Then and today ... Hauraki pioneers Ian Magan, John Monks, Peter Telling, Rick Grant and Lorraine McArthur broadcast pop music on vinyl from the Tiri II in the 1960s. Photo / NZ Herald
Then and today ... Hauraki pioneers Ian Magan, John Monks, Peter Telling, Rick Grant and Lorraine McArthur broadcast pop music on vinyl from the Tiri II in the 1960s. Photo / NZ Herald
'Pop' was once such a dirty word that the first commercial radio station had to be run from a boat outside NZ's 3-mile limit. Now, the 15-year-old granddaughter of one of those original Hauraki pirates has released her own homemade pop single on iTunes — anyone can download it to their mobile phone. The world of music has changed and her granddad says he doesn't understand it any more
They were there for three and a half years, moored off Great Barrier Island, day in, day out, through fair weather and foul. The "Radio Hauraki pirates" - folk heroes of a kind, battling weather, wind, bad frequencies and bureaucracy to bring kids the music they wanted to hear.
It was 1966 and New Zealand radio wasn't up to much. Under direct ministerial control since 1936 through the National Broadcasting Service, its content was regulated and controlled. Private commercial radio no longer existed and public radio programming was staid, conventional and slanted towards an older audience.
It was in this musical landscape that a youthful Ian Magan began his broadcasting career as a DJ on Wanganui's regional 2XA station, which fed listeners a steady diet of yesterday's hits. But 22-year-old Ian was a music lover, and provincial radio wasn't where he wanted to be. And when he started hearing whispers of a new radio station about to break the rules in New Zealand's biggest city, he wanted in.
It was to be called Radio Hauraki. It would be anchored three miles (4.8km) offshore - outside the purview of broadcasting laws - and play the music of the day. So Ian packed his bags and headed north to help create New Zealand musical history.
Those heady days of ground-breaking radio are about to be relived in a New Zealand movie titled 3 Mile Limit. Starring Matt Whelan (Go Girls) and Bruce Hopkins (Lord of the Rings), it's a dramatic rendition of Radio Hauraki's years at sea.
With tales of arrests, DJs lost at sea, government conspiracies and more, the story of the Radio Hauraki pirates has long been a movie in waiting. The story of how they fought the powers that be and won (they played a big part of the deregulation of the radio waves) is part of New Zealand folklore.
Ian, now a 74-year-old grandfather, still works in the music industry - he owns touring company Pacific Entertainment. His 41-year-old daughter Tracy Magan has years of touring experience and a record label under her belt. His son-in-law Damian Alexander, 35, was the lead singer of Blindspott (now performing as Blacklistt).
And his granddaughter Jilly Magan has just released her first single online at the age of 15.
Gone are the record players, the AM frequencies, the power of the record label. We now live in an age of digital freedom, where anyone with a computer and instruments can release music to an international audience. And the experience of three generations of Magans gives a glimpse into how far the industry has changed over the past five decades.
The story of the release of Ian Magan's granddaughter's single in September gives an excellent snapshot of how music works in our digital age.
Today, Ian Magan's granddaughter, Jilly Magan, has an electronic single that can be downloaded anywhere in the world.
Jilly's story starts
much the same as that of another North Shore secondary school student, Grammy-winning Lorde. It started with a project at Kristin School, which Jilly attends. It ended as an internationally distributed single. Welcome to the music industry, 2014.
Jilly was brought up in a world of music - her mum Tracy, a promoter and label owner; her granddad a musical pioneer. Her stepdad Damian was a Kiwi rock star.
Her early memories include backstage passes, live-in celebrities (Anika Moa, Jason Kerrison from OpShop and Annabel Fay all stayed in the family home at Herne Bay).
And she's played guitar and piano, and been singing, for years. So it made sense that when she was asked to do a year-long project on "anything" that she would choose music. "I love music, and had been writing songs for awhile, so I thought it would be great for my project."
Jilly had been involved with the school choir, had a strong voice and the resources of her musical family. So writing and recording a single to be presented on CD at the end of the exercise seemed an ideal project.
And as it turned out, the creation of a fully formed single proved a much-needed catharsis for Jilly during a tough year.
First, Jilly's grandmother - with whom she was very close - died in Ireland. This was followed by the death of a much loved cousin, Mark Didsbury, who passed away in a helicopter accident near Turangi. Then an uncle on the same side of the family died of cancer.
Jilly's song, Light, was a reaction to these tragic events, a way to help her process all her grief.
"The song is about the wonderful things these families brought to us when they were alive," says her mum Tracy. "It focuses on their lives, rather than death."
Tracy was friends with York Street studio manager Jeremy McPike so studio time was easy to arrange. Once Jilly had crafted the song, she went to the studio with the guitarist from her dad's band to record it.
"I wasn't that happy with the first recording," Jilly says.
"So I gave it to Carl Vilisini who does the beats in Blacklistt to work on. It came back sounding amazing."
Her dad, a graphic designer by trade, did the photography and design for the CD, and Jilly felt the finished result was so good she should investigate releasing it.
She thought she needed to be signed to a label to release a single on iTunes, but found out this wasn't the case.
"I discovered a website called CD Baby, which allows you to upload your song and have it made available on all the major digital music distribution networks - iTunes, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube."
CD Baby also tracks how the music is selling; at the time of speaking Jilly had sold 200 digital copies of her single.
"It's so exciting checking every week to see how it's going."
The ease with which Jilly was able to distribute her music is remarkable, especially considering the uphill battle many artists had getting noticed in the not-so-distant past. Tracy set up Siren Records in 2000 for this reason - to provide a label for artists who may otherwise have gone unnoticed.
1990s, Tracy - who had been a successful promoter, first with her dad's company and then independently - became aware that the New Zealand music industry wasn't catering for many great, less mainstream artists.
"Bands were falling through the gaps," she says.
"There was the need for a label that represented artists that didn't fit anywhere else."
In those pre-digital days, record labels were the key to a band's success. The CD was king, backed by radio play, tours and music videos, and to achieve these milestones bands had to be signed.
"It was the ideal time to start a record label," says Tracy.
One of Siren's earliest successes was Goldenhorse, and it also signed OpShop.
"One of the greatest moments of my musical career was when the Goldenhorse album went gold," Tracy says.
"Everyone had told me to give up on it, and it took two years of hard slog, but when we reached that milestone it was all worth it."
But the digital revolution was on its way. As early as 1999, websites such as Napster started offering the tools for people to share music as MP3s online.
In 2001, Apple released its first iPod, designed to be used in conjunction with iTunes. The development of a legal, paid-for music download program, which enabled the buyer to pick and choose songs from any artist's album release, was the death knell for the label and CD music industry.
Tracy realised the industry was in for a shake-up early on.
"I became aware in the early- to mid-2000s that the traditional way of running a record company wasn't going to work any more."
So in 2010, Tracy and business partner Adrien de Croy scaled down the label, and stopped signing new bands.
In Tracy's opinion, the digital technology revolution has been a two-edged sword.
"The artists have more power. They can release their music themselves, and not have to worry about record companies. And it's not as expensive to make records.
"But on the other hand, it's CD sales that generate money for an artist. And while there will always be a market for them, the returns are diminishing.
"I think the future is streaming, I believe that's where the bulk of the revenue will soon be coming from. The music industry as a business will continue to find its way monetising good artists and songs, I don't think that will ever change."
She says the music industry will continue to play a vital supporting role for artists.
"The people who work in the industry are as crucial to success as a good song or songwriter is. From what I've seen, no musician has ever made it without at the very least a good manager."
But she worries about how bands in the future will get the support they need. "Where will the next U2, the next Rolling Stones come from? Labels invest in new bands for years before they achieve international acclaim. They just don't have money to do this any more."
Tracy's musician husband has seen the same decline in CD revenue. From West Auckland, Damian Alexander started his musical career in his teens, playing music at parties with mates. His band Blindspott formed in 1997 and soon garnered a fan base.
The band was signed to EMI for a distribution deal in 2001, but the releases proved so popular that the previously cautious label signed them for an album.
Blindspott was released in 2002 and went platinum on its first week of release.
Another album and more singles followed - the song Phlex went to No3 in the charts in 2003 - before the band took a break in 2007, mainly because of family commitments. They reformed as Blacklistt in 2009 and that band's first album Blacklistt went to No1 late last year.
Alexander says the reduction in CD sales has been hard for bands. "There is definitely a drop off in income from record sales," he says. "Bands that used to be able to sit back and rely on their royalties now have to tour. And you have to work twice as hard to make the same amount of money.
"But at the same time, there is more music around, and more people are interested in music than ever before. And live music is incredibly popular."
The waters of the digital revolution are choppier than any of the waves that rocked the Hauraki Pirates in 1966.
The question for Ian Magan is whether the convenience of digital music will trump the passion of live music, the nostalgia for the music we grew up to.
There's still a big audience for fans of the live music of previous decades, he says. "I just brought over The Hollies for a tour of Australia and New Zealand and it was completely sold out."
Old technology is also making a comeback. Vinyl LP sales hit a 22-year high in the United States last year with six million sales; the figure is low but the climb is huge; in 2008 one million vinyl albums were sold.
But it's not enough. Ian says the brave new digital world "has changed everything".
"Once, pop music was played by pirates, for teenage rebels. Now it's played by computers, for office workers in elevators. Digital ticketing has revolutionised the way we work; radio is all automated. I find radio quite soulless now."
Worst of all, Ian says, the music itself has changed.
"I don't really understand much of the music that's popular these days."
