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

NATIVE TONGUE MUSIC PUBLISHING
PO Box 1570
Collingwood, VIC 3066
Australia

Ph +61 3 9445 0500
Fax +61 3 9445 0502

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

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

Daniel Younger - Copyright & Royalties Manager
daniel@nativetongue.com.au

NEW ZEALAND

NATIVE TONGUE MUSIC PUBLISHING
PO Box 8926
Symonds Street, Auckland 1150
New Zealand

Ph +64 9 378 9667
Fax +64 9 376 7198

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

Miriam Smith - Administration Manager
miriam@nativetongue.co.nz

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Robert Forster BIOGRAPHY

Robert Forster is an Australian singer-songwriter, best known for his work with songwriting partner Grant McLennan, with whom he co-founded The Go-Betweens.

Born 29 June 1957, Forster grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He met McLennan in drama classes at the University of Queensland and, inspired by a mutual love of Bob Dylan and the New York music scene, formed the Go-Betweens in 1977.

The Go-Betweens' initial break-up followed a fruitful span of six classic records, so when principals Robert Forster and Grant McLennan went their separate ways in 1989, there was at least a sense of mission accomplished. At the time, with solo careers embarked upon and new collaborators recruited, few expected the pair to reconvene as the Go-Betweens, which they eventually did roughly 10 years later. With the untimely 2006 death of McLennan came a sickening feeling of permanence, however; the excellent Oceans Apart would serve as the Go-Betweens' true swan song. Making the loss of McLennan all the more painful was Forster's reminiscence in Australia's The Monthly (for whom Forster has become a cultural critic), that "we were on the cusp of something," and that "album number 10 was going to be something special." 

Robert continued writing his column for The Monthly, and in this year received The Pascall Award for Critical Writing.

In September and October 2007 the new Robert Forster solo album The Evangelist was recorded in London. Released around the world in April 2008, it is Forster's first solo album for 12 years.

 

 

DISCOGRAPHY & CREDITS

  • The Evangelist (2008, EMI)
    The Evangelist (2008, EMI)

    It's impossible to listen to Forster's The Evangelist without thinking of Grant McLennan, but to his credit Forster has designed it that way. Three songs were in fact co-written with McLennan, bequeathed to Forster to reveal to the world and break our hearts all over again. "Demon Days" in particular works eerily like a self-penned eulogy, something that Forster was quite aware of: "I played it a couple of days after he died," recalled Forster in a recent interview in The Age, "and it was an extraordinary moment because I was the only other person who knew this song existed and I've got this thing, this masterpiece, which is so fragile, because if I'd died three days after him, the song wouldn't exist."

     

    -Pitchfork

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