May 25, 2005

Horse 346 - What You Say Lyla?

The week ended 22 May has had two rather interesting bits of info about Oasis's first single revealed, and also a little spiel into why you won't hear the song on Australian Radio.

Lyla debuted at No.1 in the UK which makes it Oasis' 7th single to debut at the top of the charts. The thing that's made it impossible for record companies in the UK is where to send to royalty cheques. It seems that Oasis had been trying to ditch Sony Music for quite some time and so had set up an independant label - Big Brother Recordings. The thing is that the tracks for the album had to be recorded in studios and mixed, so the production of the album was actually done in the houses of 6 labels.
The copyrights on the first single for the three songs are to Sony, EMI and Universal. As you could imagine this has created a nightmare for the radio stations who have the record companies as shareholders.

In Australia their ownership is more overt with Sony/Virgin having a controlling stake in the Austereo network (2Day FM and Triple M) and EMI and Warner owning Nova. WS, MIX, and 96.1 don't as a policy play first run music and JJJ isn't driven by commercial interests at all.

So this means that Lyla prior to the official launch got precisely 0 plays on Australian radio before the launch and with it being on an indepedant label, this figure isn't likely to vary unless it's included in a chart show.

Despite this it debuted at No.23 in Australia which must mean that people like myself have bought it without hearing a single note, or unless they heard it on cable radio or downloaded it before the release date.

So I'll rock out to this song by myself along with the UK (I got mine from HMV UK) in the knowledge that you'll never hear it - unless you buy it somehow.

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