AS Campbell Moore and Cooper Richards-Hancock like to say, "anyone can make a radio show."
Certainly it's true that modern technology has made producing media easier than ever, but the old adage remains - you've got to find your audience.
Moore and Richards-Hancock, both 23, have done that too with their niche online Newcastle Music Show and podcast.
The weekly Monday night program has produced almost 90 episodes since it launched in early 2021, giving underground and emerging Newcastle bands and artists a platform to premiere their singles and talk about their music.
The pair of self-confessed "music nerds" have also created their own publicly-voted Newcastle music countdown show - the Steel City 50 - and on December 30 the Lass O'Gowrie Hotel will host their first curated mini music festival.
The Newcastle Music Show Festival will be headlined by electronic-indie two-piece Raave Tapes and also features Abbi Yeo, Deadshowws, Doris, Soy Boy and Teddie.
Just like many great musical partnerships, Moore and Richards-Hancock first met at the Hamilton Station Hotel in 2018 while watching US punk singer-songwriter Jeff Rosenstock.
The pair then bonded further at the Lass O'Gowrie Hotel over a shared love of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, the Newcastle music scene and community radio.
When the pandemic hit Richards-Hancock was studying Communications and Moore had just started a Speech Therapy degree after initially studying Music at the Australian National University in Canberra and dabbling in student radio.
"I was doing one about biscuits and it was just having my friends on and chatting and playing music and broadcasting that to mates in lockdown," Moore says.
From there the pair had the idea of doing a Newcastle music show. However, neither had any real contacts or knowledge of the scene outside of being passionate punters.
"We started doing it and it was a fun side project to see what's out there," Moore says. "I figured after a couple of months we would run out of new releases, but it's shocking when you start looking, how much there is coming out.
"It's a really nice spot to take all these new releases and just play it."
For the first nine weeks the Newcastle Music Show was broadcast out of Moore's house before they moved to Newcastle Live.
After a year they headed back to their independent roots and started broadcasting out of indie collective New Brain Communications' Hamilton North studio with the help of producer Billie Kaal, 21.
"A year later we thought, we can do this at home and we don't have to run ads," Moore says. "Now we're back doing it."
Richards-Hancock says an inspiration for the program is Manchester radio station NTS, which is known for its diverse playlists and focus on curating underground music often ignored.
NTS is also known for providing opportunities for passionate music fans hoping to get a break in radio.
"One of my uni lecturers called it 'constraining enabling'. It's really trying to put yourself in a corner," Richards-Hancock says.
"Which is what we've done with the Newcastle Music Show. We're only going to play music from this part of the greater Newcastle area and we discovered lots of little genres we never thought were being made in Newcastle."
The Newcastle Music Show has coincided with an explosion of new acts post-COVID lockdowns and the success of the all-local West Best Bloc Fest in October.
Richards-Hancock says dance and pop music are also emerging in the traditionally rock and indie-orientated Newcastle scene through artists like Mason Dane, Craterface, Elijah Amoss and Teddie.
"It's been waiting to happen for quite a few years," he says. "During COVID the acts most likely to take off were ones you could connect with in your own space like solo artists, rap artists, bands.
"Dance music I think is coming along quite well because spaces are opening up in Newcastle like the Newy [Newcastle Hotel] or the Lass [O'Gowrie Hotel]."
Other acts Moore and Richards-Hancock tip for bigger things include indie bands Sitting Down and Doris, psych-rockers Fungas and post-punk band Dust, who recently announced they were supporting Hockey Dad next year on their European tour.
"All those bands have their own sound," Moore says. "Yes, there's influences, but it's very much this is them doing them."
The aforementioned bands are expected to appear in the Steel City 50 countdown on December 31. Last year 650 people voted in the countdown, which saw folk singer-songwriter Abbi Yeo finish No.1 by a single vote from Lili Crane's Lemonade with her emotive single Wildfire.
"The triple j Hottest 100 obviously hardly ever has Newcastle representation," Richards-Hancock says.
"We thought there is so much happening in Newcastle, Hunter and the Central Coast, so why can't people vote for tracks, whether it be their friends or bands they've seen once or twice throughout the year."
The Newcastle Music Show is broadcast Mondays from 6-9pm at newcastlemusicshow.com. It's also available as a podcast on Spotify. Voting for the Steel City 50 is now open.
