New Zealand lost its music media, and what we're building to replace it
propelmusic.co.nz37 points by berghoffer 2 hours ago
37 points by berghoffer 2 hours ago
There’s a guy in Wellington making a photocopied weekly gig guide which will do more for the local music scene than this attempt at making a profitable social media. I guarantee it.
> Live performance revenue reached $329 million, well above pre-Covid levels.
Is that inflation-adjusted? And as the article points out, very little of that is local talent, so it's likely some of that's due to the cost of tickets.
As someone who lived in NZ (although Wellington) for 10 years until last year, the local music scene was there, but at least in Wellington, the change in the 10 years I was there was considerable: The earthquake in 2016 progressively caused several venues on Cuba Street to close due to building regulations, and Covid was a significant shock as well, with some of the smaller (although most places in Wellington were small!) gig rooms / bars / breweries that would often host bands closing.
There was still Valhalla, San Fran, The Rogue & Vagabond and others, but it just didn't feel as much was going on other than for things like Cuba Dupa street festival, etc, or the Jazz weekends that would be held.
As the article points out, this is not localised to NZ, it's happening in Australia and the UK as well in terms of venues/pubs closing and live music not being quite the draw it once was because of that.
There's a venue in NZ called "San Fran" ? That's pretty cool
First it was a massage/sauna place called The San Francisco Bathhouse, and then it kept that name when it turned to a live venue. Now it is just San Fran.
No idea how it looked in New Zealand, but after covid "ended"* there were a lot of people who simply wanted to go out - after spending so much time indoors.
I suspect that people went out more in 2023-2025, but then they reversed to the mean + economic impacts (of money printing everywhere) hit.
* by the way, did covid officially ever end? the new variants seem to be still there, but it just stopped being covered by media after Russia invaded Ukraine)
In the US deaths peaked at >450k in 2021 and then fell <80k in 2023. They have roughly halved each year since (on track for ~10k this year. There are about 30-40k deaths each year due to influenza so this isn't really news any more.
Most everyone is vaccinated except the young who seem to have relatively mild infections. Of course there are probably excess cardiac deaths due to immune response, but that's even smaller and much more difficult to measure or determine cause for.
New Zealand locked down less than a lot of countries, but other than people with health problems I see no signs that people aren't going out any more due to Covid.
However due to other reasons people definitely have less money for discretionary activities, especially the youth.
And no, Covid never ended. It's still here, it's still killing and disabling people, but due to vaccines and antivirals it's less prevalent than it was.
What? NZ had one of the strictest, most prolonged and most extreme lockdown regimes in the world. Especially Auckland.
NZ had very strong lockdown but once the country had zero covid there were months of no lockdowns at all.
Other countries had longer lockdowns or even when they didn't people were not going to concerts etc.
Not really.
The international border quarantine was quite extreme, but the rest of the country was (mostly) business as normal.
Yeah, we had a very strict initial lockdown, and closed the border, once the number of cases went to 0 we opened up again, we then had regional lockdowns after cases broke the border quarantine.
Our level 4 lockdown was scored at 95/100 ("extreme") by the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker. Our border lockdowns and MIQ system were extreme and very prolonged stretching into 2022 and even impacted returning citizens.
Our level 4 lockdown didn't last very long.
The strictness index (which is what I'm assuming you're referring to) varied over time as the response changed.
> And yet local artists captured as little as 9 percent of New Zealand streaming, download and physical sales revenue in 2024. In the official end-of-year Top 50 singles chart, exactly one New Zealand track appeared. Radio plays local music, but only two nationwide commercial stations exceeded 20 percent local content.
This seems amazingly high for local content in a small English speaking market, unless that's all just Crowded House.
Seems to have a very narrow focus in terms of variety of music covered
> Propel has published more than 225 articles
Open topic is if anyone is reading those or not.
But decline of quality press & local press is a very big problem.
On another board there is a person who (for free) collects information about people who lost their lives in car accidents during every summer vacation. That person tries to link to articles that described what happened. More and more, there are simply no articles -> because there is no more local press, even a local portal that would write about it.
In a way it's on the people - who dont want to pay for content. Perhaps due to some content shifted to youtube, tiktok or facebook.
I couldn't be more enthusiastic about the local music scene here. But that doesn't mean I'm going to read AI slop about it. If you want to promote the arts, start by using your own words.