Discovering new NZ music in the streaming age is getting harder – what's the future for local artists?
By Oli Wilson, Catherine Hoad, Dave Carter and Jesse Austin-Stewart* of
Kiwi artist Tiki Taane performs at the Eletric Avenue fstival in Christchurch in February 2024.
Photo:
Electric Avenue / Team Event
New Zealand Music Month turned 25 this year, and there's been plenty to celebrate - whether it be Mokotron's Taite Prize-winning 'Waerea', Lorde's recent return (though not to New Zealand - yet), or the fact that live performance revenues post-Covid have been strong.
But for new and emerging local artists, Music Month also highlights a lack of visibility on streaming services and commercial radio, which increasingly favour already famous artists, including ones whose heydays were decades ago.
During a month when music fans have been encouraged to stream local, see local and buy local, so far the only homegrown artists to appear in this week's New Zealand Top 40 Singles chart are Lorde and K-pop star Rosé.
Recently published data shows that as little as 9 percent of New Zealand streaming, downloads and physical sales revenue is going to local artists. Despite this, according to NZ on Air, 49 percent of New Zealanders stream music every day. In fact streaming has recently surpassed radio as the main way audiences discover new music, with growing influence from TikTok and Instagram.
On Spotify, which approximately one in three New Zealanders use every day, only one local track - Corella's 'Blue Eyed Māori' - featured in the 2024 top-50 year-end local playlist. Streaming increasingly privileges and skews towards established releases from well-known artists, and other artists have little control over social media algorithms.
While radio remains relevant, with 46 percent of New Zealanders listening daily, only two nationwide commercial radio stations played more than 20 percent local music in 2024.
Tom Scott of Home Brew performing at the Electric Abvenue festival in Christchurch.
Photo:
Nick Paulsen
The Official Aotearoa Music Charts' End of Year Top 50 Singles provide another useful indication of local music market share. These charts draw on a wide range of sales and streaming data, and aim to provide an authoritative snapshot of what New Zealanders were buying and listening to in that year.
Since Covid, we have seen a sharp decline in local artists featuring in these charts. In 2024, the only New Zealander to feature was Corella's 'Blue Eyed Māori', and only four New Zealand albums featured in the End of Year Top 50 Albums, three of which were compilations primarily made up of earlier releases.
Corella and Gracie Moller.
Photo:
TAHI
While Covid lockdowns and border closures hugely disrupted the live music sector, we also saw audiences engaging with a lot more local music. Summer festival Rhythm and Vines sold out an all Kiwi lineup, and the amount of local music on radio reached its highest peak since records began.
This suggests visibility, discoverability and chart success have little to do with the amount or quality of local music being produced. Instead, they are the result of structural changes in the music industries.
Internationally, this has been linked to the market consolidation and dominance of a small number of big players at the expense of local artists, industry and infrastructure.
Lorde performs with Charli XCX at Coachella 2025 last month.
Photo:
Screenshot / Coachella / YouTube
As global platforms such as Spotify and TikTok have increased their influence on audiences' ability to discover New Zealand's music, it's hard to see a future where business-as-usual will improve the situation for local artists and audiences.
There are potential solutions, however. Australia has committed to imposing local content quotas on international streamers, and Canada has instituted a revenue sharing system between global streamers and broadcasters.
Unlike similar markets, such as Australia and Norway, New Zealand lacks a strong public youth broadcaster. Dedicated investment in this area could help support targeted strategies to promote local music.
Changes in the way local music is funded and nurtured could also help. The government currently funds NZ on Air and the Music Commission, but they have different objectives and obligations. Merging them might streamline decision making and recognise the interconnectedness of the live and recorded music sectors.
If steps aren't taken soon, New Zealand will struggle to support a thriving local music economy, and New Zealanders will continue to miss out on hearing themselves in the music they listen to.
With Music Month drawing to a close, there needs to be a commitment to structural changes that, over time, will see the development of a year-round celebration of New Zealand music.
*Oli Wilson is Professor & Associate Dean Research, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa - Massey University; Catherine Hoad is Senior Lecturer in Critical Popular Music Studies, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa - Massey University; Dave Carter is Associate Professor, School of Music and Screen Arts, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa - Massey University; Jesse Austen-Stewart is Lecturer, School of Music and Screen Arts, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa - Massey University.
This article was first published by
The Conversation
.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
33 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Morning Report Essentials for Thursday 5 June 2025
food money 21 minutes ago In today's episode, questions are being raised about why the Prime Minister's office did not know that a senior press secretary was investigated by police last year, it's a worrying time for residents from 70 homes - as the Tauranga-Taupo River is threatening to breach its bank, the Grocery Commissioner says major supermarkets and large suppliers use their power to set unfair terms, hurting small suppliers and new competitors, Auckland University has been told to pay more than $200,000 to microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles, former prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern has put herself back in the media spotlight this week - giving a string of interviews - here and overseas to promote her new memoir, and Black Caps coach Gary Stead's successful seven years in charge of the national cricket side is over.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Wellington employment market 'pretty Hunger Games', jobseeker says
Photo: 123RF After about a year of job hunting in Wellington, communications experts Rebecca Thomson and Emily Turner have seen a lot. Sometimes they apply for a job and get no response. Other times, the job remains advertised while interviews are happening. In one case, applying for a three-month contract was to involve a full 45-minute interview, then a coffee chat - but then the advertiser decided not to fill the position. "It feels pretty Hunger Games out there, sort of far more people than jobs, across the board," Thomson said. "It can be like a really bad dating situation," Turner said. "It's like permanently being ghosted from a very bad date, or not even a date because that would be the interview … it's putting your best foot forward, doing some really good chat and banter and thinking it's all going really well, and then nothing." Turner said she had about six interviews for roles, from about 20 applications. "I've got a very clear approach of what I'm applying for, I don't do a sort of scatter gun approach, I apply for roles that I know I've got a clear go at getting." She said she had asked recruiters how many people were applying for senior communications roles and had been told that it could be 80 to 100. Thomson said she had picked up freelance work along the way. "But in terms of full-time employment it's been a year. We're both highly skilled people that have worked on an array of projects and we're not the only ones." The pair have started an informal network for Wellington job hunters, where people can get together to support each other and share tips and information about the employment market. "We set it up to get to be somewhere where people can meet and have a chat in a casual, friendly environment," Thomson said. "It's tough out there and people are mentally finding it tough ." Some people want advice on how to put mortgage payments on hold, how to cover the cost of car registration or body corporate fees without regular income, but other times the network might share details of jobs that might suit other people. Thomson said from the initial meeting with two of them, their next meeting attracted eight. Another meeting was planned for this week and more people were offering their support online. "I've had a few DMs (direct messages) from people saying 'I can't come but this is great'," Thomson said. Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, said it was unlikely the Wellington employment market would turn around soon . "There's certainly not any signs that any time soon the pressure from government is going to change on either employment numbers or departmental spending. "Often what we've seen in the past, if we went back to the previous National government from 2008 onwards they had a sinking lid on employment, it was not as tough but reasonably tough, but at the same time they had a bit more room fiscally so there was more consulting work going on. This time the pressure is very much on both sides." Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan. Photo: Supplied He said the public sector crackdown was having a flow-on effect on the private sector in Wellington. "It may be after 18 months we're through the worst of it but it's hard to see it turning around and employment picking up any time soon." The annual average unemployment rate in Wellington City was 4.8 percent in the year to March, up from 3.4 percent in the previous 12 months. Kiernan said Wellington had previously had unemployment well below the national average but the gap had closed. Jarrod Kerr, chief economist at Kiwibank, said he thought it could be six months before the Wellington situation improved, "but probably more like a year". "It's the harsh reality of an RBNZ(Reserve Bank)-induced recession and significant cuts in the public sector. We forecast an improvement, which keeps getting delayed, by the end of the year, and we look into 2026 with more confidence." Thomson said anyone who wanted to join the network could find them on LinkedIn. "We wanted to keep it sort of friendly and open - people don't have to join some page to be part of it … it's a space to decompress and have a coffee or tea and chat with some like-minded people." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
NZ soldiers leave for Southern Hemisphere's leading military exercise
File photo. New Zealand Defence Force personnel and vehicles in 2023. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone New Zealand soldiers are leaving for the Southern Hemisphere's leading military exercise, the first since the government announced ramped up defence spending. The 35,000-strong exercise Talisman Sabre is a bilateral Australia and US military exercise with 17 other nations taking part. The Defence Force is sending about 700 personnel to northern Australia. Ahead of new defence funding the NZDF is taking some light armoured vehicles over 20 years old, which are likely vulnerable to the latest killer drones. Meanwhile, the Australians will be field-testing an uncrewed machine-gun double-track, and the Americans will be shooting precision missiles and deploying space-age data networks. Talisman Sabre aligns with US efforts to build a vast network of sensors and shooters across the Indo-Pacific, called Combined Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (CJADC2). The Defence Force said a key goal is to be able to integrate its capabilities into Australian and US command relationships. The objective was to prepare, project and exercise NZDF capabilities integrated into the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and INDOPACOM - America's largest military command in the Indo-Pacific. That included command and control (C2) elements. INDOPACOM has recently deployed precision missiles that can be fired from land against naval targets, in the Philippines near a strategic chokepoint south of Taiwan. Talisman Sabre has become a testing ground for new missiles and drones. Australia is poised to co-produce missiles for the US, and Defence Minister Judith Collins has said New Zealand would get missiles, though Budget 2025 had no funding for that. Defence consultant and NZDF veteran Josh Wineera said Talisman Sabre was uniquely large Down Under and allowed the partners real-world "benchmarking of tactics and capabilities". "It will be really interesting to see whether the capabilities intended to be purchased still fit neatly into what the Australians are doing because that's what the Defence Capability Plan is about," he said. However, the partner countries were confronted with US networking goals aiming to step up warfighting to "fibreoptic" speed. "Because of this being automated, and it's in the information space where decisions and sensors are acting so quickly, this will be a real challenge, I think, for those decision-making levels to make sure that sovereignty is not being compromised," said Wineera. File photo. New Zealand Defence Force Bushmaster vehicles. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The first 150 New Zealand military personnel leave on Thursday for the exercise which rins from 13 July to 4 August. They are taking several new Bushmasters, but also some Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) that in 2003 were given a 25-year lifespan, and were yet to be revived under the $12 billion defence capability plan with new turrets and networked comms. The military exercise is also drawing in AI companies, such as Virginia's billion-dollar that said it was going along to "help military forces act faster by updating AI models in real-time, improving coordination between sensors and shooters". The Australian military said the exercise was to build combined joint warfighting capabilities. At Talisman 2023, the Australians tested their field drone, ironically called an armoured "personnel" carrier, the M113AS4. The carrier runs autonomously but requires a human to aim and shoot its gun. It is expected to feature again this time in experiments majoring in human-machine-integration, or HMI as the Pentagon has dubbed it. All sorts of drones, but especially aerial ones, have dominated Ukraine's war with Russia since 2022. The exercise in northern Australia is the biggest ever, and the stakes are higher than ever, too. The Pentagon states that Talisman "reflects US, allies' commitment to Indo-Pacific". This is at a time when the Trump Administration's relations with Europe's NATO members are under huge strain, and US commanders have repeatedly stressed fears of a growing conventional and nuclear threat from China. America sees itself in a race to bring advanced technology, and its allies, on board its evolving battlefield network, though even before Trump began his second term, some lawmakers expressed concern the Pentagon had bitten off more than it can chew with the scale of CJADC2. "We seek to network our efforts across domains, theatres, and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the US military, in close cooperation with the rest of the US government and our Allies and partners, makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear," Joe Biden's Deputy Secretary of Defence Dr Kathleen Hicks in 2022 . Joint exercises like Talisman Sabre tap into US$2 billion annual funding from within US$17 billion 'Pacific Deterrence Initiative'. The NZDF is already active in two cornerstone Combined Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (CJADC2) efforts - the US Army's Project Convergence Capstone, and the US Navy's Project Overmatch, which NZ signed on to in February. The government said it was usual to sign on like this, unannounced to the public. Several dozen New Zealand personnel went to Convergence's annual exercise in March in the Mojave Desert, looking to identify "potential experimentation", newly released OIA documents showed. The records mentioned experiments with targeting sensors and electromagnetic warfare, and ensuring NZ Army software could "effectively interface" with partners. Two capability demonstrations had "particular relevance" to NZDF - but these were blanked out. Wineera said Project Convergence and Talisman Sabre gave insight about autonomy of decision-making. "Some of our legal staff need to be thinking about all of that flow that's happening at the same time, to ensure that our New Zealand contribution sticks within what would be our national rules of engagement." The Project Convergence records also showed the NZDF was so strapped for resources there was talk of having to pull out, but that then it would the miss out as it did not have these capabilities itself. The technology at hand includes, for example, Maven, a software system from Palantir that in recent US Army tests was 100 times faster than the most efficient targeting team in the Iraq war. One US unit working with this, known as Shadow Operations Centre, is linked to the NZDF. "We are partnering with Australia and New Zealand Battle Labs to connect" to the Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network in 2025, Shadow Operations Centre said last year. File photo. A New Zealand Defence Force LAV driving through the bush. Photo: NZDF Resources for more exercises like Talisman Sabre are on their way. Budget 2025 made millions more available for them, alongside millions more for advanced technology or upgrading old tech though there was no mention in it of new turrets for the LAVs. Some amounts were not specified, but $80m over four years was set aside for overseas deployments, $11m for interoperability and $8m for increasing engagement with security partners overseas. "It can be expected that as new capabilities prioritised in the DCP are released in time, these would be incorporated into future iterations of Talisman Sabre as our contribution to this important multinational, multi-domain exercise grows," the NZDF said in a statement. As for taking the LAVS along, "regardless of future programmes the LAVs are still a key combat vehicle for the NZ Army and form a crucial part of the NZ Army's current combat system", it said. Twenty of the LAVs were sold to Chile for just under $1 million each two years ago. A recent online discussion of the LAVs said they had some limited uses but were very vulnerable to the type of drones now common in the Ukraine-Russia war, including one that can hit 110kmh and destroy a tank. Six Bushmasters heading to Talisman Sabre have had their comms upgrade completed, Defence said. The project to upgrade all 43 Bushmasters has been delayed, and Budget 2025 signalled operational savings of $13m from "rephasing" the project.
