<img src="https://ezycourse.b-cdn.net/3887/cmrtxptlsni6naqqqbpud7yx2.png" alt="image" style="position: relative; width: 1185px; height: auto; cursor: pointer;">Rolling Stone AU/NZ has been writing recently about the rise of the new music platform Lume, have you checked it out?Why Are Some of New Zealand’s Best Artists Joining This New Music Platform?It's backed by investors including Lorde and the co-founder of Substack. Bic Runga, Troy Kingi, Fazerdaze, Dick Move, and more of the country's best artists have signed up. What is Lume?When DJ and producer Josh Fawaz stormed the Australian charts with his ‘cover’ of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, he was quickly forced to add clear credits for generative AI vocals and AI drums to his song on Spotify. Over the span of 12 months, Spotify has removed an astounding 75 million similarly “spammy tracks” from its database.AI has infiltrated Spotify in a major, dystopian way. Perfect playlists, personalised music recommendations, even an AI DJ that ‘talks’ to you about your music tastes — it’s all happening, and it’s all depressing.As Fawaz added his AI credits, Lorde took to social media to call out Spotify over another problematic feature, ‘About the Song’, accusing the streaming behemoth of sharing inaccurate information as well as overstepping artistic boundaries. According to Spotify, ‘About the Song’, which is reportedly in beta, pulls from “third-party sources to surface interesting details and behind-the-scenes moments.” It often feels like convenience is the only reason we stick around these platforms. (I’m guilty of this myself, with fussy playlist pedantry — how could I give up all my carefully curated playlists?) In this frictionless era of ours, having almost every single song ever created just a stream away is… daunting. Overwhelming. Much too much. “Spotify and similar platforms might work for the upper echelon of artists, but the 99% need to get by instead on other income streams such as touring and merch.”Last year saw the arrival of Boycott Spotify NZ, a collective of independent Kiwi musicians who joined the growing transition away from the platform. Dismayed by the perennially low payouts, Recitals, Carb on Carb and more followed the principled example of overseas acts like King Gizzard &amp; the Lizard Wizard and Deerhoof in leaving Spotify behind. As the collective noted in its artist statement, “Spotify treats the majority of its working artists as free labourers, selling access to their musical output with virtually none of the profit returning to the creators.”“Generally, each stream generates around 1/20th of 1 NZ cent. Hence, even artists with hundreds of thousands of streams are receiving poverty wages. Even worse, because artists must crack 1000 streams in order to receive any money, smaller artists earn absolutely nothing from their work,” the statement added. Tiki Taane also left Spotify last year. If you go to his profile on the platform now, just one song remains: “Bye Bye Spotify”. (It’s a stone-cold banger.) He’s now reissuing his classic debut album, Past, Present, Future, on Lume, as are Fur Patrol (Pet), The Phoenix Foundation (Give Up Your Dreams), The Reduction Agents (The Dance Reduction Agents), and Die! Die! Die! (their 2006 self-titled debut).<a target="_blank" href="https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lume-streaming-platform-new-zealand-feature-98576/">https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lume-streaming-platform-new-zealand-feature-98576/</a>

“Spotify and similar platforms might work for the upper echelon of artists, but the 99% need to get by instead on other income streams .” Here's what some major NZ artists are doing about it.

Why some of New Zealands Top Artists are joining the new music platform Lume - 'The World of an Album"

Across multiple different short form content streams, our Founders and Industry Leaders explore their key takeaways from industry events, challenges that creatives face, and everything in-between.

Why some of New Zealands Top Artists are joining the new music platform Lume - 'The World of an Album"

Why some of New Zealands Top Artists are joining the new music platform Lume - 'The World of an Album"

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