Lume starts with a launch roster of up to 25 albums (or \u201clumes\u201d as they\u2019ll be dubbed) \u2013 the likes of Tiki Taane (who famously removed his music from Spotify), Fur Patrol and Shapeshifter are already on board.<\/p>\n
Tiki Taane’s album Past, Present, Future will be one of 25 available on Lume when it launches in June.<\/p>\n
Unlike the streams and singles that drive Spotify\u2019s model, Lume showcases a full album experience \u2013 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. <\/p>\n
Lume contains a number of features, from nesting multiple versions \u2013 live, demo or acoustic \u2013 of a song, to the ability to add music as an album cycle progresses. <\/p>\n
Greive and his team are drawing on these full album experiences and exclusive material as Lume\u2019s unique selling points in a sea of streams.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also a drawcard for the artists themselves.<\/p>\n
For a one-off price of $25, the consumer receives the artist\u2019s album and they keep it forever. There are no subscription fees.<\/p>\n
The artist and their partners, in turn, receive 80% of that revenue \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t have to leave Spotify, we anticipate 99% of people won\u2019t,\u201d says Greive. <\/p>\n
Lume founders and shareholders: Tim Harper (left), Justin Warren, Sacha Judd and Duncan Greive. Photo \/ Todd Karehana<\/p>\n
But Lume will be of immense interest to those he describes as \u201cmusic people\u201d, those who want that deeper, richer experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ambition is to get a better return for artists and rights holders and to give fans access to things which would normally stay hidden,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd to create what we consider a new format, like a successor digital version of the CD and the LP. It\u2019s something that takes advantage of the possibilities of the internet in a way that we haven\u2019t seen done before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greive further says in a media release: \u201cStreaming 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lume co-CEO Tim Harper adds: \u201cOur aim is to put the album back at the heart of music, where it belongs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business of Lume<\/p>\n
Greive started out as a part-time music critic for Real Groove in his early 20s and eventually, after studying journalism, became its editor.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Lorde performs at Glastonbury in 2025.<\/p>\n
About $1.3 million has been raised to help launch Lume \u2013 investors include Ella Yelich-O\u2019Connor (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\u2019s James Hurman and Greive himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were drawn to Lume because we are music fans. We have a vinyl collection,\u201d von Randow told Media Insider. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe go to gigs and concerts. Our experience of music is heightened by understanding more about it; why was it created, what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited to be investing in this space; Lume is something we\u2019d 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!\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthew Buchanan, left, and Karl von Randow, co-founders of Letterboxd. Photo \/ New York Times<\/p>\n
McKenzie told Media Insider that Lume gave artists a direct connection with the people who cared most about their work. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a model that turns both parties into active agents, offering an alternative to the centralised systems that otherwise turn both into commodities. I\u2019m stoked that this is coming out of New Zealand and hope it will be a model that goes round the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie. Photo \/ The New York Times<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Taite Music Prize.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Greive, Harper, former Universal Music executive Justin Warren and Sacha Judd are all shareholders in the business.<\/p>\n
Building something that works hand-in-hand with artists and rights holders is key for the founders. <\/p>\n
\u201cI watched first-hand as streaming took over the music industry, creating huge opportunities but also real challenges both creatively and economically,\u201d says Warren.<\/p>\n
Greive says New Zealand music\u2019s been \u201ckind of beaten up a bit in the streaming era\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019s 20-30%, and in Japan it\u2019s 80%. <\/p>\n
\u201cSpotify doesn\u2019t have an office here, because the streamers don\u2019t have huge connections here, which I understand \u2013 it\u2019s a relatively small market from a global point of view \u2013 but it does feel like a good place to start to build something that gives other options to artists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lume launches next month.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still a big, scary, exciting thing we\u2019re working on,\u201d he wrote to followers last month. \u201cBut 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\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cI come away from 90% of our meetings just kind of thrilling at what it is we\u2019re unlocking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that\u2019s been interesting is I\u2019m sometimes having meetings with people where I was like, I\u2019m pretty sure I wrote something incredibly unkind about you back in the day … because I was prickly as hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Launching in June, it\u2019s a sparkling new app that confronts several major issues in the local music industry:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32952,95,806,34609,8834,17885,4282,3595,1651,6175,156,224386,311,224387,224312,23899,305,2936,321,5126,57440,224385,32586,93250,61340,1073,157,21409,117,111,139,69,143,2081,224384,110604,224315,9100,223,12806,16283,102],"class_list":["post-439085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-13m","tag-and","tag-as","tag-backed","tag-big","tag-bigname","tag-boss","tag-by","tag-digital","tag-duncan","tag-entertainment","tag-fellet","tag-founder","tag-greive","tag-greives","tag-hamish","tag-have","tag-insider","tag-investors","tag-john","tag-karl","tag-letterboxds","tag-lorde","tag-lume","tag-mckenzie","tag-media","tag-music","tag-names","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-partners","tag-raised","tag-randow","tag-spinoff","tag-substacks","tag-such","tag-the","tag-venture","tag-von","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}