Launching in June, it’s a sparkling new app that confronts several major issues in the local music industry: the lack of financial return for Kiwi musicians from streaming services (Spotify, especially, and YouTube), and a richer, digital album experience for those, like Greive, who have a deep love of music.
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Lume starts with a launch roster of up to 25 albums (or “lumes” as they’ll be dubbed) – the likes of Tiki Taane (who famously removed his music from Spotify), Fur Patrol and Shapeshifter are already on board.
Tiki Taane’s album Past, Present, Future will be one of 25 available on Lume when it launches in June.
Unlike the streams and singles that drive Spotify’s model, Lume showcases a full album experience – and not just the music. Alongside that will be exclusive creative material, such as handwritten lyrics, photography, videos, or different iterations of a song and album as they came to life.
Lume contains a number of features, from nesting multiple versions – live, demo or acoustic – of a song, to the ability to add music as an album cycle progresses.
Greive and his team are drawing on these full album experiences and exclusive material as Lume’s unique selling points in a sea of streams.
But there’s also a drawcard for the artists themselves.
For a one-off price of $25, the consumer receives the artist’s album and they keep it forever. There are no subscription fees.
The artist and their partners, in turn, receive 80% of that revenue – a complete turnaround from the Spotify model. Greive estimates a musician would need to attract 3000 streams on Spotify just to match the 80% return from one Lume purchase.
“People don’t have to leave Spotify, we anticipate 99% of people won’t,” says Greive.
Lume founders and shareholders: Tim Harper (left), Justin Warren, Sacha Judd and Duncan Greive. Photo / Todd Karehana
But Lume will be of immense interest to those he describes as “music people”, those who want that deeper, richer experience.
“The ambition is to get a better return for artists and rights holders and to give fans access to things which would normally stay hidden,” he says.
“And to create what we consider a new format, like a successor digital version of the CD and the LP. It’s something that takes advantage of the possibilities of the internet in a way that we haven’t seen done before.”
Greive further says in a media release: “Streaming services have been a great deal for consumers, but for many artists and serious music fans, they have distorted listening and made music into just another form of social content.”
Lume co-CEO Tim Harper adds: “Our aim is to put the album back at the heart of music, where it belongs.”
The business of Lume
Greive started out as a part-time music critic for Real Groove in his early 20s and eventually, after studying journalism, became its editor.
Over more than two decades, Greive has accumulated friendships and a bulging contact book, and he and his partners have successfully pitched the idea of Lume to a number of big-name investors.
Lorde performs at Glastonbury in 2025.
About $1.3 million has been raised to help launch Lume – investors include Ella Yelich-O’Connor (Lorde), Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, Letterboxd co-founder Karl von Randow, former Sky TV chief executive and now TVNZ board member John Fellet, Previously Unavailable’s James Hurman and Greive himself.
“We were drawn to Lume because we are music fans. We have a vinyl collection,” von Randow told Media Insider.
“We go to gigs and concerts. Our experience of music is heightened by understanding more about it; why was it created, what’s it about? Lume provides that context in a digital form, directly from the artist. Feeling closer to the artist is basically the dream of every music fan.
“We’re really excited to be investing in this space; Lume is something we’d love to see come into the world. It feels like the time is right for albums to take back the limelight and stop feeling like nostalgia!”
Matthew Buchanan, left, and Karl von Randow, co-founders of Letterboxd. Photo / New York Times
McKenzie told Media Insider that Lume gave artists a direct connection with the people who cared most about their work.
“That’s good not only because it helps artists make money from their creative work, but also because it gives their fans a way to help them thrive and shape the culture.
“It’s a model that turns both parties into active agents, offering an alternative to the centralised systems that otherwise turn both into commodities. I’m stoked that this is coming out of New Zealand and hope it will be a model that goes round the world.”
Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie. Photo / The New York Times
Lume will feature emerging and established artists, from household names to younger talent, including Womb and Geneva AM, winner of best independent debut at last month’s Taite Music Prize.
The service is also eligible for inclusion in the Official Aotearoa Music Charts, with one lume the equivalent of a vinyl or CD sale. As well as individual musicians, the company has established working relationships with key labels and distributors, including Flying Nun and Lil Chief, with more to come.
Greive, Harper, former Universal Music executive Justin Warren and Sacha Judd are all shareholders in the business.
Building something that works hand-in-hand with artists and rights holders is key for the founders.
“I watched first-hand as streaming took over the music industry, creating huge opportunities but also real challenges both creatively and economically,” says Warren.
Greive says New Zealand music’s been “kind of beaten up a bit in the streaming era”.
“The percentage of New Zealand music listened to by New Zealanders is sort of single digits on streaming and for a lot of other countries, it’s 20-30%, and in Japan it’s 80%.
“Spotify doesn’t have an office here, because the streamers don’t have huge connections here, which I understand – it’s a relatively small market from a global point of view – but it does feel like a good place to start to build something that gives other options to artists.”
Lume launches next month.
Greive has supplied to Media Insider newsletters showing the progress of the new venture over the past 12 months, from an idea that was first floated about four years ago.
“It’s still a big, scary, exciting thing we’re working on,” he wrote to followers last month. “But the more we talk to artists, labels, managers and distributors, the more confident we are that the weather is changing, and that there is a meaningful place for Lume in an artist’s world.”
Greive laughs when he thinks about his own journey, from music critic to a new digital start-up that has reignited his own creative and business juices.
“I come away from 90% of our meetings just kind of thrilling at what it is we’re unlocking.
“The thing that’s been interesting is I’m sometimes having meetings with people where I was like, I’m pretty sure I wrote something incredibly unkind about you back in the day … because I was prickly as hell.”
Just as The Spinoff has helped launch the careers of many young journalists over the past 12 years, Lume promises to be as big a boost for New Zealand musicians and music fans.
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.