The Kiwi music platform taking on Spotify with no subscription fees | Ryan Bridge TODAY

Indiziert: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]If you hate paying for Spotify subscriptions, if you hate paying for subscriptions generally and you're a music lover, there is potentially a Kiwi alternative that might interest you.

[00:00:10]Loom. Shane Curry, Herald, editor at large, is here to talk to us about that and other media issues this morning.

[00:00:15]Shane, good morning.

[00:00:16]>> Morning, Ryan.

[00:00:17]>> This sounds quite a cool idea. What is your take on it?

[00:00:20]>> Very cool idea and a lot of big names behind it. A lot of familiar names. So Duncan Grieve, the founder of the spin-off, he's gone public this morning with his plans for Loom. He's one of the big shareholders in the company. It's essentially it launches next month. It's an app that unlike Spotify, you actually pay for a full album, a one-off cost per album. It's $25 at the moment, and for that you get access to, you know, the full album list of your favorite artist.

[00:00:46]Um, and they're focusing on Kiwi artists and Australian artists to start with.

[00:00:50]Um, but you get exclusive content alongside that. So, it's like the old traditional kind of um CD, the extra notes or the um you know the uh lyrics u photographs, videos that they'll offer up as exclusive content that you wouldn't necessarily find on Spotify.

[00:01:06]So, it's called Loom as you say. It's got some big investors behind it. Lord herself. Um uh Justin Warren who's former Universal and Sony um you know music executive. Um Hamish McKenzie from Substack you know um he's done extremely well a Kiwi and Silicon Valley with Substack platform from a writing perspective. Uh letter boxed um all these kind of founders and Kiwi startup um experts have got in behind Loom. So um you know an encouraging start for them. They're doing the big PR push today and over the next few weeks before it launches in June. I'm intrigued to see how it goes. And 80% is it of the revenue generated from an album will go to the artist.

[00:01:46]>> Yes, precisely. So is that there's two kind of prongs to this one. Um they're offering what they say is a much better experience for a music fan, but also the artists themselves. So I think at the moment you might get $25 every 3,000 streams on Spotify, whereas now you get an 80% return um from that $25 upfront cost. So, it's actually a much better return for artists. And the likes of Tikit Tan who have pulled all their music off um off uh Spotify, they'll be one of the launch artists on Loom. Uh and as I say, it's focused on Kiwis at the moment, but um I know that Duncan and the team have got some pretty big global plans.

[00:02:23]>> It's interesting, isn't it? is if you that the idea would be to get artists that people actually, you know, are really a lot of people are interested in. But like Lord, for example, all of her back catalog stuff, you know, all of the stuff she's already released would presumably be tied up with labels and they would want it on a bigger platform like Spotify, would they?

[00:02:40]>> Yeah, that's right. I think I think in time you might see some of those big names starting to emerge on Loom, but they're starting off with um an initial set of 25 people at $25 each. Um and that's in June. Um but the likes of L you would they would have to have some very careful negotiations with the likes of Sony and some of the other big labels. Um but they certainly have on board already the likes of Flying Nun and um individual Kiwi artists. So as I say they make I like that someone people are doing and thinking about this.

[00:03:08]>> Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. It's cool.

[00:03:09]>> Now uh TVN they obviously have a whole Mikey Sherman is gone. It's election year. Politics is happening and you're saying you think they they'll actually hold off on appointing someone permanently and go with an interim.

[00:03:20]That's um from what my sources are telling me is that they're in no big rush to um fill Mikey's role. Um and that's partly because I guess they've been so burnt politically and publicly in the last little while. They want to get this one right. Um in the column today, I've looked at some of the options that they might have on an interim basis and Jack Tames, you know, um well ahead in our opinion poll and also I think he would be the best option internally at the moment that TVZ has um to move into Wellington for that period.

[00:03:48]But what TVZ has confirmed is that they're moving in some support and help for the existing gallery team and that includes a senior producer um for them.

[00:03:56]So they'll obviously know they need to shore up the resourcing at the at the gallery um while they determine that longer term >> because they've also because the problem you've got the restraint to trade problem for an outsider, but then you know to O'Brien's doing breakfast that as I know is a very busy gig and you don't really want to take your talent off doing that show to do a you know 6 p.m.

[00:04:15]>> No, precisely. They've got both to O'Brien and May here and sort of settling into new roles. Jack obviously has Q&A, but as I point out in the column this morning, Q&A folds nicely into the political.

[00:04:25]>> The guy's barely working, honestly.

[00:04:29]>> Love you, Jack. Um, right. Finally, this morning, we uh have the media awards on tonight. Who's up for what? Who's going to win?

[00:04:35]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's something like 60 odd media awards. It's the annual what was once known as the Voyager Awards, but of course, controversially, the CB Woodhouse is no longer a sponsor. Um but the big awards um you know one of the actually most interesting categories um from RNZ Sam Shuard's got five nominations and lots of big different categories but he's up against Jared Savage of the Herald for the Jeff McKimming um exclusive reports that they compiled last year. So that's a really strong head-to-head as is the overall sort of digital and newspaper awards. So yeah, big night ahead for the media industry.

[00:05:06]>> Good stuff. Shane, nice to see you. Has anyone come forward to sponsor it after Voyager?

[00:05:11]>> Not yet.

[00:05:11]>> Not yet.

[00:05:12]>> Not yet, but they're looking. That is Shane Curry, Herald, editor at large.

[00:05:16]Media insider column is out today. Cool.

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