When Canadian author Matthew Goody dug into the research for Needles & Plastic, his comprehensive 2022 “illustrated discography” of Flying Nun Records, one thing stood out for him: how much of the story was there in our daily newspapers.
“I remember going into it the first time and realising how much weekly coverage was in the newspapers there back then and it blew my mind,” he told one interviewer. “It makes New Zealand stand out in that regard.”
In Christchurch, where the label was born, he was able to bury himself in microfiche and read Rob White in the Christchurch Star and David Swift and Tony Green in The Press. I was there too: the year Flying Nun launched, 1981, was my first year in journalism, at the Star. Before long, I moved to Auckland to be deputy editor of Rip It Up, a national music magazine that printed what now seems an astonishing 30,000 copies a month.
If you saw a copy of the Auckland Star’s entertainment pages from the early 1980s, you might be struck by the sheer volume of live-music advertising. Netflix was decades away and there was a lot less competition for the leisure dollar. Alongside the listings, you might catch Colin Hogg telling everyone to see an unknown reggae band from Auckland called Herbs.
Things have changed, to put it mildly. Few new releases are reviewed in mainstream publications, apart from the Listener. Even live reviews are rare. Former Herald entertainment writer Chris Schulz observed recently in his blog that two large festivals at Go Media Stadium at Mt Smart had gone unremarked. Well, almost: he granted that Stuff had contacted him seeking to use his phone footage of an onstage fire, “but there was no critical analysis, nothing saying anything good or bad about the event”.
The implications for local artists have also been traversed in a piece by Duncan Greive of the Spinoff (he described “infrastructural decay” in the media about music) and a report for NZ On Air by composer and industry figure Victoria Kelly. They all dwelt on versions of the same question: how on earth do local artists let audiences know they’re alive? And if they’re any good?
This has been a long time in the making. The legendary music papers I wrote for in Britain were gone even before Spotify made irrelevant an essential pretext of record reviews: should I spend my money on it? But good reviewers also help listeners approach unfamiliar music. Without that, we just listen to more of what we know. (Recorded Music NZ this year rebalanced its chart formula to take more account of actual sales, even though they are tiny, because charts based on streaming plays excite no one.)
There is always radio, but only 10-12 local songs a year will make “A-rotate” on commercial music stations. RNZ’s Music 101 fights the good fight, although a midweek afternoon spot reaches more ears. But it’s the Student Radio Network stations that really underpin the ecosystem. When Benee played her first shows in K Road basements, bFM played her songs. The stations’ continued existence relies heavily on about $700,000 in annual “platform” funding from NZ On Air. To be frank, the rest of the music funding system does, too.
All this places a burden on young artists. They are smarter and more businesslike than their forebears, much more focused on the wider world. But they’re asked to do a lot; to write their own press by constantly making social media content, and to find new ways of supporting themselves. We should wish them well. Because every now and then – remember the concerts after the Christchurch mosque massacres? – we are reminded that we need there to be songs.
