The rise and fall of New Zealand's Music industry

It’s hard to pinpoint quite when the Kiwi music resurgence began, but by the year 2000, the tide was firmly rising. That year saw 12 Kiwi artists enter the top 40. The following year that number rose to 20 and in 2002 it went up to 26.

New Zealand on Air (NZoA) head of music David Ridler, who worked for now-defunct radio station Channel Z at the time, attributes the change to some key breakthrough acts in the late 90s – specifically Supergroove, Bic Runga and The Feelers.

“They were everywhere. That made the record companies go, ‘there’s something here’. And then the arts package and NZoA investment in New Zealand music increased and radio started to change. There was also a new breed of radio programmers coming through who were passionate about New Zealand music.”

Zed frontman King agrees, saying Runga and The Feelers kickstarted the movement. By the early 2000s, he says, attitudes had changed.

“There was a sense of national pride welling up with our music. A sense of ‘we can do this as well as anyone offshore’.

"I think there was a really great batch of songwriting that occurred during that period. A lot of songs that people nowadays still sing along to and know. It was something quite special. At the time we didn’t really understand it or realise what we were in. We only got a sense of it after the fact.”

Chris Caddick was the managing director of EMI Music New Zealand at the time, which went on to sign more than a dozen Kiwi acts during that era, including Pluto, Blindspott, Goldenhorse and OpShop.

The label set a deliberate strategy to release more New Zealand music, he says, as the British-owned company tried to compete with its US-owned rivals.

“We were the weakest of all the international labels in terms of generating American hits,” he explains. “There was a greater need to have more repertoire to meet our targets. It wasn’t just coming on a plane from New York or LA each week. We felt that we might be able to generate more hits by having a great local roster.”

And they did. EMI’s artists dominated the charts and local radio for the better part of a decade, before the label’s New Zealand office closed in 2013.

“EMI as a company was the oldest record company in New Zealand, going back to 1925,” says Caddick. “Its roots were based in a strong history of recording New Zealand artists. It reached its peak in the 1960s and 70s and for whatever reason in the 1980s and early 90s, that seemed to take a back seat. We made a decision collectively that we would become more active in local music.”

The decision coincided with another key development: Helen Clark’s Labour Government.

Two years after taking power, Clark’s Government announced a major funding boost to the arts, officially called the Cultural Recovery Package, which saw an $84 million boost for the creative sector. While that was spread across the wider arts industry – including theatres, museums, dance companies and more – it included an additional $7m annual funding for NZoA and nearly doubled the amount of music funding available.

That year saw NZoA introduce its Phase Four strategy, which included a $50,000 grant for the recording and promotion of albums. Record companies had to match the investment but suddenly the music game was a lot less risky.

“It wasn’t a handout,” explains Caddick, who stresses that a lot of people never fully understood the conditions of the album grant. “It was like having a nice backstop and you knew that if you didn’t succeed, you weren’t going to go down for the count. Given that we were answerable to overseas bosses, it certainly gave us comfort.”

The reality was that artists and labels repaid the grant on a pro-rata basis. As Caddick explains, if you were successful and your album sold well, you ultimately repaid the full $50,000.

The money not only encouraged labels to invest in local artists, it gave musicians the freedom to record in quality studios and improve their production values.

Ridler explains: “If you talk to most musicians, they will say recording an album in a studio is a lot more creatively interesting than just going in for a day or two to record a single. You camp in for a week or two weeks and whole hit songs have been written in studio, in that environment.”

It wasn’t just funding that was changing. In 2002, radio stations committed to a new voluntary target system, aiming to increase the amount of local music they played from 13 per cent to 20 per cent by the year 2006.

Suddenly people were hearing more New Zealand music – and they liked what they heard.

Zed’s Campbell recalls: “All of a sudden New Zealand music really started engaging with the general public and people weren’t just being fed American music and British music. Radio stations starting the voluntary New Zealand music targets and as a result New Zealand music was put on a level playing field with these international artists. And we were a bit more approachable for the public because we were in the country and playing gigs. There was a groundswell.”