The Opinionated Diner

And......... This post was first sent by me to the NZ Radio discussion list, on which I lurk and occasionally post and I had several people, not least of whom was Peter Mac, ask me to post it here, so.... I'm willing to bet anything that the next NZ artist to break abroad will not be signed to a major. Fat Freddies as yet unreleased album is creating a major stir internationally already, although they're largely ignored by the mainstream here...it might be FFD or The Mint Chicks or Greg Churchill, whose had two UK pop charting singles so far or someone else, but the signings to our majors are traditionally pretty uninspired and I see nothing right now to change that opinion (even the bulk of the "indies" signed and funded by majors are included in that...I had the misfortunate to sit in a room with two friends out of the US a few days back..non industry types but music purchasers..as they watched Savage perform our current number one..and I squirmed as they rolled around in hysterics). I absolutely exclude Scribe & Pete M from that though...if Scribe can hold it together they have legs Aly..The only act I can think of signed to a major directly in NZ to get any traction offshore is Hayley W (Enz were on Mushroom and Crowdies on US Capitol then UK Parlophone) and she had to move to the UK operation (Universal NZ gets an override) to make it work. OMC ended up on PolyGram as we simply didn't have the funds to take it to the next step but it's a decision I'll always regret as Poly/Universal made a dogs breakfast of it, with bad decision after bad decision being made in Australia in particular, over which we had little control, and the way Pauly's career was handled after the single is a disgrace. It goes back to my firm belief that majors more often than not simply don't understand anything beyond marketing Which is one of the reasons indies do better than majors in selling NZ acts. The other is the global system where territories have their own priority acts and odd bands from NZ don't hit the radar. Why push a Brooke Fraser in Germany when they have half a dozen acts like that on their own books, all of which have local investment and the jobs of the local A&R guy /gal who signed then riding on them. Dead in the water before they start....