Triple J has just confirmed its newest Music Director.
Claire Mooney is the type of person you would stalk on LinkedIn and wish you could be her (well at least I would).
Still in her 20s, she’s been working for triple J since 2017, and has spent the last ten months as Triple J Unearthed’s director – which, if you didn’t already know, is where artists like Flume, Missy Higgins, Spacey Jane and Rufus du Sol have been discovered.
Now, she’s just been announced as the station’s new Music Director, after the role became externally advertised last October for the first time ever. Sounds to us like it might be in safe hands.
The straight white man monopoly of triple J seems to have met its end. Mooney is the first female Music Director of triple J ever, and she steps into the shoes of Nick Findlay who has held the role for almost 9 years, and who’s now set to become quite the busy bee as he becomes Manager of Music Programming, overseeing triple j, Double J, Unearthed and ABC Country.
He congratulated Mooney, saying “she lives and breathes new music” and “will lead the music that soundtracks the lives of young people in Australia well into the future.”
He’s not wrong – triple j has indeed soundtracked millions of Aussies’ lives and is where many of the tunes that take you back to simpler times of backyard summer barbecues and sunburnt noses were first heard.
Being the one to pick who those artists will be for the next generation is a big gig.
This year’s Hottest 100 countdown had almost twice as many Aussie songs than last year’s after they were pretty much forced to introduce a dedicated Oz-filter to the voting process after 2024’s had less than 30, so Mooney has picked up the role at a perfect time to continue that momentum into the right direction.
