Native Tongue is an independent music publisher, with offices in Australia and New Zealand.
Besides acquiring rights to local writers, we also administer the works of overseas writers and catalogues for Australia and New Zealand.
Established in 2003, Native Tongue has built a respected catalogue of local writers. We set out to provide writers with a publishing company dedicated to assisting with the development of their skills as songwriters and composers throughout their careers.

Although we are a small company, we see this is one of our major advantages. It enables us to be far more proactive than our competitors and react quickly to the needs of our clients, whether they be film and television companies, commercial advertisers or the bands of which our writers are members.

We see our role as getting out there and getting things done, working with the band, the management, the record label and the distributor to make things happen.
Our job is to work with you to help you achieve your goals, as a songwriter and in many cases; an artist. We have a broad network of contacts we can utilise in all areas of the business – record companies, distributors, booking agents, promoters, publicists, radio, etc.

We will work with you, your management and record distributor to maximise sales of your record. You probably have most bases covered but there will always be something we can do to help squeeze those extra sales. It may be that we help a band get on a festival bill, provide advice on obtaining touring grants or come up with that song opportunity in a film that breaks through at the box office – who knows – it's an ephemeral business and its not always easy pinning down where things will come from.

If you are looking to place songs with other artists we have a worldwide network of contacts who work songs on that basis. If you want to co-write we will work with you to develop connections with writers you want to work with. If you want to compose film or television scores we are ideally placed to help you realise these ambitions.
We get out there and do the hard yards wherever it is required.
We have over the years developed publishing relationships internationally and through our music supervision business have come to know those companies who work particularly hard gaining sync licenses and pursuing the ancillary income that is available around the world. We have also established a network of international sub-publishers to administer our works around the world. In each case our sub-publishers are established independents with a long term track record of working within their own territory.

Native Tongue also enjoys strong relationships with all the major US, UK, Canadian and European music supervisors and can submit clients works for use in a wide range of projects around the world.

We are also the only publisher with offices and staff on the ground in Australia and New Zealand enabling us to fully represent your copyrights in the key markets in our home territory.
Native Tongue is closely associated with Mana Music, which is the major music supervisor for feature films, television series, and documentaries in Australia and New Zealand. As a result Native Tongue is in a strong position to place its writer's songs in the wide range of projects.

A similar situation applies in respect to television commercials where once again Mana Music is the major provider of licensing services to the advertising agencies.

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AUSTRALIA

Ph +61 3 9445 0500

PO Box 1570
Collingwood, VIC 3066
Australia

Chris Gough - Managing Director
chris@nativetongue.com.au

Jaime Gough - International Manager
jaime@nativetongue.com.au

Daniel Younger - Creative Manager
daniel@nativetongue.com.au

Gaylene Williams - Copyright & Royalties Manager
copyright@nativetongue.com.au

Natalie Bell - Licensing & Admin Assistant
natalie@nativetongue.com.au

NEW ZEALAND

Ph +64 9 378 9667

PO Box 8926
Symonds Street, Auckland 1150
New Zealand

Savina Kim - Creative Manager
savina@nativetongue.co.nz

Contact Form

Native Tongue does not give feedback on unsolicited demos or unsolicited material.



Karl Steven BIOGRAPHY

Karl's father was a film maker, so Karl grew up watching edits being made, replayed, and deliberated over on both film and video, getting a sense of what is at stake when telling a story with pictures. He did his first television jingle at 16, and was soon writing and recording music regularly for TVCs (Mazda, Honda, Whitcoulls, Griffins...), coming up with the theme music for such celebrated and long running series as Squirt, Open Door, and Inside New Zealand, as well as scoring a long list of documentaries (including Top Shelf's "Wahine: The Untold Story", Silver Medalist at the New York Festivals Film & TV Awards and recipient of a Certificate of Creative Excellence at the US International Film & Video Awards Festival 1994).


Karl's composing work for picture is also informed by his background in sound design, which started when he worked for one of New Zealand's first digital audio post production facilities, Mandrill Audio Post.

 

Karl was also a founding member of pop favourites Supergroove, co-writing and co-producing their musical output, including the quadruple-platinum Traction. With the production awards garnered from these recordings, Karl has produced recordings and wrote arrangements for a number of artists, most notably Bic Runga.


Following a successful academic career Karl has made a welcome return to New Zealand and the world of music, film, and television, composing soundtracks and themes for a host of television series and specials; producing and mixing; and recently contributing to the soundtrack of Nova Paul's experimental short film This is Not Dying. He also hosts a radio show on Kiwi FM, is in the pre-production stages of a prospective album with John Rowles and is an ambassador of the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre and member of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.

DISCOGRAPHY & CREDITS