{"id":643989,"date":"2026-10-28T17:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/643989\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T17:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:40:09","slug":"a-generation-of-lost-local-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/643989\/","title":{"rendered":"A generation of lost local voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Subsidised big ticket events are performing on New Zealand stages at the expense of small live music venues and new acts.<\/p>\n

A generation of lost local voices<\/p>\n

The sellout crowds at pop superstar Robbie Williams’ live concerts next month have the government to thank for bringing him here.<\/p>\n

That is Tourism Minister Louise Upston’s take on the events fund that subsidised his BRITPOP world tour to New Zealand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The argument for funding international artists through the $45 million Events Attraction Package is that for every dollar spent on the live performance, $3.20 is returned in benefits to the wider community, says Upston.<\/p>\n

But while the live music is humming at the top end, our small venues that host homegrown talent are losing money and shutting down.<\/p>\n

Just last week the Kiwi-owned UnderTheRadar announced it was winding down its ticket business after 18 years.<\/p>\n

It says it was the leading ticketing platform for small to medium music events, working with more than 5000 promoters on more than 30,000 events.<\/p>\n

Founder and chief Daryl Fincham said the decision was not due to competition.<\/p>\n

“With the current pace of future tech and AI threats, we no longer think our grassroots indie ticketing site is positioned to manage these upcoming threats.<\/p>\n

“This is getting clearer every week, and we don’t have the capacity to fight the fight. Time for us to bow out from this area,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The announcement came just days after the music rights organisation APRA AMCOS issued its annual review with figures on the dire state of local music.<\/p>\n

The review highlighted international success for New Zealand artists but shrinking spaces for domestic music<\/a> with local content streamed in Aotearoa in 2025-26 declining to four percent.<\/p>\n

APRA AMCOS New Zealand boss Anthony Healey called the continued decline in NZ’s share of digital music “catastrophic”.<\/p>\n

“If we can’t increase discoverability, audience demand, and market access, then we can’t compete against the volume of global music and algorithms that actively works against us,” Healey said.<\/p>\n

He called for decisive action from industry and government. Without it, he said, a whole generation would miss hearing themselves reflected and represented on the streaming platforms and “the ability of local artists to foster audiences through touring at home will continue to disappear”.<\/p>\n

Those views are shared by many in the local industry.<\/p>\n

“We want to see the next Crowded House come out of this country,” says Dave Carter, Associate Professor at Massey University’s School of Music and Screen Arts.<\/p>\n

“We want to see a huge number of really amazing, talented musicians take on the world. But if they can’t build a career to start doing that locally, they’ve got no hope of exporting.”<\/p>\n

His colleague, senior lecturer Catherine Hoad, cites the imbalance in public funding. Local venues and promoters were ineligible for funding through the Events Attraction Package while global entertainment operators could get millions in support for international artists.<\/p>\n

“Unless we take a kind of a whole of market approach, unless we can listen to and hear our music live on stage, our live music venues, our concerts, unless we can hear music there, we don’t learn about it.<\/p>\n

Carter explains to The Detail the vertical structure of the entertainment giants Live Nation, AEG and TEG means they have numerous businesses within their operations.<\/p>\n

Live Nation is the dominant player in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

“The majority of 1000 plus capacity venues that are council owned, are ticketed through Live Nation’s ticketing company, Ticketmaster. That means that Live Nation owns Spark Arena, or controls that venue, and then venues all the way down to Wellington and the Tuning Fork, and they own Moshtix.”<\/p>\n

It also owns Electric Avenue and Rhythm and Vines music festivals.<\/p>\n

But Live Nation is facing greater scrutiny internationally for its dominance of the industry after a Federal court in the United States found it guilty of abusing its market power.<\/p>\n

“I’m not suggesting that’s happening in New Zealand, but just to point out that that’s one of the concerns with any company that has a really dominant market position in this sector, whether it be Live Nation, AEG, TEG or someone else, that that lack of competition is a problem and can lead to something called market failure, which really requires government intervention to resolve because the market can no longer regulate itself,” says Carter.<\/p>\n

Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can also get in touch with us by emailing thedetail@rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Subsidised big ticket events are performing on New Zealand stages at the expense of small live music venues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-643989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643989","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=643989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}