New Zealand music industry thrives in isolation

The successful delivery of New Zealand’s summer festival season in the midst of the COVID pandemic is giving up-and-coming kiwi musicians an early boost to their careers.

With border restrictions making it difficult for international acts enter the country, local acts have filled the gaps in festival line ups usually reserved for international artists. 

“We’ve had to look a lot harder at who is already here,” says Gerry Paul, the director of Wellington’s CubaDupa festival, “local musicians have all stepped up a tier and that’s brought through a new wave of musicians who may not have had a look-in this summer.”

Despite the absence of international acts, New Zealand’s summer festivals have still proven to be a hit with audiences. 

“It’s been a really buoyant summer,” says Hamish Pinkham, programme director and co-owner of Rhythm and Vines, “we thought that ticket sales would slow up this year, but people still want to come whether it’s kiwi acts or otherwise.”

As a result, newer artists have had the opportunity to play to audiences they didn’t previously have access to, resulting in a larger fan-base and further performance opportunities.

“Once you get a bit of exposure in front of 20,000 people, your streams go up and your phone calls start getting replied to.”

Artist managers are confident that even with the border opening to Australia, and by extension Australian touring acts, local artists will be able to maintain the growth they’ve seen this summer.

“It has shined a light on a lot more of the talent that we have within New Zealand,” says Poppy Tohill, who manages recent international success BENEE.

“It will help for when international acts start to come in and are looking for acts to support them; they’ll bring some of [our local] bands on rather than bringing other bands with them.”

Music manager Poppy Tohill sees a bright future for New Zealand artists whose careers have benefitted from the lack of international performers on New Zealand’s summer festival line up.

There is worry, however, that the limited talent pool will result in audiences growing tired of seeing the same acts. More popular artists have turned down performance opportunities to leave them open in the future. “It is something we do have to be weary of,” says Ms Tohill, “New Zealand is such a small place, it’s so easy to quickly play everywhere.”

However, these fears may be unfounded. Statistics released by Recorded Music NZ show that in the 2020 calendar year, 20.95% of all music played across New Zealand’s radio stations was by local artists — the largest it has been since records began. The previous record of 20.7% was set in 2005.

In a media statement released alongside this statistic, NZ On Air’s head of music, David Ridler said, “despite 2020 being a hugely challenging year it was very encouraging to see local audiences loving local hits.”Chief executive of the Radio Broadcasters Association, Jana Rangooni is also quoted saying, “it’s so great to see the depth of talent in New Zealand today producing such good music and it’s not surprising Kiwis want to hear.”

NZ artist BENEE performs her song Supalonely at the 2020 NZ Music Awards; which hit the international charts after it went viral on TikTok as the majority of the globe went into COVID-19 lockdowns.