About us

Who is who?

Phil Tripp

With 39 years in the music industry and 29 years in Australia, this American emigre runs several businesses in Sydney with heavy online presences in entertainment and pets.

After ten years of production/tour management and festival production in the US plus teaching music business in Atlanta, Phil emigrated to Sydney in 1981 where he ran Australia's largest record retailer, Palings, for openers. Pursuing a love of media, he became a leading music trade writer and investigative journalist with credits in over 100 major domestic and international magazines or newspapers. These included trades such as Billboard, Hollywood Report, Variety, Music Business, National Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Rolling Stone and many more.

After four years of writing, he created IMMEDIA! Public Relations to service artist and corporate clients - especially in their needs or strategies to penetrate overseas markets. He is an export expert having served as an adviser to AUSTRADE in the 1980s and 90s and has represented music industry trade fairs such as MIDEM for a decade, New Music Seminar for five years and currently South by Southwest in Austin, Texas for the past five.

In 1988 he created the first Australian Music Industry Directory which turned AustralAsian in 1990 and has published 46 biannual editions. He also created the first Australian Sports Industry Directory in 1994, sold to another publisher, AusSport in late 2000. He's been online for over 20 years, starting first with a Tandy 100 and 300 baud modem on the ESI email service in 1984 and has evolved to put the entire company and all directories on the Internet as well as creating an online weekly music industry trade magazine TheMusic at http://www.themusic.com.au. His fortnightly LOOSE CANNON opinion pieces at http://www.themusic.com.au/im_m/tripp.php stir the industry and he's often quoted as a music industry analyst in print and electronic media.

An amusing industry profile on Phil is published on the US Celebrity Access site that traces his music industry history with an interview, anecdotes and background at http://www.celebrityaccess.com/news/profile.html?id=285.

This year, he and partner Lisa Treen celebrated 19 years together and also the success of a new magazine aimed at pet lifestyle--Urban Animal--a quarterly free 40,000 copy print and online publication at http://www.urbananimal.net. As Australia's first free, cross-pet, glossy colour tabloid, it entered year 7 of quarterly publication with Issue 21, November 15th, 2009. Like the music industry that he's spent 34 years in, the pet industry is a parallel universe that is still all about entertainment.

Aside from running a company that also produces the major music industry conference AustralAsian Music Business Conference every other year since 1992 (http://www.immedia.com.au/ambc), he represents South by Southwest in Austin as their Australian, NZ and Hawaiian agent (http://www.themusic.com.au/sxsw) where IMMEDIA! has run the Australian stand for Austrade and published the Australian Music Guide.

He also keeps his fingers in media as a freelance travel, lifestyle and entertainment journalist. He's written a series of articles for Business Review Weekly which are reproduced here and serve as an excellent guide to these three 'Phil Fave' cities and Hawaii as well as his favourite pasttimes--wearing Hawaiian shirts and scuba diving. He's also written music, travel and lifestyle articles for in-flight magazines of Qantas and Continental as well as consumer press and newspapers.

You can find a lot more at http://www.philtripp.com

Lisa Treen

I always said that when I was getting over the Music Industry then I should do something else. Thankfully I'm not over music but I have been concentrating on some other 'pet projects' recently. We created Urban Animal magazine www.urbananimal.net and this has been a great outlet for creativity and is one of the more enjoyable projects I have ever done.

Justine Lynch

Justine is returning to IMMEDIA! after a 3-year hiatus running the subscriptions department for the likes of Rolling Stone Australia, Blunt and Australian Guitar magazines. She has been drawn back to IMMEDIA! by two of her greatest loves, music and animals. She loves all animals large and small, except rodents. Justine is also a pop culture/music nerd. Her favourite bands are The Ramones and The Clash and she lives with a cat called Elvis D.C.

Jess Kalucy

Fresh faced after two years of study at Ultimo Tafe, Jess started work as a full time member of the IMMEDIA! Team in April 2009. Having two previous music business internships under her belt, Jess earned her stripes in the IMMEDIA! Office spending three months working on the Music Industry Directory and recent South by Southwest Festival, travelling to Austin to work on the Australian Film Stand and enjoy the multitude of magnificent bands that took over the city. As a serial intern, Jess is looking forward to weaning her way off the bohemian student lifestyle, ready to put all of that theory into practice (whilst counting down the months until the next SxSW!)

Lilly

Her name is Lilly, named after a delicate, sweet smelling flower-yet her name around the office is Lilly Monster. "Such a sweet puppy", we hear most visitors to the office proclaim. Yet there is something sinister lurking underneath the soft fur coat, the wide light green eyes and the princess-like diamante collar. She is a beast, a witch, we tell you-well, at least when she grabs a scrap of paper from the recycling bin and shreds it on the office floor. Lilly came to us at around six months of age, as a 'Rescue Dalmatian' from Dalmatian Welfare. She had a rough start in life and her history is a little patchy. Yet we're happy to let you know that she's progressing well and she's much loved by all staff and the extended IMMEDIA! family. www.dalmatiansofnsw.org.au/rescue.htm Lilly's favourite magazine is Urban Animal www.urbananimal.net (yes another shameless plug for an IMMEDIA! publication).

Scooter the Pooter

Meet Scooter the Pooter - or his official name is Starswept Scooter. He's brand new to our team and we've decided that he's in charge of light entertainment. Scooter's interests include gardening, swimming and eating. He's also very good at tug games and sleeping. He's only a baby but we know he's going to go far in his chosen field-comedian. Paws down he's a funny little dude.

Jackson

This handsome fellow is Jackson a male Eclectus. Jackson has a variety of names from Jacko, Chicken, Chicken Beast, Boomsticks, Boombie and That Darn Bird! He came to IMMEDIA! at just three months of age back in 2000.