The Australian music industry is poised for a seismic shake-up, following the appointment of the first woman to the chair of the body that oversees the industry’s annual night of nights.

The ABC’s head of music and events, Natalie Waller, has been appointed chair of the Australian Recording Industry Association (Aria), taking over from Denis Handlin, who lost his right to sit on the board when he was removed as CEO of Sony Music Australia in May.

The appointment signals a significant shift in the representation of women in the music industry; as recently as 2019, the Aria board was made up entirely of male executives.

Although Aria handles advocacy, copyright, licensing, and myriad other functions typical of an industry peak body, its public face is very much the glamorous annual Aria Music Awards, which have come under fire in recent years for failing to reflect the cultural diversity in the music industry and the contribution of female artists.

Aria’s Annabelle Herd, who took over as CEO from president of Warner Music Australasia Dan Rosen earlier this year, is promising change.

“[Waller] and I are on the same page about where we want to go, and the board is very supportive, it’s very excited about this new era for Aria,” she said.

“We’ll be making some announcements about the Aria awards shortly ... and we will see some evolution.”

In the wake of sustained criticism, Aria recently conducted a review of its judging panels.

“The results are in and they’re not surprising,” Herd said.

“So we will be working to redress the balance of our judging panels, and doing all of the other work that we need to do to progress on issues of cultural diversity and cultural awareness ... to reflect the true diversity of industry.”

Herd dismissed suggestions the live broadcast of the annual Aria awards might find a new home at the ABC, given the new chair’s decade-long senior position at the public broadcaster.

“The potential interests of the chair’s individual employer does not dictate the direction of Aria,” she said.

Prior to Waller’s appointment, the Aria chair has always been occupied by a male executive representing a major commercial record label.

Coming from a career in television [as Channel 10’s chief operating officer], Herd said it was “fairly obvious” as soon as she joined Aria that the treatment of women working in the music industry was a “huge issue”.

“And it’s not just focused on one sector, one part of the industry, it seems to be across the board.”

In May, University of Technology academic Jeff Crabtree released his Tunesmiths and Toxicity: Workplace Harassment in the Contemporary Music Industries of Australia and New Zealand report.

That report found bullying and sexual harassment of women in the music industry – “perpetrated by patrons, peers and power figures” – had become widespread and “normalised”.

The music industry has since formed a working group to tackle the problem and recently called for expressions of interest to form a panel of experts.

Board control

The shake-up at Aria follows the departure of Handlin from Sony Music Australia.

A Guardian Australia investigation published in May detailed multiple complaints from former employees alleging a toxic work environment at the global company’s Australian operation. Aimed broadly at the workplace culture rather than specific individuals, the complaints included allegations of sexual harassment at work events, intimidating behaviour, alcohol abuse and the unfair treatment of women in the workplace.

None of the former Sony employees Guardian Australia spoke to made any allegations of sexual harassment against Handlin himself, although they were critical of the workplace culture at the company while Handlin was CEO.

On 21 May the global Sony Music Entertainment brand’s head office in New York announced Handlin’s departure from the company.

Handlin’s name has now been removed from the Aria website as a board member and chairman. All that remains is the acknowledgement that in 2014 he was crowned an Aria Icon, an industry gong he himself had lobbied the Aria board to establish a year earlier.

During its three-month investigation into Sony Music Australia, Guardian Australia heard from some individuals about Handlin’s perceived dominance as chair of the Aria board.

Breaking from his stance of not commenting to any media since his departure from Sony, Handlin told Guardian Australia in a statement issued on Tuesday: “Like all directors including Aria board directors, I am bound by board confidentiality in regard to board discussions and decisions made by the board at the time I was a director.”

One board member who spoke to Guardian Australia said “Denis liked things organised a particular way and that was the way things were organised.”

“He liked everything to be pre-arranged and pre-organised, he didn’t like surprises ... so you just save an argument over something that might mean a lot to him, that ultimately doesn’t mean a lot to you.

“Nobody, not even the big multinationals, wanted to get in a fight with him, because you’ve got better things to do with your life. And that was the feeling on the board.”

Another board member who agreed to speak with Guardian Australia said that did not mean the board never engaged in robust debate over more important issues.

“But I don’t think it’s fair to say that [Handlin] exercised [undue] control,” the board member said.

“The board votes on things.”

During his 37-year tenure at Aria, Handlin did manage to create a couple of new Aria awards – the aforementioned Aria Icon award which in its first year in 2013 went to Michael Gudinski – the man who throughout his career constantly denied the Sony boss the title of the industry’s “most powerful” – before Handlin received it himself in 2014.

The icon award is bestowed on industry titans at the Aria board’s discretion.

No icon award was given in 2015.

Then, in 2016, Handlin succeeded in splitting an award in two, in a bid to get recognition for the vocal group Human Nature, who at the time was celebrating its 20th anniversary in the Sony stable.

The strategy didn’t work. Human Nature failed to get enough votes to even get nominated.

“Like any member of any board of any company or organisation around the world, Mr Handlin regularly made suggestions for new initiatives and changes which were then considered by the full Aria board,” Herd told Guardian Australia.

“All decisions of the Aria board are made by the board, not an individual, regardless of their title. Mr Handlin was just one member of the Aria board and all members have always had an equal voice.”

Opportunity for major change

With almost four decades of Handlin at the top now at an apparent end, the Australian music industry is watching keenly how the company’s US parent body, Sony Music Entertainment, will mop up the messy public perception puddle down under.

“I think Sony has a substantial opportunity,” one industry insider said.

“It’s a very powerful music company and it’s very successful on an international level, and I would expect them to make substantial changes in terms of how they operate their business.”

One current Aria board member, speaking before the latest announcement, said the way Sony Music Australia reinvents itself now could have a significant impact on the music industry as a whole.

“There’s plenty of great women out there who could run that company, they’ve got an opportunity to do that. And if they do that, then all of a sudden you do have a woman in a position of power who then joins the Aria board.”

Up until 2019 the board was exclusively male. That year there was a flurry of female appointments. Of the four women recruited, one was from each of Australia’s three major record labels – Universal, Sony and Warner. Only the ABC’s Waller, it could have been argued, was a truly independent director.

This meant six of the nine voting board directors were drawn from Australia’s three largest recording labels. The three female representatives were all junior to the male representatives of the labels.

A gender inclusive board hasn’t necessarily delivered any different decisions in the past two years, one Aria director said.

But Herd strongly refutes any suggestion that the sudden increase in female representation has been in any way tokenism.

“I think it’s entirely disrespectful to say that just because [these women] work for the same company as their boss, they don’t have a voice or an opinion or a contribution to make,” she told Guardian Australia.

“You’re going to have a very small board if you only have the CEOs of the major labels on it, and you’ve got to remember that [Aria] is a membership organisation, representing the recording industry – the majors and the independents. So the board is reflective of that membership, as it is with any other industry organisation.”

Music industry observers will now be watching keenly for signs of change at Australia’s national music rights management and publishing organisation, Apra Amcos, where the 12-member executive team employs just two women. The 12-member Apra board has three female directors, the 12-member Amcos board remains entirely male.