Introduction
Popular Music Studies have generated an emerging literature on the relations between state policies, the market economy and popular music (Wallis and Malm Reference Wallis and Malm1984; Berland Reference Berland1991; Rutten Reference Rutten1991; Wright Reference Wright1991; Bennett Reference Bennett1993; Breen Reference Breen1999; Cloonan Reference Cloonan1999, Reference Cloonan2007; Eling Reference Eling1999; D'Arcy and Brindley Reference D'Arcy and Brindley2002; Power and Scott Reference Power and Scott2004; Strachan and Leonard Reference Strachan and Leonard2004; Young Reference Young2004; McLeay Reference McLeay2006; Makela Reference Makela2008). In the wake of policymakers' creative industry turn (Florida Reference Florida2002; Hesmondhalgh and Pratt Reference Hesmondhalgh and Pratt2005; Oakley Reference Oakley2006), into whose ambit popular music was often folded (DCMS 1998, 2001; Office of the Prime Minister 2003), academic attention has been especially drawn to the various contested means and ends of state support for popular music industries. This interest is most notably demonstrated by Popular Music devoting a special issue to the topic in 2008.
Some core themes in this field include how popular music making is aligned to welfare (Cloonan Reference Cloonan2007; Baker et al. Reference Baker, Bennett and Homan2009), forms of state regulation notably around live music venues (see, for example, Homan Reference Homan2003), domestic broadcast quotas (Wright Reference Wright1991; Strachan and Leonard Reference Strachan and Leonard2004) and copyright issues post web 2.0 (Golding and Murdock Reference Golding and Murdock2010), along with an interest in the export policies of semi-peripheral states (see, for example, Makela Reference Makela2008). In general, these popular music studies illustrate how the state, despite various claims to the contrary, remains as a central institution supporting national arts and culture, and the more contemporary creative industries. However, there appears to be little theoretical coherence between the various accounts of the role of the state in this context, with researchers instead producing rich depictions of particular cases, involving the state acting in a range of either unpredictable or transhistorical roles. In this regard it is our contention that contemporary popular music policies can be more closely understood through a theoretically informed reading of the particular ideological, governance and institutional processes which undergirded recently emerging forms of state support, including formations associated with neo-liberalism (and its aftermath) and the hybrid range of governing modalities here described as New Institutional.
Drawing on empirical material from recent New Zealand experience, this article augments the literature on state–popular music relations in three ways. First, it supplements Martin Cloonan's (Reference Cloonan1999) promotional state concept by considering how and why the New Zealand state came to support domestic sounds. Under the centre-left Labour government (1999–2008) the profile and audibility of ‘Kiwi’ pop underwent a dramatic cultural repositioning as commercial radio airplay, sales and royalty returns all doubled, albeit from a low base in the 1990s when domestic sales struggled to comprise 5 per cent of the market and commercial airplay was rare (Smith Reference Smith2005; Scott Reference Scott2008; New Zealand Music Industry Commission 2010a, p. 2). By early 2010 local artists accounted for 20 per cent of all album sales and online sales continued to grow (New Zealand Music Industry Commission 2010a, p. 2). Concurrently, increasing numbers of musicians such as Scribe, Fat Freddy's Drop, Bic Runga and Ladyhawke have gained recognition and commercial success on the global stage (Shuker Reference Shuker2008).
A nuanced but familiar range of promotional state policies underpinned New Zealand's pop renaissance: increased funding; public–private partnerships to incentivise small scale producers; the state development of social networks and relations of trust with domestic and international music industry elites; informal education to attune pop producers and artist managers to the logics and demands of the music industry; and, importantly, a 20 per cent voluntary domestic commercial radio quota (Scott Reference Scott2008). Labour's policies and programmes resonate with the durable research themes surrounding the state and popular music, including how states enable economic process, how music can address concerns over youth employment, and how popular music may foster national cultural identity (Cloonan Reference Cloonan1999, p. 204). All are interpenetrated, becoming mobilised and legitimated through the pervasive ideologies of economic growth, national identity and social wellbeing where cultural policy becomes re-articulated as social policy (Pratt Reference Pratt2005). This point was neatly summarised by the then Prime Minister and Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage, Helen Clark (Reference Clark2000), when she stated ‘we want young New Zealanders to be able to hear more of their country in their music, and for us all to experience the cultural and economic advantages that brings’. However, the specific methods through which the New Zealand state engaged the diverse actors involved in popular music illustrates an interesting institutional variation beyond the subsidy/quota mechanisms often deployed to boost the consumption of local sounds.
Thus, and secondly, this article responds to the research problematic raised by Frith and Cloonan. They ask how the ‘different ways state power is organised and understood’ mean music policy becomes ‘determined by quite different ideologies of what we might call governance’ (Frith and Cloonan Reference Frith and Cloonan2008, p. 189, emphasis in original). New Zealand, as a leading nation of neo-liberal state and market reform during the 1980s and 1990s, provides a unique case through which to investigate how the legacies of neo-liberal ‘market governance’ came to influence its pop renaissance (Larner Reference Larner2000, p. 5). Here, the Labour government's attempts to ‘get behind local music’ provide further insight into contemporary policy thought – and the ideologies of governance – underpinning the implementation of state music policy (Shuker Reference Shuker2008, p. 271).
Frith and Cloonan's enquiry has the considerable virtue of directing us beyond grand theories of the state and into a closer theoretical and empirical examination of activities of governance in which the state is an important but not the only actor. Reflecting the plurality of domains and fields in which governance happens, multiple, competing definitions of governance now present themselves to would-be analysts. Reviewing relevant aspects of this burgeoning literature briefly, we see a general recognition of the complexity of the field, and the emergence of a coordinating (as opposed to a simply regulating or commanding) role for the state. Jessop (Reference Jessop1998, Reference Jessop2002b) sees governance as the performance or approach of government in coordinating and regulating activity between different institutional orders such as the economy, scientific and/or educational systems. Rhodes (Reference Rhodes1996) emphasises governance as the systems of governing between state and non-state actors requiring the allocation, control and coordination of resources. Thompson (Reference Thompson2003) identifies governance as state-instigated network forms of coordination serving to bridge the gaps between hierarchically prescribed targets (such as policy-defined airplay quotas) and the dynamism of markets. Peters and Pierre (Reference Peters and Pierre1998) suggest governance is the blending and leveraging of public and private sector resources in policy formation and application, wherein to reach policy objectives the state simultaneously facilitates social networks and moral suasion as a less direct form of intervention. Rose and Miller (Reference Rose and Miller2010) observe how the art of governance is constituted through a complex assemblage of relations comprising institutions, apparatuses and organisations, and state and non-state actors each with specific know-hows. Within these assemblages, governance allows for an appreciation of how state ideological aspirations become performed through the arts of coordination or ‘joining-up’ (Bevir Reference Bevir2005). In the case of popular music, how the state coordinates musicians into the popular music market is understood as the exchange of self-interested creativity into commerce through licensing and recording deals for artists, airplay royalties and direct sales of recordings, performances or merchandise (Weber Reference Weber1968, p. 109).
Our third point is that the ideologies of governance implemented under Labour problematise what appears to be a durable narrative in the popular music and creative industries literature – the binary between ‘government intervention in the market place versus the operation of the free market’ (Kong Reference Kong2000, p. 289; see also Cloonan Reference Cloonan1999, p. 200; Shuker Reference Shuker2005, p. 288). Certainly there is evidence that, as Breen (Reference Breen2008, p. 206) laments, ‘inevitably, popular music policymaking will struggle with the challenge to create policies that intervene in the increasingly taken for granted world of the market’. However, New Zealand's pop renaissance evinces a case where, rather than seeking to ‘defy the market’ (Cloonan Reference Cloonan1999, p. 204), the state instead aligns its support with existing music market institutions, and thus becomes a significant player, albeit in a marginal market as is the case domestically or as a marginal player in international markets. Rather than stressing the struggles and incapabilities of state action, this article considers the highly inventive deployment of governance strategies which work with the grain of the market economy and in turn facilitate domestic popular music producers' ability to compete in the music market.
Empirical material for this article was collected between 2004 and 2010. Primary in this material were in-depth interviews with four state organisation informants and four music industry contractors conducted in 2006. These agents were exemplars of their positions as key decision makers and observers, and as holders of expert knowledge and experience. Once contact was made with informants, semi-structured interviews were conducted until saturation point was reached, focusing upon state programmes and how they operate. This took anywhere from one-and-a-half to three hours. The interviews were tape recorded with the permission of the interviewees and the tapes were transcribed. In accordance with ethics protocol, their names have been made anonymous in the quotes below. Other qualitative materials augmenting these interviews include state policy documents and Labour party press releases, media interviews and commentary, and websites.
To explore the ideologies and practices of governance underpinning New Zealand's pop renaissance this article proceeds as follows. First, the concept of the promotional state is reviewed. A discussion of the ways New Zealand's pop renaissance can be understood as an outcome of Labour's ‘after neo-liberal’ policy responses to neo-liberalism's social dislocations follows. Then the core institutional features imbuing these contemporary modes of governance are reviewed, including supply-sidism, social inclusion and selected policy modalities we group as ‘New Institutional’. To give concrete exemplary form to the discussion the work of the New Zealand Music Commission (NZMC) in exporting domestic popular music is discussed. This example vividly illustrates the nimble state forms that reach down and then connect musicians to global market opportunities. The final section summarises the ways New Zealand's promotional state policies are more than mere funding mechanisms, together constituting a significant new institutional formation and entity: an ‘after neo-liberal’ promotional state form we may see emerging in other national contexts.
The promotional state
Cloonan (Reference Cloonan1999, pp. 203–4; 2007) proposes three ideal types to describe state policy orientations to popular music. The first is the ostensibly benign, free market state of core capitalist nations whose music industry regularly turns in a profit and whose commercial hegemony continues to shape mass global culture. The second is the censoring ‘authoritarian state’ of dictatorships or one-party states. Third is the ‘promotional state’ which designs policies and programmes to support the audibility and visibility of domestic sounds (see also Berland Reference Berland1991; Rutten Reference Rutten1991; Wright Reference Wright1991; Breen Reference Breen1999; Looseley Reference Looseley2003; Strachan and Leonard Reference Strachan and Leonard2004; McLeay Reference McLeay2006; Makela Reference Makela2008). Since 1999, New Zealand can be seen as an example of a promotional state, for it came to regard popular music ‘as something of a national asset’ – a cultural form to be bolstered in the face of Anglo-American cultural domination (Cloonan Reference Cloonan1999, p. 204). In this situation, as Cloonan (Reference Cloonan1999, p. 204) describes, the state ‘retain[s] the potential for invention … in the global market and to help local musicians reach a wider audience than they otherwise would’.
Considering this national scale, Rutten (Reference Rutten1991, pp. 297–8) suggests promotional state policies are shaped by three structural parameters. The first is the often small size of the domestic market – in New Zealand's case, 1.8 million units sold in 2005 (Shuker Reference Shuker2007, p. 27). The second is the share of domestic music within the overall turnover of the national music market. In 2005 in New Zealand this was 11.5 per cent, figures which have subsequently risen (Shuker Reference Shuker2007, p. 27). The third is the importance of domestic music within the global music market, expressed as the share of domestic music within the international turnover of recorded music sales. In New Zealand's case this amounts to approximately 0.3 per cent (New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004, p. 28). Despite these structural limitations the four million New Zealanders are relatively avid consumers of music. In 2006 compact disc sales per capita saw New Zealand ranked 12th with 1.5 per capita, ahead of Netherlands and France but behind the UK and USA (International Federation of Phonographic Industries 2008). New Zealanders are also frequent attendees at live musical performances, with these events being reported as the most frequent cultural activity (Statistics New Zealand 2006). It was within this context of a small market with a globally negligible cultural presence but music-exposed citizens that the Labour government sought to expand the cultural and commercial presence of domestic sounds.
However, promotional state policies are not solely concerned with music, its sales volumes and commercial viability. Popular music policy is also woven through heterogeneous economic, social and cultural goals (Florida Reference Florida2002; Office of the Prime Minister 2003; Pratt Reference Pratt2005). As Bennett (Reference Bennett1993, p. 10) notes, popular music's location in youth culture makes it susceptible to ‘incorporation into social welfare policies and programmes’. Illustrating music as a form of social inclusion through employment, Labour's then Associate Minister for the Arts, Culture and Heritage Judith Tizard (Reference Tizard2000) asserted that the creative industries had ‘yet to reach their full potential to contribute to the wealth of New Zealand. They have the potential to be much greater employers of people doing the jobs they love, and to boost GDP and export earnings.’ Following Labour's NZ$86.8m (US$66.5mFootnote 1) fiscal injection into art and cultural agencies in 2000 there are increasing numbers of young people seeking to enter the creative industries, as a key music industry informant (interview 2006) attests:
I get people ringing up all the time saying, ‘I'm thinking about starting up a label what do I have to do?’ It is every week or every couple of weeks someone is coming along and saying ‘I'm starting up a record label’ and it's like … my god, another one!
Nevertheless, popular music (and other creative industries) being asked to function as a social inclusion mechanism is not unique to New Zealand, having been deployed to these ends by the UK's New Labour government and other local governments managing the combined and uneven social dislocations of deindustrialisation and neo-liberalisation (Yudice Reference Yudice2003; Neelands et al. Reference Neelands, Freakly and Lindsay2006; Oakley Reference Oakley2006; Cloonan Reference Cloonan2007). Social inclusion, as discussed in more detail below, can be seen in many ways as providing an opportunity for agents to engage the labour market, pursue a self-chosen career ‘pathway’, while simultaneously generating social connectivity and a sense of community with other like-minded souls. Popular music is well disposed to meet these assorted ends for, although ‘making it’ is notoriously fraught (Jones Reference Jones1999, Reference Jones and Beck2003; Toynbee Reference Toynbee and Beck2003) music engages young people in communities of practice and allows the performance of a unique calling that pleasurably blurs work and leisure (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1984). These promotional state elements are further coloured by the socio-cultural milieu in which they are applied.
Ideology and popular music policy: neo-liberalism, ‘after neo-liberalism’
By tracing neo-liberalism's history, trajectories and application in New Zealand this section unpacks the ideologies and institutional histories shaping the contours of Labour's promotional state. Given England and Ward's (Reference England, Ward, England and Ward2007, p. 7) assertion that neo-liberalism is the ‘defining economic paradigm of our time’, this approach promises to reveal important shaping characteristics, which we anticipate may resonate with state–popular music researchers in other contexts.
Liberalism's core elements of individualism, the pursuit of freedom through the market economy, private property and impartiality before a strong law may appear at first somewhat distal to discussions of the promotional state. However, liberalism articulates a moralistic and productivist economic philosophy whereby paid work, commerce and economic capital accumulation in expanding markets leads to greater opulence and living standards – an ideology synonymous with the key word ‘development’ (Williams Reference Williams1988, p. 103; Fusfeld Reference Fusfeld1990, p. 32). In doing so, liberal ideals infuse many variants of creative industry policy. For example, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, echoing the DCMS (1998, 2001), defines the creative sector as ‘those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’ (New Zealand Institute of Economic Research 2002, p. 1, authors' emphasis). Crucially the creative industries as content industries require a strong state to uphold intellectual property law – ‘that most characteristic device of bourgeois society’ (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1975, p. 292) – to sustain the profit incentives for creators, investors and rights owners (see, for example, New Zealand Institute of Economic Research 2002; New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004).
Historically, the state's role in liberal ideology can be seen through two competing visions which influence promotional state policies. Due to space constraints we bundle these debates into ‘elite’ and ‘social’ liberal ideal types (Richardson Reference Richardson2001, p. 50). Elite liberalism stresses the right to non-interference from other actors or the state, leaving the individual to pursue their own interests and freedom of expression within legal parameters (Richardson Reference Richardson2001, p. 30). Consequently, from this stance, any state attempt to promote the common good produces the inequalities it seeks to ameliorate, and in doing so is ‘inefficient’ and ‘wasteful’ (Gray Reference Gray1986, p. 69; Richardson Reference Richardson2001, p. 34). Social liberalism differs by arguing for collective decision making and ‘the extension of rights and freedoms to all’ through welfare and education programmes which enable individuals to ‘enjoy the right and freedom to develop their potential’ (Richardson Reference Richardson2001, p. 50). Cloonan's ideal-types are reflected in these readings of liberalism. The benign state's historical position permits the market to reign vs. the promotional states' social liberalism that may legitimate, among other reasons, its popular music supports as allowing citizens to develop both their artistic and income potential.
The neo-liberal revolution of the 1980s and 1990s brought elite liberal aspirations to shrink Keynesian inspired welfare states, leading to a ‘radical re-configuration of state institutions and practices’ (Harvey Reference Harvey2005, p. 78) and the creation of ‘new forms of political-economic governance premised on the extension of market relationships’ (Larner Reference Larner2000, p. 5). As a global policy project, many states' executive branches emphasised the ideological coordinates of laissez faire and the ‘competitive society’ to create a ‘good business environment’ where individual freedom was expressed within a competitive de/re-regulated national economy open to world markets. Gray (Reference Gray1998, p. 39) claims New Zealand between 1984 and 1999 was especially vigorous in its Manchesterismus (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1975, p. 303). New Zealand's initial neo-liberal reforms focused on developing clear lines of delineation separating the state from markets, restricting the state to (light handed) competition enabling regulatory and funding functions, and enabling, where possible, private sector, competition based (or lightly regulated monopoly-based) provision in the place of public provision. This change occurred within an international competition state framework (Jessop Reference Jessop2002a) in that New Zealand's experimental adoption of these reforms was intended to position it well in global capital markets. In terms of institutional reforms relevant to Labour's promotional state developments, New Zealand led the OECD in the restructuring of public sector accountabilities and modalities around New Public Management style targets, using Principle-Agent theory, to empower the managerial functions of state bureaucrats (Boston et al. Reference Boston, Martin, Pallot and Walsh1996; Scott Reference Scott2001).
Prior to this neo-liberal turn, popular music made fleeting appearances in New Zealand's state policy, and was woven into economic and cultural discourses. Indeed popular music's relationship to the economic has been a persistent – although not prominent – policy narrative since the late 1970s. During New Zealand's post-war long boom the Queen Elizabeth the Second Arts Council of New Zealand (QEIIACNZ) was the state institution charged with funding and supporting the (high) arts. By the early 1980s QEIIACNZ elitist discourses of ‘quality’ and ‘nationalism’ as the measures of state arts funding were slowly interpenetrated by the instrumental and economic ends of the arts (Skilling Reference Skilling2005, p. 25). Since 1979 popular musicians had access to piecemeal QEIIACNZ funding including small financial (NZ$500–3,000/US$385–2,300) recording grants primarily for demo recordings or an EP, and touring grants. Although somewhat parsimonious compared to current state funding levels, QUEIIACNZ offered significant support to cover recording costs for the then leading independent labels Flying Nun, Pagan and Jayrem. Nevertheless, these proto-promotional state supports made little impact – nor were they intended to – on enhancing domestic sales or subverting the dominance of imported sounds (Shuker and Pickering Reference Shuker and Pickering1994, p. 268; Shuker Reference Shuker2008). Further reflecting the paucity of state support from the 1970s through to the 1990s were debates over popular music's status as Culture in the Arnoldian sense. Domestic pop musicians were often discredited as talentless and tasteless by power elites, whom multimillionaire property developer Bob Jones characterised as ‘diverse mobs of wailing and bellowing factory hands’ (Pickering and Shuker Reference Pickering and Shuker1993 p. 33). Such attitudes were also manifest materially with a decidedly illiberal 40 per cent sales tax on records by what conservative Prime Minister Robert Muldoon labelled as those ‘horrible pop groups’ (Shuker and Pickering Reference Shuker and Pickering1994, p. 263).
During the 1980s and 1990s, for Labour and centre-right National governments dealing with vigorous neo-liberal state restructuring and subsequently pressing social and economic malaise, the arts, culture and popular music withered under benign neglect (Shuker and Pickering Reference Shuker and Pickering1994; Skilling Reference Skilling2005). Yet, Skilling (Reference Skilling2005, p. 25) has suggested ‘the political consensus that art was, by its nature, unsuited to the ravages of the market [and funding] was never completely dismantled’. Therefore, although neo-liberalised state agencies were ‘anxious to avoid measures that could be seen as State interference in the market-place’ this is not to suggest that there were no new forms of funding or a revaluation of popular music's utility to the state (Shuker and Pickering Reference Shuker and Pickering1994, p. 268).
However, these programmes were fragmentary and emergent. For example, concurrent with the deregulation of broadcasting through the 1989 Broadcasting Act was the concomitance of New Zealand on Air (NZOA). Through this agency popular musicians gained new public–private subsidies, principally in the area of video production and some access to commercial radio through syndicated state-funded music shows (often broadcast late on Sunday night). Since 2000 NZOA functions have expanded to include managing the 20 per cent voluntary broadcast quota, album funding and export strategies (see Scott Reference Scott2008; Shuker Reference Shuker2008). Also in 1989, the New Zealand Trade and Development Board's (NZTDB) New Horizons for the Arts report (New Zealand Trade Development Board 1989) introduced the narrative of domestic pop as ‘world class’, with New Zealand's burgeoning multiculturalism framed as a strategic asset in the global market. New Horizons in many ways reflected the commingling of the neo-liberal export orientation with post-modern cultural shifts which slowly oriented music makers' subjectivities towards music as trade and commerce (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1996, pp. 11–39). Illustrating this in 1992, the NZTDB, ‘more accustomed to marketing sheep meats and wool than music’, subsidised NZ$4,000 (US$3,080) towards the costs for a trade delegation to attend the influential New Music Seminar conference in New York (Reid Reference Reid1991, p. 67). For music commentator Graham Reid (Reference Reid1991, p. 67) local labels' attendance was asserted to be a result of ‘the sudden self-recognition of New Zealand's expanding music scene … publicly acknowled[ging] the sound of its own backyard’, although, as discussed below, this partnering approach would have to wait until Clark's Labour government and the NZMC to be systematically aligned to existing industry practices. Overall, Shuker and Pickering (Reference Shuker and Pickering1994, pp. 261, 263) succinctly summarise the situation facing popular musicians and wider society during this era of neo-liberalisation:
The local scene remains insufficient to support full-time professional performers, there is still only limited radio and television exposure for local artists, and initiatives to support the industry remain extremely limited … the prospects for the mid-1990s are less positive given the continued depressed state of the economy with high levels of unemployment, a growing foreign debt and a general lack of consumer and business confidence.
Such features contextualised the fifth Labour government (1999–2008) which was ‘elected partly on the platform of healing social divides evident in the wake of neo-liberal reform’, and under which popular music was to play a prominent role (Porter and Craig Reference Porter and Craig2004, p. 408). Moreover, as the anticipated economic gains of neo-liberal reform and global openness were not widely evident – rising income inequality and declining social cohesion appear to be the enduring legacy (Coburn Reference Coburn2000, pp. 136, 140) – different possibilities for state enablement of the market were on the table. A defining feature of the 1999 general election was spirited debate over the state's role in supporting the productive economy. Labour, in contrast to the neo-liberal National Party, drew on endogenous growth theory to advocate ‘providing more state-funded financial support for companies seeking to develop new products and export markets’ (Vowles Reference Vowles2002, p. 136). Popular music too was brought into the election campaign with Labour making a naked appeal to the youth vote through election pledges of a domestic radio quota. Following election, Prime Minister Helen Clark (Reference Clark2002) emphatically signalled a new political–economic paradigm, declaring ‘neo-liberalism is over in New Zealand’, and continued to underscore this shift by adding later that ‘the hands off days have gone, as our government engages with a wide range of stakeholders to strengthen the economy’ (Clark Reference Clark2007).
For this article's purpose this ‘after neo-liberal’Footnote 2 junction can be broadly thought of as a reprise of social liberal ideals with the state acting to enhance individual opportunity, in our case to become a venerated pop producer. However, ‘after neo-liberalism’ remains an emergent analytical frame for interpreting current state strategies (Larner and Craig Reference Larner and Craig2005; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Larner and Le Heron2008). Researchers using this term are seeking to account for how current policies are path dependent on earlier market-oriented reforms and their unintended social consequences and do so by tracing new forms of state reconciliation with the neo-liberalised market economy. Arguably then, what made Labour's government ‘after neo-liberal’ is not simply that neo-liberalism is over (post neo-liberalism), or that there has been a ‘defining rupture with neo-liberalism’ (Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Larner and Le Heron2008, p. 44), but a recognition of the state's role in enabling agents into the existing neo-liberal economic order. Thus ‘after neo-liberal’ promulgators regard the market economy not as an end in itself, but as a means to the higher social liberal goal of widening social and economic opportunity and deepening social cohesion (New Zealand Treasury 2001; Office of the Prime Minister 2003; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Larner and Le Heron2008, p. 43).
Therefore, the key feature of the emerging ‘after neo-liberal’ state is that its policies remain acquiescent to the neo-liberal faith in the formal freedom and vibrancy of the market economy (see Jessop Reference Jessop2002b, p. 465; Hay Reference Hay2004, p. 519; Porter and Craig Reference Porter and Craig2004; Craig and Cotterell Reference Craig and Cotterell2007, p. 504). As New Zealand's lodestar creative industries document the Growth and Innovation Framework affirms: ‘the intention is to unleash the productive potential of the private sector not to replace it’ (Office of the Prime Minister 2003, p. 22). Here the state can then be seen to do so principally through renewed participation with industrial sectors (such as the creative industries) underscored by the triumvirate of globalisation, market exchange and entrepreneurial dispositions. More specifically, ‘after neo-liberal’ promotional state modes of governance now seek to finely attune music makers to the market economy as it is expressed through the contemporary features of the global music industry: deal seeking with territorially dispersed gatekeepers in publishing and record labels; developing audiences live, online or through traditional broadcasting; and turning piecemeal DIY production into commercially sustainable micro-enterprises.
One of the most visible features in this turn in political-economic governance is how this ‘after neo-liberal’ state engages in ‘the active building of new relationships, many with non-traditional economic and social actors’, including youthful, micro-entrepreneurial pop musicians (Larner Reference Larner2005, p. 9). In its new governance relations within the market economy, Labour's agencies came to function not as a direct provider of economic growth but through institutional arrangements aimed at leading, partnering, broking and facilitating market activity (Hodgson Reference Hodgson2004). These often involved enhancing agents' social capability to engage with market practices and the fostering of trust through networks, partnerships and shared norms and values (Porter and Craig Reference Porter and Craig2004, p. 403; see also Office of the Prime Minister 2003; Bevir Reference Bevir2005; Scott Reference Scott2008, for an example of trust building untaken by NZOA with radio broadcasters). The rationale for such micro-institutional innovations was to coordinate the ‘joining-up’ of atomised and individualised economic agents with the opportunities for market exchange (Bevir Reference Bevir2005, p. 112). The NZMC, discussed below, demonstrates how these modes of governance function in efforts to export ‘Kiwi’ pop, but we can also note there are other ideological influences on these state supports.
Ideologies of governance ‘after neo-liberalism’
With New Zealand's ‘after neo-liberal’ state now seeking to coordinate popular musicians into the expanding ‘new cultural economy’, what ideologies of governance can be seen to undergird its policies and programmes? This section reviews the key orientating policies through which the Labour government can be observed to have guided its efforts to ‘get behind music’. These, we suggest, include supply side economics, social inclusion and hybrid forms of new institutionalism, each with varying visibility and overlapping influence.
Supply side economic theory is a central dimension of neo-liberalism, which has been elaborated by the ‘after neo-liberal’ state. Since the 1980s, when supply side economics gained ascendance, neo-liberal economic policy has, in general, come to argue for stable price signals – low inflation through monetary policy – in order to expand and intensify market transactions (Hailstones Reference Hailstones1982). Supporting this are lower taxes to incentivise enterprise, investment, private savings and greater work productivity coupled with the state provision of an appropriately skilled and educated workforce (Hailstones Reference Hailstones1982). Supply side doctrine offers scope for adaptation to social liberal aspirations, particularly in the area of creating a skilled workforce, broadly defined (Bevir Reference Bevir2005, p. 111). According to Helen Clark (Reference Clark2007) Labour has ‘focus[ed] on education and skills’ with these components of the supply side understood as an ‘investment in people … and transitioning to employment’ while retaining the principles of market incentives and discipline (Maharey Reference Maharey2003). Such supply side policies are prevalent in Labour's promotional state programmes, for it is through multiple informal education programmes that domestic pop producers are to acquire nuanced understandings of the music business's idiosyncrasies (see below). Furthermore, this emphasis on a skilled workforce saw Labour increase state funding for music and creative industry training programmes, with increased numbers of tertiary rock schools and credentialised creative industry courses (Bill Reference Bill2005).
The legacy of unemployment haunted Labour's popular music policy too. As noted above, promotional state engagements are often legitimated through employment and social welfare concerns. Notably, un- and under-employment are social phenomena to which young people are particularly vulnerable and to which the collective practices of pop production offer a means of social interaction, learning and community participation, and the fostering of identity and self-esteem (Levitas Reference Levitas1998; Barry Reference Barry2005; Beland Reference Beland2007). Popular music then becomes an extension of the promotional state's tacit welfare function with social inclusion being the new discourse of welfare. What needs to be underscored here is that social inclusion is an ethos intended ‘to create new forms of social regulation that actively foster market participation by individuals’ simultaneously creating social forms that promote ‘enterprising subjects and values' (Jayasuryia Reference Jayasuriya2006, pp. 13, 14). Therefore, social inclusion is viewed through the lens of participation in the labour market where the state facilitates agents' ability to ‘stand up, go forward, and connect’ with the neo-liberalised social order (Unger, quoted in Amin and Thrift Reference Amin and Thrift2002, p. 144). As New Zealand's Ministry of Social Development (2004, pp. 12–13), succinctly claimed, ‘economic and social development go hand in hand’.
For aspiring pop producers this inclusion was at times assisted through artistic workfare (Peck Reference Peck2001a) such as the Ministry of Social Development's Pathways to Arts and Cultural Enterprise (PACE) programme which created (often fragile) supported employment in the creative industries for approximately 4,000 recipients (Shuker Reference Shuker2008; Work and Income New Zealand 2008). Yet ‘hard work’ remained the key to success (Ministry of Social Development 2004, p. 11) and those who sought state financial supports for their music production were required by funding criteria to demonstrate the formation of a career such as live performances, tours, self-released recordings and a media profile. Reflecting on this transformation of the popular musician from counter-cultural figure to business person, one musician who was on PACE commented that ‘there is so much you have to do to get in the picture’ of state support (pers. commun., August 2006). Hence, the coordinating functions of the promotional state ‘after neo-liberalism’ are not only with the objects directly involved in sales and airplay, but in creating skilled, creative and entrepreneurial subjects whose resources and attributes can be more readily leveraged into, and made manifest, in export, airplay or sales metrics. Furthermore, by creating for potentially excluded young people a stake in the now celebrated status of local sounds, Labour can be seen to be coordinating a social project which legitimates identity investments in ‘national’ popular culture while economising the affective labour of youth.
Perhaps of most importance to understanding Labour's governance of the pop renaissance are varying applications of the theoretical insights of New Institutional Economics (NIE). This school of thought analyses how the institutional form of the economy and firms influence economic action, exchange and ‘efficiency’ (North Reference North1984; Lane and Ersson Reference Lane and Ersson2000; Campbell Reference Campbell2004). To this end NIE has developed theories around the market dimensionalities of public and private institutions, importantly in the area of transaction costs (Coase Reference Coase1937). In NIE's analytical focus transaction costs are the costs incurred in ‘running the economic system’ (Williamson Reference Williamson, Olson and Kahkone2000, p. 15): gaining information, making contracts, and maintaining relationships, which are all vital components of market transactions. For Coase, the progenitor of NIE theory, such time costs were a significant omission from the frictionless world of neo-classical economics and ‘perfect information’. If neo-classical economics' privileging of laissez-faire was the intellectual thrust behind neo-liberal policies, various branches of new institutionalism provided much of the theoretical justification for the ‘after neo-liberal’ state's revised engagement with the market economy and its actors (World Bank 1997; Porter and Craig Reference Porter and Craig2004, p. 404). In operationalising NIE insights the ‘after neo-liberal’ state is ideologically legitimate in entering in the market economy to reduce transaction costs. To do so, and in contrast to the neo-liberal atomised rational actor, new institutionalism understands ‘that people and institutions alike are embedded in wider social contexts that structure their choices, behaviour, and development’ (Bevir Reference Bevir2005, p. 35). This includes more voluntaristic modes of institutional configuration: partnerships, trust, and local and global collaborations involving various processes of network governance (Newman Reference Newman2005, p. 8).
For popular music, this new institutional policy orientation has significance considering the high degrees of social connectivity and conviviality needed to create commercially successful artists. Therefore, state agencies could enter the music market to coordinate access to cultural intermediaries for the hardworking, entrepreneurial and industry-attuned pop producer and thus, by extension, include these agents in market-based opportunities and career pathways (Frith Reference Frith1983; Negus Reference Negus2002; Nixon and du Gay Reference Nixon and Du Gay2002; Jones Reference Jones and Beck2003). The following discussion of the NZMC will illustrate how state agencies created such a supportive institutional infrastructure.
New Zealand Music Commission
The NZMC was established in 2002 and recently, under the centre-right National government, released a strategic plan forecasting its activities and key performance indicators into 2013. This plan continues the NZMC's initial promotional state mandate to grow the ‘NZ music business, at home and overseas’ (New Zealand Music Commission 2007, 2010a). A key informant working within this organisation recounts this melding of art and commerce in the NZMC's foundation:
There was this explicit [government] belief that music had an economic value to it, and not to disregard the artistic value as well, but as something that could be leveraged for national economic benefit. Companies [such as indie labels] could be assisted to work smarter. One, so they don't disappear. Two, so they can actually go on to make some money. What it all comes down to is that notion that a body should exist that can increase the viability of the business side of the ledger because the cultural side of it was being looked after, really quite well at that point. (NZMC informant, interview 2006)
The Ministry of Arts and Culture administers the NZMC's three-yearly NZ$5 million (US$3.85 million) budget. From this funding the occupancy of a low-rent office in Auckland's gritty urban milieu, its eight staff, and projects and public–private partnerships are accounted for. A NZMC informant (interview 2006) claims this ‘represent[s] really good value for money … it's a really small office with really small overheads and we do a lot of different projects with a high rate of success with a lot of small budgets’. To these ends the NZMC has four main functions: first, export assistance through the Outward Sound programme to generate connectivity with the influential players in the global music business, while simultaneously providing public–private partnerships to reduce ‘Kiwi’ pop exporters' costs; second, supply side capacity building through informal education intended to direct popular musicians towards how the music industry functions; third, NZMC manages the ‘New Zealand Music Month’ promotion. May's Music Month is a centrepiece of NZMC's work as it coordinates media, broadcasters, artists and retailers to create a sharp peak in the audibility, visibility and sales of domestic sounds; and fourth, formal education though involvement in the school music curriculum to promote the study and appreciation of local sounds. The NZMC also facilitates artists' visits to schools to act as mentors in songwriting workshops.
We have chosen to focus on the export assistance in deal seeking and capacity building roles as these exemplify the contemporary forms of promotional state governance that use ‘less direct forms of intervention as a means to achieve their ends’ (Peters and Pierre Reference Peters and Pierre1998, p. 227). NZMC's orientation to the export of domestic pop closely follows Labour's lodestar ‘new economy’ document, the Growth and Innovation Framework (Office of the Prime Minister 2003) and the durable ideology of engaging global markets. This orientation also imbues the subsequent 2004 report Creating Heat: Tumata Kia Whita!: A Strategy to Ignite the Economic and Cultural Potential of the New Zealand Music Industry, which guides the NZMC's export operations. Illustrating the partnering of non-state actors in policy formation, Creating Heat's authors were comprised of 17 industry professionals, from heads of domestic MNC labels through to independent label owners, managers and the experienced but faded stars of yesteryear, and was chaired by the CEO of SONY music New Zealand and former copyright lawyer Malcolm Black. This New Zealand Music Industry Development Group concluded that, in order to multiply export earnings 10-fold (which were then estimated at NZ$5 million/US$3.85 million), increased international hit rates were required; this would then ‘trickle-down’ to stimulate domestic allied industries, noting that ‘to support our global aspirations we must continue to expand our domestic capability’ (New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004, pp. 22–3). Cultural and ideological objectives were present too, with global success intended to bolster ‘pride in New Zealand music domestically’ while simultaneously branding New Zealand as ‘at the forefront of global creativity’ (New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004, pp. 22–3).
Nevertheless, Creating Heat reprised the durable barriers identified in 1989′s New Horizons report: a lack of entrepreneurial expertise, weak global contacts and the dominance of imported popular culture. To overcome these obstacles, Creating Heat recommended building government–industry partnerships adapted to existing ‘informal networks of specialists’ in the music business (New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004, p. 15). By mobilising state-coordinated social networks in consultation with private sector agents these were imagined to connect domestic music producers with influential labels, managers and publishers and other industry gatekeepers at home and abroad (New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004, p. 4). Furthermore, harmonising with this overtly economic export narrative was a range of social inclusion benefits:
Limiting success to New Zealand solely due to the small population base limits the potential income for New Zealand artists and industry professionals. The creation of viable export pathways will create feasible career paths for New Zealanders. The strategy will also allow artists to not only realise their creative dreams, but also earn a realistic income from their creativity. (New Zealand Music Industry Development Group 2004, p. 23)
In application, NZMC's export assistance has worked in conjunction with supply side capacity building. Here the state has reached down to mould pop producers', managers' and independent label owners' dispositions. Important here is the cultivation of musicians' and neophyte artist managers' business skills necessary to engage with cultural intermediaries as ‘signing “a deal” remains a mantra for (many) new pop acts’ (Jones Reference Jones1999, p. 24). Arguably, despite the internet reconfiguring many music industry practices, cultural intermediaries still occupy a central position in industry networks and are able to negotiate significant market opportunities through their wide range of contacts. Hence a deal may not just be a recording contract but may include accessing: publishing and licensing deals; film, television and new media synchronisation rights; securing influential booking agents; or accessing influential managers and media tastemakers (Economist 2007). Together or separately these deals are vital stages in forming a music career.
NZMC's yearly ‘Warrant of Fitness’Footnote 3 seminar was highly indicative of the forms of informal supply side capacity building developed under Labour. First held in Auckland and Wellington over two days in 2005, it expanded to include New Zealand's third city – Christchurch – in its yearly cycle. To provide insights into the global music business and translate this into local experience, the NZMC drew on the extensive ‘Kiwi’ diaspora working in the international music industry (Office of the Prime Minister 2003, p. 43).Footnote 4 By collecting these agents' expertise and informally distributing this arguably scarce knowledge the NZMC acted as, albeit indirectly and distally, a facilitator of market exchange. Some notable participants included former heads of UK labels, managers involved in teen sensation Steps and rapper Akon, and domestic-based managers with extensive global experience.
At the Auckland ‘Warrant of Fitness’ seminar on 3 and 4 October 2005, held at the Art Gallery auditorium, the audience was comprised of approximately 40 managers, musicians and journalists at different levels of career development. This audience represented a fragment of ‘the swarm’ of small-scale pop producers (Power and Scott Reference Power and Scott2004, p. 6), some with international experience, some with demonstrably little domestic experience who, for the most part, sat impassively listening to the experts' insights into the workings of the popular music business. The seminar's informal discussion panels were arranged thematically and reviewed what artists needed to know to become ‘export ready’. Over these days professionalism, the mobilisation of social connectivity, touring and servicing ‘tastemakers’ were addressed as aspects of what was recounted as ‘playing the game’. This involved conducting market research on intensely competitive overseas markets, and then subtly starting to network from New Zealand to develop contacts with key music industry agents.
Illustrating this network sociality, a recurring theme in the seminar was that pop producers should be ‘accessing one [person] in a label that can make things happen’ (Emily Crowther, International Promotions manager Universal Music UK, Warrant of Fitness Seminar 2005). Success generated by these ‘champions’ was seen to flow on in a process whereby the artist ‘knocks down one territory at a time’ (Kirk Harding, Loud Records, Warrant of Fitness Seminar 2005), mostly through the slog of touring as ‘bands that have been signed in the last ten years have built up a following’ (Simon Bayertz, Director of International Affairs at V2 records, Warrant of Fitness Seminar 2005). In building the ‘buzz’ (Caves Reference Caves2000) necessary to translate into deals, it was recommended that an artist identify ‘what is your story’ (Emily Crowther, International Promotions manager Universal Music UK, Warrant of Fitness Seminar 2005), and to ‘get [this] spiel right, to tell someone in the pub, in a meeting, or at a lunch’ (Paul McKessar, CRS management, Warrant of Fitness Seminar 2005). In the summary, the panellists' message was to work harder and smarter. Notably, this requires ‘having a goal and not letting the little things get you down’ as it may take ‘10 years to become a new band’ while being ‘realistic of where you are at’ in the music hierarchy (Emily Crowther, International Promotions manager Universal Music UK, Warrant of Fitness Seminar 2005).
Such state-facilitated seminars illustrate the small-scale projects to change ‘cultural habits through information and persuasion’ (Bevir Reference Bevir2005, p. 51). Through these, pop producers are hopefully altered from inspired artisans unsullied by commercial considerations into business people with a product to sell. Furthermore, NZMC's informal education function has expanded to include online video interviews and fact sheets on such tasks as ‘How to find a manager’ and ‘Guide to touring Australia’ (New Zealand Music Commission 2011). Such institutional innovations are in stark contrast to leaving atomised small-scale pop producers to negotiate the global music industry with their own resources, contacts and cultural frames.
Concurrent with the attuning of musicians to the logics of the global music industry were NZMC's export subsidies. As New Zealand's popular musicians are geographically, and arguably culturally, isolated from decision-making centres this precludes constant observation and important forms of social connectivity with labels and investors (Scott Reference Scott1999; Economist 2007). NZMC's Outward Sound funding has been calculated to enable musicians and domestic labels to develop connections with international tastemaker networks and thus facilitate opportunities to access global markets (New Zealand Music Commission 2008). NZMC's supports have been available to bands, songwriters, labels and producers of ‘all genres, styles and niches and applicants may target relevant markets around the world’ (Selby Reference Selby2005). Briefly, Outward Sound's (2006) tiered funding system includes NZ$10,000 (US$7,700) for market scoping and meeting overseas market professionals, up to NZ$30,000 (US$23,100) to fund overseas showcase performances and up to NZ$60,000 (US$46,200) for sustained international tour support. Each state dollar has to be matched by private sector investors, labels or the artist themselves. As a policy mode these public–private partnerships have been imbued with the social liberal ethos of a shared moral responsibility and a ‘hand up not a hand out’ – what elite state actors have candidly referred to as ‘leaving some skin in the game’. By early 2010 over 110 artists and record labels had received Outward Sound funding, with most grants dispensed for the ‘market-scoping’ phase which includes funding for independent labels to attend music trade shows (New Zealand Music Commission 2010b). ‘Performance oriented support’ subsidies have funded artist performances and tours in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia (‘the first export market’ for New Zealand's musicians; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Larner and Le Heron2008, p. 48), while commercially successful artists with significant MNC or international investor backing – Breaks Co-op, Bic Runga, Midnight Youth, Gin Wigmore, Fat Freddy's Drop, Ladyhawke, The Blackseeds, and Brooke Fraser – have received ‘market infiltration’ subsidies (New Zealand Music Commission 2010b).
More indicative of Labour's efforts to ‘grow NZ music business’ are the ways NZMC's agents have performed new institutional thought to generate and coordinate social networks, trust and partnerships with global cultural intermediaries. Here, the NZMC has enacted Creating Heat's recommendations by bridging (Burt Reference Burt1992) parts of the global music industry that otherwise remain unconnected. This has been achieved by maintaining a ‘Kiwi’ presence in international markets via the prominent music industry trade shows South by South West (SXSW) in Austin, CMJ in New York and MIDEM in Cannes. At these the NZMC's agents support artists' ‘deal’ seeking, as this revealing quote from a NZMC informant demonstrates (interview 2006):
SXSW? We've been going for the last four years. What basically the Music Commission presence does is once we've got a list of bands that are going we get in touch with them … [and] what we do – two or three staff members – is we get over there a couple of days before the festival kicks off. There is a trade show component to it but business is not done there, it's about representation as much as anything else. We have a stand, so it's a place where people can come and find the ‘Kiwis’, a place where bands can organise meetings, in a little booth – that kind of thing. So it's very much the visibility part of it. Most of the business is actually done out at gigs and afterwards in the bar. And the people you meet are just ridiculous. I was having a slightly pissed natter to someone and someone else said ‘that's Duran Duran's manager – shit should have got his card!’ So everyone's dressed down, you've got no idea who you are talking to. We also throw a NZ music party on the opening night of the festival which is great because the delegates swoop into town and get ready for the next day and we have a party in the park that is across the road from the Hilton Hotel, which is kind of the biggest hotel at SXSW. So in terms of numbers … we had up to 5 or 600 people this year. So it is a really successful event and we've used that in the past as a showcase for all the ‘Kiwi’ bands, who then they go and play their official showcases. Then we run through the week manning the trade show during the day and then running around trying to help everyone as much as possible with exposure over there. Because you've got 4 or 5 days to really maximise the number of people that see you, how they see you, and even who they are. So we help getting media appearances, just go around plugging hard to get people to come to these shows that we think might be ones they're interested in … It's pretty over the top but that's really an opportunity for acts make an impression on audiences off shore. It's really hard work and it's a very competitive environment.
Antipodean taxpayers paying for parties in Texas in the name of economic and social development? Such activities might raise the indignation of small state, regulatory focused neo-liberals, but when viewed from a new institutional perspective the NZMC has been finely attuned to the realities of accessing music industry ‘tastemakers’ and creating opportunities for domestic pop producers' future encashment. However, networking, partnering and ‘face work’ clearly are not unique to NZMC agents, for social connectivity is ‘an even more important resource in securing entrees, opportunities, and advancement’ within an industry where ‘there is no substitute for hospitality and conversation’ (Murdock Reference Murdock and Beck2003, p. 26). Therefore, these forms of state governance are ‘mimetically isomorphic’ to other private sector firms who seek to facilitate market transactions in the inherently high-risk music industry (DiMaggio and Powell Reference DiMaggio and Powell1983, p. 151). This is because, according to DiMaggio and Powell (Reference DiMaggio and Powell1983), ‘uncertainty is also a powerful force that encourages imitation [for] … when the environment creates symbolic uncertainty, organisations may model themselves on other organisations’, as in the case of the volatile and fashion-driven music industry. Therefore the NZMC has collected and distributed market information by forming ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter Reference Granovetter1973) and has thus become part of this informal industry network, as an NZMC informant explains (interview 2006):
Our international network of people we know quite well is constantly growing every year. So that is the first bunch of people that we target [before going to a trade show]: the existing network. We talk about what they like and what we've got, and then it's just really casting the net as much as we can. So the trade show element is the same for all the other people that have got stands as it is for us. So we can go to the Spin Magazine stand and go ‘hi how's it going here's a book of our acts, here's a CD with some off our stuff – “oh I went to your party and saw Chris Knox” – yeah, he's on here’. So that kind of just meeting people and getting the promo stuff we produce into hands and saying ‘This Coco Solid, she's kind of a Peaches-y hip-hop and I know that you're into that, why don't you check this one out?’ But at parties is the most effective way of doing that because it is an opportunity for people to see the bands and once that's happened they start to really sort of feed out that information themselves because it really is an environment where everybody's playing Chinese whispers about bands, people want to look cool about it. (In whisper) ‘I've got the hot tip, this instrumental band from New Zealand they're called Jakob – yeah, like Mogwai’. There is a lot of that sort of stuff going on.
These examples of the NZMC's practices illustrate how the state, rather than attempting to ‘defy the market’ or intervene in the logics of the music industry, becomes another player in the market by bearing, in part, the significant transaction costs many domestic artists face when entering music industry networks. This personalised mode of state action is much more than the ‘common development of such things as export support mechanisms and state-subsidised trips to US trade fairs’ that Frith and Cloonan (Reference Frith and Cloonan2008, p. 189) downplay as relatively unimportant aspects of the contemporary promotional state's activities. Of more interest to state–popular music researchers perhaps should be the ways ideologies of governance embed promotional state agents in particular microscale policy performances. Such activities demonstrate how the promotional state ‘after neo-liberalism’ is not just arm's length, bureaucratic and regulatory in managing quotas and subsidies. Rather, through new forms of governance, the state's presence becomes increasingly personalised, blurring public–private divides as it reaches down to mould pop musicians' subjectivities, while entering the fray with musicians in a mutual national project where policy goals and individual desire meld.
Conclusion: the ‘after neo-liberal’ promotional state
This article has sought to illustrate some of the nested ideologies of governance constituting New Zealand's pop renaissance. By building on Cloonan's (Reference Cloonan1999) promotion state this article has investigated how and why the fifth Labour government ‘got behind local music’. It was noted how the socio-economic conditions induced by neo-liberal reform have seen popular music and the creative industries deployed as meliorative cultural mechanisms through the meta-discourses of social inclusion as work. Here popular music as market activity is aligned with the higher social liberal goals of opportunity and empowerment, assisted by various programmes inspired by supply side, social inclusion and new institutional thought. We have also foregrounded how the ideological legacy of neo-liberalism and its emphasis on markets, competition and the gain spirit continued to influence the ways Labour's ‘after neo-liberal’ policies supported popular music. This exchange orientation has seen inventive forms of state coordination become directed towards the nimble ‘joining-up’ of musicians to market opportunities. Here, through the construction of organisations such as the NZMC, the state comes to manage and reduce the transaction costs involved in leveraging artists into global sites of deal making.
Yet there remain limitations and unanswered empirical questions. To what extent has NZMC's supply side capacity building actually attuned music makers to market logics? That is, have more musicians started to see themselves as entrepreneurial or has the state just further enabled what young people would be doing anyway? What have been the cost-benefits of these enabling policies? For example, do NZMC programmes actually transpire into ‘deals’ or do these incentives just create a ‘churn’ of new acts endlessly shuffling through the export process without achieving state export goals? This in turn is a question about how the state reviews and measures the success of these programmes, with NZMC's 2010–2013 business plan stating the aim of having 10 Outward Sound recipients gaining ‘foreign investment annually’ and with domestic sales figures reaching 30 per cent of all sales during Music Month (New Zealand Music Industry Commission 2010a, p. 16). The extent to which these metrics reflect sustainable career paths remains uncertain. Furthermore, we do not want to overstate the coherence of ‘after neo-liberal’ projects, for of course these are contested and negotiated. Instead our aim has been to tease out the salient features of contemporary music policies and by doing so illustrate how these offer a wide ambit for conducting aspiring music makers towards a heteroglossia of ends – regardless of how deeply the agents touched by the state come to think and act like the state.
We have argued for an expanded sense of promotional state–popular music relations, and in particular for a more nuanced, historical institutional understanding of these arrangements. From the New Zealand case we have seen how the ideological underpinnings of promotional state governance may form new secondary features to explain why and how the state becomes promotional. Such an analysis, we think, can go beyond the supportive subsidy and quotas interpretations, narratives of interventions in the market or discursive analysis of policy formation, in order to consider more closely how ideologies of governance affect conduct on the ground. These dimensions then might resonate in other contemporary settings, such as Australia, Finland or Canada, and provide a theoretically informed framework through which to trace the emerging trajectories of the promotional state ‘after neo-liberalism’.
