The Flo Manifesto

Some woman running Commercial Radio Australia is saying that we don’t produce enough local music to justify playing more than 25% Australian music on commercial radio (25% is the current quota that they need to meet in terms of playing local music).  What a load of crap!!! First of all, why in the world does any country need to produce the same percentage of local music as they play on their radio? I’m sure the French (with quota of 50%) does not produce 50% of the world’s music!!! Adding to that, doesn’t America play local music 75% of the time?? I’m sure they don’t produce 75% of the world’s music either!!

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have the audience change their mentality when it comes to local music.  Feed them great local music and they wouldn’t need to look elsewhere. The only thing we’re doing is making these international artists as well as airlines richer! Festivals fall over their feet trying to book the most famous internationals to draw crowds in. Then they will book local bands to fill the gaps in the festival schedule.

Ahh I have craploads to say about this and I could break it all down but I haven’t got time right now.  I do want to say though that music fans don’t rave on Australian musicians as much as we drool, celebrate, idolise and venerate overseas acts.  Half the time they use “Australia” to refer to Never Never Land!.. as if it’s a fantasy land that doesn’t really exist.

We go on so much about buying “Australian Made” with all the tv commercials and logos etc for public awareness.  Why not do the same for local music?

Michael Chugg has got the right idea:

http://www.dailymercury.com.au/story/2011/09/09/music-industry-and-radio-at-loggerheads/