In February 2025 the Ministry for Culture & Heritage (MCH) released a discussion document outlining “five draft proposals to create modern media legislation for New Zealand’s media and content production sector.” If you’re reading this then you’ll very likely be working and playing in the music space, but this news might not have even registered.

Submissions on the draft proposals were invited, with a closing date of March 23. Most of the discussion document was about matters that have little to do with music – prominence of local media services on smart TVs, increasing captioning and audio description, updating media regulation etc. 

Until we come to Draft Proposal # Five – ‘Streamlining Crown content funders’. This short statement can only boil down to one key concept; a merging of NZ On Air and the NZ Film Commission into a single media content entity. 

So far perhaps, so ho hum for the music sector – until you think – ‘wait, what’s happening with Music?’

In the 2023/2024 financial year, the amount of NZ On Air’s overall spending that went to music funding and activities (including music promotion and sponsorships), was approximately 4% of its total funding to external content creators and platforms. Just shy of $7million out of a total spend north of $170million. This allocation is not dictated by legislation and is at NZ On air’s discretion. I note that the music allocation was significantly boosted during the Covid-19 response and has remained at that higher level since. 

There’s a fair bit of MCH and Ministerial paperwork now publicly available but hopefully I can summarise some of the key issues as best I can. Because if you are a musician, label, music producer, studio, music manager or have anything else to do with local music in Aotearoa, this change may end up impacting you in some way.

If you’re interested to dive in deep yourself, there is some fascinating reading available: The ‘Interim Regulatory Impact Statement: Streamlining Crown content funders’ paper that went to Cabinet in October 2024.

https://www.mch.govt.nz/publications/interim-regulatory-impact-statement-streamlining-crown-content-funders 

The Media Reform Cabinet paper from February 2025.

https://www.mch.govt.nz/publications/media-reform-cabinet-paper-february-2025 

And NZ On Air’s Media Reform submission as part of the consultation.

https://www.nzonair.govt.nz/news/media-reform-consultation/ 

First up I should note that NZ On Air, the NZ Film Commission and Te Māngai Pāho have all been part of discussions and consultation on the proposals ahead of the Media reform package being put out for sector consultation.

There’s a line on page two of the Interim Regulatory Impact Statement from MCH that is key from my perspective; ‘The preferred option is structural change to create a consolidated entity with a mandate to fund content in any form.’ So that is the starting point as far as the consultation is concerned. Presumably this means an uber media content funding agency born from the bringing together of NZ On Air and the NZ Film Commission.

So again, what’s happening with Music?

NZ On Air’s public submission on the Media Reform package proposes that the Music functions would stay within the merged entity, along with a variety of other parts of NZ On Air’s current non-screen funding priorities. In other words, keep calm and carry on – albeit with some recently-implemented changes to the New Music funding schemes informed by Victoria Kelly’s review in 2023. 

From a distance it feels like the change may be somewhat inevitable, but there’s clearly still a lot of work to be done, and no final decisions on the possible merger have been made. The whiff of change may reignite discussion about the balance between screen funding and music, and whether the new entity will be too heavily dominated by screen sector priorities, right up to Board/governance level.  

Given public entities run on a July-June financial year and based on the timelines presented in the cabinet documents that are publicly available, there’s a chance this could all be implemented before July 2026. Having said that, 2026 is an election year and strange things can happen in election years. Any such merger is certainly not a done deal.

But before all this work and time goes into legislative reform, design work on any merger, cost/benefit analyses and all the myriad of factors that go into this kind of structural change, I have to wonder if there’s an opportunity to stop and think outside the current parameters and individual entity frameworks – to ask, ‘What’s actually happening with music?’

I’m not meaning what would happen with music funding within a larger merged content funding entity. Rather, what’s happening with music across the full slate of public investment into our industry and community – across NZ On Air, NZ Music Commission, Creative NZ and Te Māngai Pāho? What’s happening at a higher strategic level for the sector?

For context, the last time there was a significantly major structural change (which impacted across the sector and not just at an individual agency level), was the Cultural Recovery package brought in by Helen Clark’s Labour government in 2000. That’s 25 years ago. CDs were still king, and radio was the dominant source of music discovery. I haven’t got time or space to list the number of significant things that have changed for the music ecosystem in the last 25 years, but we know they are fundamental, challenging and plentiful.

To me the question raised must be – is now not a once-in-a-generation opportunity amongst all this change? An opportunity to really consider what would be most beneficial for the music sector heading into a future which looks so fundamentally and dramatically different from the past?

Please humour me while I scribble on the back of an envelope and piece together some (approximate) figures to illustrate how a significant chunk of the overall music funding pool is currently weighted. From one angle let’s look at both the NZ On Air Music and NZ Music Commission spends in the past year to see what the public investment for music looks like using the actual financials from the 2023/24 financial year (year ended 30 June 2024).

Across those two key sector support entities, the spend on contemporary popular music in terms of grants (excluding internal agency costs like staff, premises, admin etc.) was close to $9 million. Of that funding, the areas of investment percentage-wise break down something like this:

• Content funding and content promotion– 72%
• Export funding/Outward Sound – 12%
• Touring support – 9% 
• Education (non-grants) – 4%
• Development – 2%
• Capability – 1%

Allowing that the above is a very rough indicator of resource allocation, it does illustrate an interesting position we find ourselves in after over a generation of funding and promotional support from NZ On Air and the NZ Music Commission combined.

Question: With the goal of providing the best chances of success for our artists and music, both locally and in many ways more crucially globally, is it the best use of that pool of funding that almost three-quarters is applied to content creation and promotion? Maybe so, but then again, maybe not.

Frequently I hear versions of a similar refrain: ‘There’s so much content, so many songs, so many artists, but is there enough genuine break-out success for the investment?’ By that I mean the kind of success where artists and songs become familiar and massive hits across the motu, and ideally across the globe. Where more and more artists are making a healthy and sustainable living from their music. 

When I was Head of Music for NZ On Air (2016-2022) the impetus (from MCH in particular) was to fund more – especially across those tumultuous Covid years. More funding for artists, more songs funded, the more the better. Reasonable when the thinking was that the way to get the sector through the pandemic crisis was lots of activity and lots of spending.

But reflecting at a distance and backed up by many conversations I increasingly seem to be part of, is that ‘more-more-more’ mantra in terms of music content funding providing the best outcome for the sector?

Having said that, I do completely acknowledge many examples of genuine success across a multitude of talented artists. But I for one would love to see more Lorde-level successes, and having more artists making a real living income from their music activities with international careers. I do now wonder if the current high proportion of content creation funding is the only answer.

There are certainly many more questions to be answered as we all stare into the uncertainty of a music world shaped by global tech companies, threatened by the incoming deluge of AI-generated music, and an increasingly difficult task of cutting through even on a domestic level, let alone genuine international success.

Some of those questions include: Is there a case for more investment instead into things like music education and the youth talent pipeline? Artist and brand development? Music infrastructure? Local touring? Or any number of other sector priorities?

If we were to take some time to have a good hard think about the state of things, are we giving artists the best chance to succeed with the current allocation of resources spread across the multiple agencies involved in music funding and support? Conceptually is a mix of funding support via four completely different entities in the music space the best way to approach the future?

I think that the changes being proposed by MCH mean that now is the opportunity to have a fresh look at the entire public investment and funding slate for New Zealand music. With everything up and the air and being tested, consulted on and potentially redesigned for the sake of merging the country’s screen funding entities, why would it not be time to do the same for the Music sector?

Surely this is the time to do the research, do the consultation, and fundamentally reconsider the way we think about the future of music support in Aotearoa.

I’d ask these questions not only of MCH and the government funding agencies, but also of the broader music industry. What is required and why? What is the plan and what is the specific ask from government? This is not simply a government problem to address. Now is the opportune time to identify and clearly articulate the goals and challenges and put together a comprehensive strategy to tackle them with a view to the next 5 to 10 years and beyond.

It’s been two and a half decades, a generation, since there was a serious rethink on the shape and structure of the way the NZ taxpayer supports local music at a macro level. With this screen funding entity merger proposal rumbling along, and at this stage NZ On Air’s music work being swept along with it, isn’t it time to have the conversation about where the mix of public investment levers for music is best applied?

All I want, and I think likely we all want, is the best chance for truly remarkable future success for our artists and their music. Perhaps there is a different or better way to achieve that, and if there’s ever a time for that discussion – it’s now. 

Disclosure: David Ridler is a former Head of Music of NZ On Air (2016-2022). Since 2022 he has been independently consulting and contracting and has worked on projects for entities such as Recorded Music NZ, Music Managers Forum Aotearoa, Parachute Music, RNZ, Te Māngai Pāho and others.