In his teenage years, Gudinski began promoting
dance hall events around Melbourne. managing artists including
Chain and Healing Force. The pair later founded the short-lived music magazine
Daily Planet. Gudinski and fellow music agent Ray Evans formed
Mushroom Records in late 1972. The company's first album was a triple-LP live recording of the 1973
Sunbury Festival. In its first few years Mushroom released albums and singles by some of the most significant Australian rock acts of the period, including
Madder Lake,
MacKenzie Theory,
Matt Taylor,
Ayers Rock, and
the Dingoes. Mushroom struggled to survive for its first two years, hampered by lack of airplay on commercial radio, and the company reportedly came close to folding on several occasions. But the label was dramatically pushed to the forefront of the Australian music scene in early 1975 with the massive success of
Skyhooks, whose debut album ''
Living in the 70's'' became the biggest-selling Australian LP ever released up to that time. In 1977 Gudinski opened the music venue Bombay Bicycle Club in Bourke Street, Melbourne, soon moving it to Sydney Road Brunswick and renaming it
Bombay Rock. This became one of the premier music venues of Australian and international rock bands in Melbourne. Gudinski was convinced to sign expatriate New Zealand band
Split Enz, who had recently relocated to Australia. Although they had only moderate success for the first few years, Split Enz scored huge success in 1980 with the release of their album
True Colours and the hit single "
I Got You", which marked the emergence of
Neil Finn. Through his ownership of Consolidated Rock, which later evolved into the Premier Artists/Harbour Agency group, Gudinski became the major player on the Australian east coast booking circuit, and enjoyed a virtual monopoly on rock music bookings in Melbourne for much of the 1970s. In partnership with others (including Frank Stivala, Philip Jacobsen and Ian James), he diversified his business interests to include most sections of the music industry including venues, concert promoting, merchandise, publishing and recording. In 1988, Gudinski co-founded
Melodian Records with
Ian Meldrum. In the early 1990s Gudinski sold 49% of Mushroom to
News Ltd, who had owned Australia's largest record label,
Festival Records since 1961. He sold his remaining 51% share to News in 1999 for a reported
A$60 million, claiming that the sale was a protest against the changes to Australia's parallel record importation regulations. In November 2005, shortly after the sale of Festival Mushroom's recording division to
Warner Music Australia, Gudinski purchased Festival's publishing division for an undisclosed sum. In 2020, Gudinski created
The Sound, a music show for
ABC TV which was developed out of an online production called The State of Music, which was created to help Australian musicians during the
COVID-19 lockdown. He was also behind the
Music from the Home Front concert, which was organised in nine days, so that artists could perform in the concert on ANZAC Day 2020. ==Public image==