Climbing a broken ladder

My band just released our second album and today I spent the whole day at home wondering what the fuck I’m doing with my life. Instead of the burst of inspiration that’s often hit after releasing something, a desperation to “go while the going’s good” so to speak, this time around I’ve found myself absolutely distraught about the state of the music industry and the future for artists like me. I think this is in a large part due to a bit of a perfect storm - the revelation that my songs have unknowingly been used to train AI (sad robots inbound), the closure of Flying Out and Neck of the Woods in Auckland (where I currently am), being in the midst of promoting an album (therefore on social media more than usual) and the fact that Office Dog got dropped by our US label while writing this recent thing. I think there has never been more great art being made, and never a worse moment in time to be an artist. It genuinely feels like waking up each day and watching the thing you love more than anything get the shit kicked out of it. And it’s finally reached a point for me where I literally need to write some of my experiences out both for my own sanity and in the hopes that it sheds some more light on the reality of trying to survive as a musician these days. Although this is a very personal take I’m sure there are many instances here that other people can relate to, even across creative disciplines. I’m also not after any sympathy and there are clearly moments where I could’ve been smarter. In that case maybe I can be a test subject for others to learn from.

^{Visiting Flying Out on my first tour (2015)}

My first proper experience with the music industry began when I was around 21. I’d released one proper album on Bandcamp and received an email from a very large publishing company / label group that has worked with some of the biggest names in indie music. Being a real dreamer and full of youthful self-belief at the time I dove head first into deals on both ends, waking up at 2:00am for Skype calls from my flat in industrial Dunedin to be pumped full of positive affirmations. Of course the Dunedinite in me was skeptical, but when you’re continuously told you have something special, and made to feel supported by a large team on the journey to getting your art out there, those fears inevitably fade over time. You reach a point where you can’t imagine it disappearing. Especially when you can still see your teens and are yet to be humbled in any real way.

What followed was a complete emotional rollercoaster. A long story of incredible experiences but also immense pressure, both creatively and financially, that completely changed me as a person and ultimately ended in a five minute phone call where I was dropped. It was 2018 by this point, I’d released one album of my three album deal, and 99% of the people that had been lifting me up for the past few years completely fell off the face of the earth; off to throw something else at the wall and see if it sticks. I moved to Auckland, got a job in the Golf Warehouse distribution centre (knowing nothing about golf) and didn’t play music live for two years. I remember being in that basement filled with shitty hats and gloves, watching from afar as the label had their christmas party on a boat knowing I could’ve probably made another record for the price of that party. It was incredibly confusing and honestly heartbreaking.

Funnily enough, the only time I heard from my publisher again (outside of their accountant) was because they were “seeking safe and appropriate ways to test the waters with developing AI platforms” and looking for artists who were keen to get involved. The email had a real kiwi-esque “all good if not!” tone to it, but I obviously found it disturbing and never replied (which they stated they would take as a “no”). Now I see that the album I released under them appears in The Atlantic’s new AI watchdog tool and, even though I’ll never really know exactly how that came to be, I wish these supposedly progressive music companies would’ve acknowledged the obvious dangers of AI music and taken a more defensive stance from the get-go; rather than simply tempting struggling artists (an artist they’ve dropped in my case) with a potential immoral paycheck. I’d also ask - how was AI ever going to benefit working songwriters in the long term? How can you feed music to an AI developer and it not take something away from the artist? I think we are seeing all of the consequences of their approach in 2026, two years after I got that email, with how out of control the whole thing has become. These developers were always just going to take the music for themselves anyway, and we needed the music industry to focus on protecting us, not encourage it. Now there is no way of fishing my songs back out of that digital swamp.

^{Rass and I in the Flying Out basement}

My time at Golf Warehouse came to an awkward end when I accidentally threw out a set of clubs worth around $3000. They thought I’d hidden them in the trash to take home and sell and even when I was proven innocent by their 200 CCTV cameras no one there looked at me the same (I did also crash a forklift into the garage door). Eventually I quit, and as the pandemic hit began working on Office Dog. This was an insanely exciting time for me, writing for over a year with no intentions of chasing record deals or anything in that vein; just me and my two friends making music for the sake of it. It was beautiful.

Another friend of mine once said that I always seem to wind up with the wider music industry dangling a carrot in front of me, and the next carrot appeared right as OD were about to self-release our debut album. It’s now 2023. I’m studying full time while also working washing dishes at a French restaurant and sitting on a collection of songs I’m very proud of. Importantly, I’m also still in debt from my past attempt at fame / fortune with Westpac one week from shutting down my business account. That’s when another label came along. And sadly once again I was the rabbit, believing that surely this time would be different. I’m much older, I’ve learnt from how I dealt with things last time and I can handle myself now.

But what this next experience showed me is that even if you have a lovely team who genuinely believe in you, labels of the size I have dealt with are inherently vampyric. You will be told again and again that your music is important, but you are a short-term investment and quickly cut loose by the higher-ups when it doesn’t pay off almost instantly. This, to me, is almost the worst part of it all. Artists who sign these kinds of deals are not often given long enough to get their bearings, make the album they actually want to make, before they are told to walk the plank. It is an unforgivable short-sightedness on the music industry’s part, one that is setting so many talented musicians back and keeping potentially great records from ever seeing the light of day. Where is the actual support, the actual long term investment in artists with potential? It barely exists from what I can tell.

Unfortunately I think these labels will retain their power and be tempting for artists like myself until making and performing music at a local level is more sustainable. I come from a country with one of the most incredible, diverse and inspiring music scenes in the world. The problem is, that the general public does not know that. The panelbeaters at my dad’s work do not know that, listening to The Rock FM play the same international hits they’ve been playing for the last 20 years all day. Kids learning guitar do not know that and still ask to learn the songs that I asked to learn a decade ago. Mainstream media is completely frozen in time and playing it far too safe while contemporary, local artists are sacrificing everything to only be ignored. Once again, it is a short-sightedness that I believe is not only terrible for creatives but one that will doom these media corporations in the long run. I also believe this to be a huge part of the reason why venues struggle to survive. Yes there was a pandemic and yes there is a cost of living crisis, but if the general public were more aware that their next favourite artist might be from their town and playing down the road tonight then our chances of keeping these important, necessary spaces increases greatly. Popstars still sell out stadiums here and I don’t buy that this is all down to a bad economy; we just seem to not value performers who haven’t purchased their popularity yet in the same way.

^{Outside the first Office Dog gig}

I love music more than I can express. It’s given me so much purpose and all I’ve ever wanted is to write songs for a living. It is not being signed to a label that is important to me, like most artists I am just trying to survive and make the next album happen. But we’re climbing a broken ladder. We need to tear this whole thing down. We need music corporations in positions of power to take responsibility for the damage they are causing to the people they depend on to exist at all. We need actual support and investment, not just these arbitrary chunks of government funding for those with enough social media followers. We actually need to get the fuck away from Meta and co. before we let these platforms become the only way to promote ourselves. We need larger society to wake up and stop viewing artists as this stereotypical, lazy group of people living in a dream world when a lot of working artists in my orbit are the hardest workers I know. And we definitely need an end to the short-sidedness I have witnessed too many times in this industry. As I said, I truly believe there is more great art being made at the moment than ever before. Imagine then if all artists, not just the ones who get so much money pumped into them they are inescapable, had a real shot at stability and comfort. Imagine if they maybe didn’t have to work at fucking Golf Warehouse while hucking back blood pressure pills. That is good for everyone because everyone is surrounded by music every day. That is the world I want to live in. That is a world that can still exist.