Sulinna Ong has devoted most of her career to sharing the universal language of music since graduating with First Class Honours with a Bachelor of Arts (Music) from 91���� in 2000.

She’s proven highly adept at deploying technology and marketing intelligence to help people find the perfect music for any moment, whether as General Manager of artist management company The Family Entertainment, which took Kasabian to global success, Chief Marketing Officer at social media tech startup WholeWorldBand, and now as Head of Music at Spotify UK and Ireland.

“Music and technology have always been the two great and constant loves of my life,” she explains. “I didn’t really have the skill level to make a career out of the performance side, but I knew I wanted to make music and technology the way I earned a living. I was constantly told I had to pick either of these two things, and I knew that at some point, they would converge, and I wanted to be in the centre of it.”

Ong says her career path has been quite instinctual, driven by her enthusiasm for learning about new technology and new music, sometimes to the bafflement of her parents, who didn’t know anyone who worked in either the technology or music industries.

“Like most Asian and Middle Eastern parents (her father is Chinese, her mother is Persian), they both come from cultures that really value formal education,” says Ong. “My folks wanted me to get a law, medical, or engineering degree. Understandably they were concerned about my desire to pursue music, which is not the most stable of careers, but they knew I had my heart set on it.”

In her last year of high school, Ong was exploring a photography exhibit in Darwin when she met the renowned photographer and academic, Emeritus Professor Des Crawley. After listening to Ong talk about her interests, he asked about her plans for university: she explained she didn’t want to do a traditional music degree at a conservatorium, nor did she intend to join an orchestra because she was mostly interested in popular music.

Professor Crawley told her: “You should consider the university (91����) where I’m a professor. We have a new course, which really addresses all the things that you’re saying. It’s about popular music and I think you really should look into it.” 

So the next time Ong visited Sydney, she explored the Penrith campus and Western’s new courses, and was pleased to discover it offered all the things Crawley had told her about: “Music technology was incorporated in the degree in the Bachelor of Arts, which at that time was pretty unusual,” she says. “And the university itself really expanded my world as a young adult. It introduced me to new music experiences and people.”

Ong had felt stifled at high school, where she’d often been told she was ‘difficult’ because she questioned the status quo, always wanting to know why things couldn’t change.

So campus life at 91���� was a revelation: “It was one of the most carefree and experimental times in my life, which really gave me a lot of confidence,” she remembers fondly. “All the optimism, curiosity and vitality of youth in a university environment where free and critical thinking is encouraged and rewarded.”

“I met some of my close friends I still speak with now while sitting on the grass between classes, including people studying other degrees,” she adds. “And my longest friendship is actually with Professor Crawley. Even after I graduated and moved to the UK in 2003, we kept in touch. I actually spoke to him in April (2021) to wish him a happy birthday (he’s in his 80s now). So that’s a friendship that has endured for 27 years!”

A tiny sample of some of the artists Ong has worked with so far reveals cross-generational favourites like The Rolling Stones, Debbie Harry, Madonna, De La Soul, Wu Tang Clan, plus new-millennium hit makers Jay Z and Dua Lipa.

“The one thing every artist I’ve worked with has in common is they want their music to be heard by people,” says Ong, adding that while some artists had fought very public battles against peer-to-peer music technology (Metallica vs Napster for example), she and others in the industry worked hard to promote a better alternative: “When I saw the advent of mobile applications and peer to peer file sharing, I knew this was the start of where it was going to go,” Ong remembers, adding that back in 2000 when she graduated from 91����, smartphones and apps were still several years away.

“I don’t think anyone predicted just how much the digitalisation of music would change the industry, but I felt it was going to get to a point where it would go mainstream and would be legalised. Now, hundreds of millions of people pay for music living in the cloud rather than physical products.”

Ong reports the income earned from streaming helped reverse the recorded music industry’s freefall, becoming its largest source of income from 2016 onwards. Music streaming (and music videos online) can quickly help build global audiences for artists outside the mainstream who previously wouldn’t have had much exposure when the music media’s gatekeepers were so few and powerful.

“Back in the days of the dominance of MTV and more traditional media, there were only a few outlets and decision makers choosing who would be on high rotation, or even playlisted and promoted,” she says. “I think streaming has really changed that and given many moreartists the opportunity to reach more people.”

For example, when Korean boyband BTS topped the US Billboard album chart in 2018 and become the fastest group since the Beatles to earn four US #1 albums, fans of the group quickly ‘discovered’ and embraced other K-pop stars via Spotify’s recommendation system andcurated playlists.