music record store scene in Adelaide, and so having that showcased is something that, if there’s a platform that I can use, why not?”
You can subscribe to This Song Is Yours on your podcasting app of choice, and check out the For The Record videos on YouTube.
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