Media Insider: ‘A missing piece of the puzzle’ - Lorde on new Kiwi music start-up Lume
Lume launches today, backed by several high-profile investors - and a commitment from its biggest.
Ella Yelich-O’Connor – Lorde, as we all know her – is not only putting her money where her mouth is but, shortly, her music, too.
Lorde is one of several high-profile investors in the new New Zealand music digital app/platform Lume, which officially launches in app stores today.
“I think Lume is really smart,” Lorde told Media Insider in a statement.
“It’s a missing piece in the puzzle of modern album-sharing, giving artists an opportunity for deep intimacy with their core listeners while dictating what their work is truly worth.”
And here’s music to the ears of Lume’s founders: “I’ll be putting Virgin’s XRAYS on Lume as soon as possible,” Lorde said.
Lume launches today with 22 albums (or “lumes” as they are dubbed) – including Tiki Taane (who famously removed his music from Spotify), Bic Runga, Fazerdaze, Fur Patrol and Phoenix Foundation.
The new app aims to solve several major issues in the local music industry: the lack of financial return for Kiwi musicians from streaming services (Spotify, especially, and YouTube), and a richer, digital album experience for those who have a deep love of music.
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Unlike the streams and singles that drive Spotify’s model, Lume showcases a full album experience – 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.
For a one-off price of $24.99 for each ‘lume’, the consumer receives the artist’s album and value-added extras, and they keep them forever. There are no subscription fees.
The artist and their partners, in turn, receive 80% of that revenue – a complete turnaround from the Spotify model.
Co-founder Duncan Greive – the founder of The Spinoff website – estimates a musician would need to attract 3000 streams on Spotify just to match the 80% return from one Lume purchase.
“We’re trying to bring the best properties of vinyl and streaming together into one digital product,” Greive said in a statement today.
“You can think of it as a record store and a record collection, which you access like streaming, but own like a record. But along with the core audio, you get much more alongside it – while also meaningfully supporting the artist.”
Co-founder Justin Warren – a former Universal Music NZ executive – has helped lead the assembly of the first Lumes.
“Putting them together is the most fun part of this job,” he said. “We have incredible live sets from Fazerdaze, Die! Die! Die! and Tiki Taane, fascinating demos from Vera Ellen and Womb, multiple remixes from the Phoenix Foundation and a full instrumental album from Troy Kingi. It’s all just so different from the streaming world.”
As well as Greive and Warren, Lume was co-founded by Tim Harper (The Great New Zealand Songbook, Glorious) and Sacha Judd (Buddle Findlay, Hoku Group).
It has secured seed investment from Yelich-O’Connor, Substack’s Hamish McKenzie, Letterboxd’s Karl von Randow, Previously Unavailable’s James Hurman and former Sky TV CEO John Fellet.
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s 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.