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September Oz 5 Chart:

1. MIRACLE – FOR KING & COUNTRY
2. Only One That Matters – Ethan Beer
3. Never Too Far Gone – Nathan Tasker
4. Here Comes The Day – Justin Michael
5. Feels Like Coming Home – Daniel Hagen

*Compiled by TCM based on Australian Christian radio airplay from the preceding month.

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One Song At A Time: Kate Westwood On Reviving Australia’s Christian Music Scene

She didn’t mean to start a movement — she just got sick of waiting for one. Artist, radio host and Christian music industry insider Kate Westwood shares her heart looking beyond her music and behind Aus Music Showcase.

Kate Westwood never wanted to be on the radio.

That might sound odd, since she now hosts a syndicated show heard on over a dozen Christian radio stations, but it’s true. “I’m a singer. I don’t wanna do that!” she told me plainly. “I never really had a desire to be a radio host.”

If you had told Kate back in 2014, when she first walked through the doors of The Light radio station in Melbourne to answer phones and care for donors, that she would become one of the most important advocates for Australian Christian music in the country, she probably would have laughed.

Kate Westwood doesn’t chase platforms. She chases purpose.

Born in Sydney to a missionary family embedded in YWAM, her parents met in the UK and spent their lives helping young people discover who God is.

“YWAM is really focused on discipleship training,” Kate explained. “To know God and make Him known is the tagline. You learn how to hear God’s voice, how to do justice and mercy, and then you actually go and serve.”

That upbringing shaped everything. Music was constant in her childhood home. Her mum loved Tina Arena and John Farnham, Sandy Patty and Amy Grant. Worship wasn’t just a Sunday morning thing. It was a weeknight living-room thing. The real inheritance wasn’t musical taste, though. It was lived-out Christian values. Hospitality. Service. Kindness.

“My experience wasn’t of a disconnect between mom and dad’s faith and then how they parented us,” she said. “It was all in together. When we needed money, we prayed together. We believed together. We did outreach together.”

Kate Westwood is the host of the Aus Music Showcase syndicated to 15 radio stations across Australia.

That foundation was tested hard in 2011. Kate went through a brutal season of disappointment. She had built an entire imaginary future around a relationship she thought God was blessing, and when it collapsed, she was devastated. She was shattered by the heartbreak, and shaken to the core by the terrifying suspicion that she could no longer trust the voice of God she had depended on her whole life.

“I got so angry with God,” she admitted. “I was like, God, you could have saved me two years of wasted time and heartbreak.”

She fell into a depression. For an optimist like Kate, that was like losing her God-given superpower. And in the darkness of that time, God did what he always does for the brokenhearted. He drew near. He impressed on her heart that she was like a painting with all the colours turned down. Nothing was lost. She just couldn’t see it yet.

That is who God is. He shows up for the shattered. She learned that her faith had become too small. She was brilliant at reaching up to God, and terrible at reaching out to people while she was still bleeding.

“It was never meant to just be Him,” she realised. “It was meant to be both.”

That revelation changed her. It set the stage for everything that came next.

Kate explained that after emerging from the season of feeling invisible, she started looking for the invisible ones, becoming absolutely convinced that no one else should have to walk alone.

That is where Aus Music Showcase came from. Kate had been writing songs and studying entertainment management when she noticed something disturbing. The Australian Christian music scene had practically vanished. The festivals were gone. Toowoomba’s Easterfest had ended in 2015. There was no pipeline for artists who loved Jesus and happened to live in regional Australia.

“There wasn’t anything going on,” she shares. “So it was more that there was a gap. A disruption in the industry.”

Kate remembered that the greatest innovations often come out of the greatest disruptions. So she started asking uncomfortable questions. Why can’t we play more Aussie artists? Why are we waiting for someone else?

“Who am I to wanna run a conference?” she laughed, recalling her internal dialogue. “I’ve only just released one album. Nobody really knows me. But the answer was, no one else is doing it, Kate. Why not you?”

That question is written all over her story. James 4:17 says that if anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. Kate knows exactly what it means to see a need and refuse to look away.

She pushed. She agitated. She spent her own money flying to conferences just to sit by the pool and start conversations. She wrote proposals and made radio pilots. Eventually, the Aus Music Showcase was born.

It started as a Sunday night experiment and grew into a prime-time Friday slot. Now it is a fully syndicated national show with a brand new website that is becoming another go-to hub for Australian Christian artists trying to get heard. Through the showcase, artists can submit their music for free. It gets played across fifteen stations. It gets social media love. It gets radio music directors listening who might never have discovered a voice otherwise.

Kate doesn’t want to be the star. She wants to be the spotlight operator, pointing the beam at people who deserve to be seen.

Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.” Kate lives that passage. She champions risk-takers because she is one. She celebrates individuals like Cate Buchanan, who runs Seek Jesus Festival, because she knows how lonely it is to build something from scratch.

“If we wait for somebody else to do it, it’ll never happen,” she said. “If we wait to get the funding, it’ll never happen.”

Artists can submit their songs to Kate through the Aus Music Showcase website for consideration.

After years of agitating and hoping and praying, all of that risk is culminating in something tangible.

This September, at the Connect 26 event on the Gold Coast, Kate is launching Beyond the Song. It is a one-day artist-focused event attached to the Christian Media and Arts Association (CMAA) Conference, and it is exactly what the industry has been crying out for. A real, practical, roll-up-your-sleeves gathering for artists who need tools, connections, and community.

“We’re gonna look at developing your story and your brand, how to get your song heard, and then also about your future and your team,” Kate explained. “What kind of team will you need to support the career that you want to have? You can’t do it on your own. You’re meant to do it in community.”

There will be networking and performances. Radio producers and music directors will be in the room. Most of all, there will be the simple, electric magic of people realising they are not alone in this.

Kate’s song ‘Weight of the World’ finished #5 on the 2025 end-of-year OZ 10 Chart.

“It’s a big experiment,” Kate admitted. “I would be super happy if there were twenty attendees. Because it is a huge commitment for independent artists. It’s in the middle of the week. If you don’t live on the Gold Coast, it’s a huge expense. But we are encouraging people. You’ve gotta put in the sacrifice. These kinds of things are never going to be easy.”

Kate wants to do it every year. She wants to expand it to every capital city. She dreams of songwriting camps and live showcases and writer hubs where people can build each other up. It is an enormous vision, and she is attacking it with the same stubborn optimism that got her through her darkest season.

“I’m gonna keep agitating,” she promised. “I’m gonna keep having conversations. I’m gonna keep saying there’s more that we can do.”

Kate Westwood is not trying to be famous. She is trying to be faithful.

Like many Christian artists doing it themselves, she has spent well over thirty-five thousand dollars of her own money making music over the last eight years. She knows how brutal this industry is. Instead of guarding her hard-won knowledge like a secret, she is giving it away.

There are echoes from her missionary parents in Kate’s conviction — the obedience, the selflessness. It’s the kind of kingdom work that doesn’t make the headlines but slowly changes hearts through conversations and connections.

If you are an Australian Christian artist reading this, do yourself a favour. Submit your music to the Aus Music Showcase. Check out the new website. If you can scrape together the time and money, get yourself to the Gold Coast in September for Beyond the Song at Connect26.

Because Kate Westwood has been asking herself, “Why not you?” for years now.

And the truth is, I believe that she might be asking it about you.

Follow:

Aus Music Showcase

Website:       www.ausmusicshowcase.com.au

Instagram:   @ausmusicshowcase

Beyond the Song

Location:    Gold Coast
Date:           September 16

Cost:           $110

Register:    https://mediaarts.org.au/theres-more-to-connect

Kate Westwood

Instagram:   @katewestwoodsounds

Spotify:         @katewestwood

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Republished with thanks to Australian Christian Records. Images courtesy of Kate Westwood & Positive Media