Ray Columbus has declared that graduates of the Nelson School of Music Contemporary Performance Course are something pretty special, that the school was the best in the country, and that New Zealand is second only to Ireland as a place to launch a music career.
It’s an odd turnaround from a few years back (prior to the NZ Government’s Arts Recovery Package), when Ireland was held up as this great and glorious example that we could never hope to emulate unless New Zealand radio instituted compulsory music quotas. In fact, it turns out that the industry could actually be quite accommodating when it comes to playing NZ music without mandatory quotas, if only you know what buttons to push.
But Murray Cammick would probably disagree that NZ’s all that crash hot at the pop music success thing. Sure, per head of population, your chances of being played on the radio – even having an album marketed internationally – are pretty good (relatively speaking)… but international sales are not something we’ve managed to quite crack yet – particularly in the world’s biggest market.
Comparing U2, The Corrs and Ronan Keating to The Datsuns, Bic Runga and Greg Johnson might be premature.
Still, wait till the AUT Creative Industries major in the Bachelor of Communication Studies kicks off. It’s music management we’re lacking – we’ve got the talent, songwriting, energy and radio support stuff all pretty much sorted out.
