Doing my gratitudes for the week, and this memory is definitely up there. Didn’t get to share any footage at the time, but walking the stadium catwalk, playing guitar for @emmanuelkellyofficial —on a song I co-produced, no less—while supporting @Coldplay was something special. Feeling that same energy carrying into 2025, and we’re only six weeks in… Excited for what’s ahead!
Big thanks to my beautiful wife for capturing this footage and this moment—especially fitting to share on this Valentine’s Day weekend. Grateful for you always 💚
A fair question after today’s coverage. And thank you to @sambj and the @financialreview for the piece.
Yes, Vinyl Group has accumulated losses over the past few years. Building something new almost always does. What matters is the trajectory.
• FY22 revenue: ~$105K
• I became CEO: June 2023
• FY25 revenue: $14.4M
• FY26 trajectory: ~$25M annual revenue
The article referenced $57M in accumulated losses since 2022.
• ~$35M occurred during my tenure as CEO, of which a majority relates to non-cash accounting items
• ~$15M reflects cash operating losses incurred while conceiving and executing the Group’s transformation strategy, integrating six acquisitions and building Australia’s largest ecosystem of cultural assets
What this investment created:
• Reach: 50%+ of Australians online
• Comparable audience scale to multi-billion-dollar incumbents: News Corp and Nine
• Acquisition capital deployed to achieve this: ~$17M (~$27M once Val Morgan completes)
In December we delivered our first cash-positive quarter on schedule, during a calendar year in which we improved the bottom line quarter-on-quarter without missing a beat on topline growth.
We are still in a transition phase as the business moves from investment and integration into sustained profitability. That is a normal part of building and scaling a platform like this, and much of the heavy lifting is already behind us.
Disruption rarely looks tidy in the early chapters. The real test is whether the foundations eventually support a durable business.
We believe they will.
On Monday we announced the acquisition of Val Morgan Digital and welcomed Damian Keogh to the Vinyl Group Board.
Today I wanted to share why this matters.
Adaptive Media is built on a simple belief.
You cannot simply prompt your way to cultural relevance. AI is rapidly reducing the cost of producing content, targeting audiences and optimising campaigns.
Supply is exploding. However, attention is not.
The scarce asset is trusted cultural reach.
With this transaction, Vinyl Media now operates at national scale across Australia’s News and Entertainment categories, with audience reach comparable to the country’s largest advertising companies.
That scale is not built on a single publication or platform. It comes from consolidating culturally relevant brands that audiences actively choose to engage with every day.
When combined, these assets form something much more powerful than traditional publishing.
They become cultural distribution infrastructure.
AI strengthens this model rather than threatening it. It improves efficiency, personalisation and commercial yield, while the underlying cultural relevance remains defensible and difficult to replicate.
Every brand in the world is chasing relevance because relevance drives outcomes. Impressions are fine, but recall, trust and conversion is the clear opportunity in front of us.
Build a platform anchored in culture, amplified by technology, and operating at meaningful national scale. Prove the model at home, and then scale globally.
This is what Adaptive Media looks like in practice.
Big day for Vinyl Group.
We’ve acquired the Val Morgan Digital publishing assets, including the ANZ licences for BuzzFeed, LADbible, Vox and Fandom, expanding our national audience reach to digital scale comparable with Australia’s largest media organisations.
This is a major step forward in building Adaptive Media in Australia, combining premium cultural assets, technology and distribution into one integrated ecosystem.
Val Morgan and its parent HOYTS have built exceptional advertising businesses over decades, and this transaction also establishes an ongoing cooperation agreement between our organisations across cinema, outdoor and digital networks. I’m genuinely pleased to welcome HOYTS Group CEO & President Damian Keogh to the Vinyl Group Board.
The work starts now.
Starting the year strong, Vinyl Group (ASX: VNL) is pleased to share results from a standout Q2 with record cash receipts, our first operating cash flow positive result, and continued validation of our vertically integrated media and platform acquisition strategy.
Key Highlights: • Record cash receipts of $7.2M, up 80% quarter-on-quarter • First operating cash flow positive quarter, with net operating cash inflows of $305K • Net cash used in operations reduced to $1.11M in 1H FY26, down from $3.96M in 1H FY25 • Structurally lower fixed cost base, with improved operating efficiency at scale • FY26 revenue guidance updated to $22M–$25M
We delivered this result organically in our seasonally strongest quarter, demonstrating the operating leverage now embedded in the group as scale increases and fixed costs remain structurally lower.
📈 Full quarterly update and investor materials now live.
#ASX #VNL #QuarterlyResults #CashFlowPositive #VinylGroup
2016 might be my favourite year of all time. Transitional and transformational in every way possible.
It started with @buchananband ’s final 🇦🇺 headline tour and the release of our second album. Then I moved to LA to launch @vamprapp into the world, the beginning of my 🇺🇸 journey. I started working with @kilhoffer , landed major writing cuts and placements, and got invited to play a national arena tour with @keithurban and @carrieunderwood .
The soundtrack to that year was The Life of Pablo. It dropped in February, and in a wild turn of events I was working out of @Ye ’s studio by the end of the year.
Most importantly of all, it was the year I met my wife and life partner @totbot 😍
2025 was a grind.
If you looked at my calendar from January to today, you’d see the messy reality of building a business at this speed.
We’ve had people come. We’ve had people go. We’ve restructured teams, torn strategies down to the studs, and rebuilt them from scratch.
Change is necessary, but it’s also exhausting.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned this year is people management.
It’s easy for me to get obsessed with the product or the vision. You look at the business as a machine.
But without the people, there is nothing.
You can build the most exciting music tech or media conglomerate in the world. But if the humans behind it all aren’t supported, aligned, and fired up, you just have expensive assets collecting dust.
So, I want to say a genuine thank you to my team @ Vinyl Group.
To those who stuck it out in the trenches this year, who navigated the chaos and kept pushing the rock up the hill, thank you.
We are heading into next year with a very simple theme: Play to your strengths.
We’re done trying to be good at everything. We’re going to be exceptional at the things that actually move the needle.
We’re going to double down on our superpowers and stop apologising for our blind spots.
Go take a break. Refill the bucket. Because we’ve got a hell of a year coming up.
See you on the other side 👊
When I was 17, I dropped out of school to start a film production company.
Within a year, I was completely burnt out.
I went and mowed lawns for a while before heading to England to figure things out.
There, a friend of my dad’s gave me an analogy that I didn’t fully appreciate for another decade.
He said, “Imagine everyone has a bucket full of energy. When you pursue high-octane, high-stakes roles, you are going to empty that bucket. That’s not a failure; it’s a given. Your only job is to figure out how to refill it.”
The advice was abstract but I started to understand it.
In your 20s, you feel invincible. You can just keep pushing with no consequences.
In your 30s, mortality catches up. Your body reminds you that you’re not Iron Man.
You only truly heed advice when you learn the lesson firsthand through physical or mental consequences. (that’s definitely happened over the years)
Now, refilling the bucket is a non-negotiable part of how I operate.
For the final investor video of the year, we figured we may as well swing for the fences.
It’s ridiculous, it’s sincere, it’s very us, and it’s the perfect way to wrap up a massive year.
Hope it gives you a smile. Here’s to an even bigger 2026.
