Sweethearts: From student jammers to professional musicians

Here’s the thing. The split between boys and girls is pretty much equal when it comes to the numbers studying music and the numbers with music qualifications of some kind, so how come 80% of songwriters are male and only 20% of women sign up with APRA|AMCOS for royalties? Who better to ask than Ross Lipson, music director and manager of The Sweethearts Foundation, the business that runs the all-girl soul band based at Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College in Geelong. He’s watched girls come and go for the past 23 years in the annual incarnations of the band and though he admits it’s a question he’s often pondered “and never got to the bottom of,” he does have a part solution and it’s the reason he is no longer a classroom teacher and the band is now a business as well as an education provider.