The award-winning musician reveals what he has learned a year after taking the plunge.<\/p>\n
Just under a year ago, Tiki Taane quit Spotify<\/a>. He left behind tens of thousands of listeners on the world\u2019s biggest and most powerful music streaming service. His biggest hit, \u2018Always on My Mind\u2019, had clocked up 26 million streams. But a handful of factors \u2013 compensation to artists, the march of algorithms and AI, and the military investments of co-founder Daniel Ek \u2013 tipped him over the edge.<\/p>\n The highest-profile New Zealand musician to join a global walkout, Taane did not go quietly. The Papamoa-based musician-producer deleted his catalogue from the streamer and left one in their stead: \u2018Bye Bye Spotify\u2019. With an incendiary disdain, he sings: \u201cI don\u2019t want to be part of this fucking streaming war machine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n How\u2019s that going for him, a year later? No regrets, said Taane, talking to The Spinoff for the podcast At Large with Toby Manhire. Audiences haven\u2019t collapsed, they were just meeting him elsewhere, he said. \u201cI had to build these other platforms up, start funnelling traffic to my website, and to YouTube music and Bandcamp.\u201d He\u2019s posted a good chunk of his catalogue on Lume, the new music service that eschews streams in favour of letting people buy and keep albums in digital form.\u00a0<\/p>\n When asked by other artists whether they should follow suit \u2013 and those questions come a lot \u2013 Taane, who also removed his music from Amazon, says \u201cstay there\u201d. Or stay there, at least, if it is going to have a meaningful impact on your ability to survive without them. He\u2019s independent \u2013 without the tangle of contractual obligations that others might face. And he had those other digital platforms up and ready to go.\u00a0<\/p>\n But if they are ready to take the plunge, he\u2019s all about sharing his own experience. He\u2019ll walk them through \u201cthe steps I\u2019ve done, and how long it took me to get to that point where I could go: I can pull this off now\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not easy. it\u2019s one of those things where you\u2019re going, shit, have I done the right thing? But you know, it\u2019s nearly been a year now. Everything\u2019s fine. All the other platforms are building even faster. People wanting to listen to my music are going, shit, he\u2019s not there any more. Where is he? Oh, he\u2019s over here.\u201d<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s made up for the lost Spotify income. But \u201cthings are going to level out at some point. It could be next year where things are at the point where it\u2019s a where it\u2019s like, OK, Spotify is out of my life now, I\u2019m getting no income from that from the tunes, but the other platforms have have gotten up to the same point, and I\u2019m playing more live shows as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Live performance has always been important, but never more integral. Taane is close to chalking up 50 gigs for the year already. \u201cI\u2019ve consciously gone: I need to go out there and do these gigs, and [finding] OK, the gigs are going off, I\u2019m selling merch, all that kind of stuff. So it can be done, but it takes a lot of thought to put those things in place.\u201d<\/p>\n All in all it makes for an exhilarating time, he said. \u201cIt reminds me of the early days. It\u2019s super exciting to be alive.\u201d<\/p>\n The business has changed dramatically since Taane\u2019s early years in Christchurch, where he began working with Salmonella Dub, at first as recording engineer. Having hit rock bottom and struggling with addiction after leaving the band, he rebuilt himself as an artist, determined to have control and ownership of everything he made and a direct, unfiltered interface with his audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI started to invest in my studio and some property, and built Tikidub Production and step out as a producer. So I wasn\u2019t putting all the weight on my songs and my creative output. I could also produce other stuff as well for other people. So I\u2019ve got it to a point now where I\u2019m super happy with the balance. I\u2019m out there playing gigs, doing my thing but I\u2019m also in a studio producing all this other stuff as well for other people. It\u2019s a beautiful balance now.\u201d<\/p>\n For Taane, that\u2019s a decent place to be a few months out from his 50th birthday. And another milestone is imminent. He\u2019s preparing for a show to mark the 20th anniversary of the Past, Present, Future and has released a special edition of the album on Lume<\/a>, the new platform co-founded by Duncan Greive <\/a>(who also founded the Spinoff).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited to see where they take it, and I\u2019m stoked to be part of that first wave of 25-odd artists to be on there,\u201d he said. \u201cI like the idea of music lovers and super fans having access to content and material that they wouldn\u2019t be able to get anywhere else, and it\u2019s all in one spot\u2026 When the Lume team were explaining it to me, I was instantly, like, \u2018I\u2019ve got a hard drive full of demos. I\u2019ve got a hard drive full of live stuff \u2013 this will be perfect.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Hear more from Tiki Taane on At Large with Toby Manhire, which you can find on your podcast feed: follow here for Spotify<\/a>, or\u00a0here for Apple<\/a>. Or YouTube, if that\u2019s your cup of tea: subscribe to the Spinoff here<\/a>\u00a0and find\u00a0all the episodes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The award-winning musician reveals what he has learned a year after taking the plunge. 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