this moment is your spring fling

Controversial? Well not really, perhaps if I’d actually heard anything about it this year. So really it barely registers. But let’s face it, the situation for New Zealand musicians has not gotten any better, if anything it’s gone backwards. What has improved is the situation for New Zealand advertising agencies, Creative New Zealand and commercial TV and Radio. Wicked.  

One sad imaginary exercise has prompted me to think about this. 

 Imagine if our signpost for the high quality of New Zealand Music of decades past, Split Enz had existed today as a band trying to “make it”. Maybe they would, by putting in all the hard work that bands today put in trying to promote themselves (99% of the time overseas and I expect 100% of the time now that EMI has taken it’s talent scout out of NZ). One thing I can guarantee however, is they would be having a tough time getting any money out of the NZ government with their weird ways. Shouldn’t getting that kind of support be easy for a band that sums up everything the NZ public supposedly thinks is great and our music should be?  

I actually think the idea of the government supporting creative endeavors is a good one. My major problem is that it seems the funds are massively misdirected towards pleasing dinosaur major label related industries and unimaginative wastes of money.

Earlier this month I talked to a struggling attendee of one of our high profile industry seminars. She described meeting some schmuck from middle echelons of one of the bigger labels from the States who’d been flown in to talk about something he knew nothing about ( how to reach a worldwide audience ) . I guess it’s nothing in the scheme of things but you can tell when someone’s feelings are hurt, they were busting arse just to stay in the game and not getting much love and here is this massive extravaganza of wasted money.  

Yet we still have all these talking heads saying “Good golly, We’ve Done It!”*

Whatever we’ve done, it’s been done very wrong. The way the system seems to work is the bulk of the money seems to go to those at the end of chain. People working for commercial radio stations, major labels, major promoters and advertisers seem to do ok so long as there are one or two big acts they can promote to fulfill their quoto. And who can blame them? These people push product, good or bad. If things were healthy, these people wouldn’t be struggling so much to find varied acts to promote. But these are the people at the end of the line, it’s the beginning that seems to be suffering. The sad thing is we just aren’t spending money on generating or refining talent. Largely the major labels may be disappearing, good riddance probably. 

But what’s to fill the gap of funding for signed bands that aren’t getting a chance taken on them anymore. It seems as though the democratization of media has been a bad thing for the New Zealand music scene. 

It’s it’s own fault really. It’s shot itself in the foot by not keeping up (with a few happy exceptions), but when you have the government initiatives still acting like the two most important things are signing to a major label and touring the same old places for ever it’s a bit of a lost cause. 

Maybe in the future we need to think about spending our money on things that actually affect NZ Music, developing local scenes and venues, helping bands get recorded, taking a chance on non conventional and gosh horror supporting non-profit radio. haha not likely.   *( see the youtube for some light relief )  

 

 The Pod (Julian Barratt + Tim Hope) Community Techno Unit: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Pod - We've DONE IT! BURN OFF MY FLESH!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download