One Year Later: triple j’s Nick Findlay

Welcome to One Year Later, an Industry Observer podcast, presented by APRA AMCOS, where we revisit career changing moments, one year on.

In this episode, Poppy Reid chats to triple j Music Director Nick Findlay.

As was first reported on by The Industry Observer last April, Findlay stepped up from Assistant Music Director into Richard Kingsmill’s role, as Kingsmill moved to work under the title Group Music Director.

Throughout the interview Nick Findlay explains how his life has changed in the last 12 months, how triple j’s playlisting works, which local acts are our next global exports, and more.

“We have to make sure that what we add to the radio each week is a great reflection of what’s getting played on air,” he said. “And what the Australian music scene, and the international music scene, sounds like at this moment, and how it’s relevant to our audience.”

Nick Findlay

It’s clear Nick Findlay is doing his dream job. Not only is he anything but a genre snob who loves putting Australian music in the spotlight, he’s training for the role since he was a preschooler.

“When I was five or six I used to pretend to play radio in my bedroom,” he said. “I’d be taping triple j on tape decks and sort of switching between the two pretending to be a radio DJ.

“Always in the back of my mind I had the idea that I wanted to work here,” he continued. “I never thought I would have reached where I have at the age that I have.”

Nick Findlay also offered his views on the current investigation into the commercial radio sector’s local content quotas.

“I’m really proud of triple j’s Australian quota,” he said. “We have a self-imposed 40% minimum but every month – probably for the last 18 months – we’ve been hitting 50-plus% and I think on average for 2017 our on-air quota was closer to 60%.”