Bands often make the mistake – particularly after a long, slow album recording process – of thinking they've done all the hard work when the album is released.

But, realistically, this is only the beginning.


Anthony Coutler.

You arrange gigs and make a video or two, try and get it reviewed in papers and online, perhaps try and get onto national radio or TV shows – whatever you can do to get someone to notice.

One person on this path in Tauranga is Anthony Coutler. Some months ago Anthony released a six-song CD EP called ‘Shaking Her Wings'.

He's since made a couple of videos and recently appeared on Shane Hales' somewhat iffy show on Face TV, ‘Rocking The Planet'.

These are the avenues available for someone who is not a 20-year-old pop star aspirant, particularly since the media has collectively cut right back on music.
There are no music shows on TVNZ; Juice TV has gone.

In fact, there are basically no outlets on TV any more for videos.

Meanwhile, commercial radio – aside from our brave folk at Tauranga's true local alternative Paradise 105.4FM – is programmed from Auckland and only plays new New Zealand music of the ‘20-year-old pop star aspirant' variety – and usually only then with record company support.

The other avenue for promotion is competitions.

There seem to be more and more online competitions all the time, some respectable, some pretty dubious.

But the main thing is you can leverage a bit of publicity from them.

Because simply making music doesn't do it anymore. Release the best album of the year and ‘The Herald' still won't even respond to emails about reviewing it. But, if you win some sort of ‘international' competition then everyone sits up and takes notice. Actually, ‘The Herald' probably still won't bother, unless you come from Auckland – they do struggle with the nuisance of having to report from ‘the provinces'.

The most prominent of these is probably the International Songwriting Competition, where Kiwis have had considerable success. Darren Watson won the blues category a few years back and local songwriter Mike Garner was a runner-up in the Americana section.

They have famous judges and look extremely official.

But, really, the one thing all these competitions have in common is the entry fee. It's about $50 a song for the ISC and similar amounts elsewhere.

That adds up pretty fast over several thousand songs – plenty of dosh to pay those famous judges.

I got an email from Anthony last week. Exciting news! The EP's title track ‘Shaking Her Wings', has been named Best Song, Pop Rock/Ballad at the Akademia Music Awards in Los Angeles. They say: 'Anthony Coulter's hovering vocal communications are deftly augmented by dexterous string and percussion work to make ‘Shaking Her Wings' a meditative but uplifting experience”.

Now I could be churlish and point out the Akademia looks more dodgy than a Trump University degree?

Or that there were 98 ‘Best' winners for June – including one Pelvis Presley – plus five ‘Akademia Executive Top Picks', plus one ‘Honourable mention' – all at $10 a pop to enter. Or that the prize seems to consist solely of getting an online page with your award on it and radio play on the Akademia's own internet radio station. Or even that ‘hovering vocal communications' is about the most pretentious term for ‘singing' I've ever heard!

But that's not the point. The point of these ‘online competitions' is to leverage a bit of publicity from it.

The media in this sadly inferiority-complex-plagued country love awards, particularly from overseas.

If you have an award from overseas, even a dodgy online one, you have more chance of getting a bit of much-needed publicity.

So hats off to Anthony! He got off his butt and entered some obscure awards and came away with the potential to get noticed. And, you see, it works. I'm writing about him right now.

Anyone else wanting to follow this path, or simply spend a few minutes giggling at what the ‘staff' of the Akademia look like, can find Anthony's winning song and everything else at: www.theakademia.com/june2016_bestsong_poprockballad1.html Have fun!

watusi@thesun.co.nz