By Richard Thorne, NZ Musician, Vol. 9, No. 7, August/September 2001
Thanks to the legacy of Neil and his latter day guitar wielding cohorts, rock 'n' roll hopefully will never die, but Auckland radio station Mai FM has no intention of letting Kiwi R&B, rap and hip hop fade away either. Recent months have seen the wholly Ngati Whatua owned station bust some pretty sharp moves of their own and, rather than te reo, it is the lexicon of brand marketing which these days dominates management discussions.
The brand in question is not Mai FM, but the more global-sounding Mai Media, and there is (of course) more to this picture than meets the eye. Alongside Mai Media now stands Mai Music and Mai Publishing, between them representing an unprecedented push by a radio station into record company territory.
For pretty much all of the six years which Graham Prior has held the reins as CEO of Mai FM, the station has rated number one in the Auckland youth market. The most recent ratings show Mai FM 88.6 to have a dominant 15.3% of the 10-39 year old action and a massive 22% of the 10-24 listenership pie. Such consistently good results, along with the success of some non-core initiatives over the last few years, got the station's management thinking about taking advantage of the Mai brand.
Compilation CDs entitled 'Mai Street Jams' which kicked off in 1997 and subsequently the R&B/hip hop 'Mai Music Volume' series, had already shown the station's market strength. Any profits have been ploughed back tells Prior.
"The company has grown considerably in the nine years. It's a very competitive marketplace now, an oligopoly with two owners accounting for about 95% of the total radio revenue in the country. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it is not a very good place to be operating! You have to work at it, and brand extensions are an important strategy."
Victor Stent, himself a former record company MD, head of the ill-fated independent record distributor Metro Music, and for two years now Retail Sales Manager for Mai FM steps up to the microphone.
"Concurrent with the market polarisation was the recognition that this station had established a brand that actually had a value, one people would wear on their T-shirt. Mai stands for something very clear music-wise and also for a lifestyle and the youth market. We have identified our place, staked it and own it and stand for it.
"Those things meant that we could look outside our traditional paradigm for revenue and leverage the brand value in innovative ways. Rather than just saying 'we are an empty vessel, use us as a pipeline', we started marketing ouselves as a brand with a loyal 150,000 audience, which we can engage in a number of different ways - not just through the speakers."
Labour Government moves to support the music industry announced in May last year, led quickly to further action. With the increase in subsidies from NZ On Air (happening), anticipated legislation of airplay quotas (no sign yet), the possibility of Maori television (recently confirmed), the establishment of the Music Commission (a year old), and other funded initiatives, it seemed the time was right for Mai to further expand its role.
"Unfortunately about that same time we saw a substantial dis-investment in the local R&B, hip hop and rap genres by record companies", tells Stent, referring presumably to significant changes in the previously supportive BMG roster, as well as the demise of some lesser groove labels. "So right at the time that the Government was saying they wanted to legislate for a local quota on radio we were faced with the potential that the amount of product we were getting was going to drop by half, rather than double."
Driven by the need for content to meet the anticipated quota regime plus the realisation that within Mai FM was a skill set and understanding of music types which was not available elsewhere to local artists, the possibility of starting their own in-house record label arose.
Stent continues the explanation.
"The kaupapa of Mai FM has always been about trying to support the local scene, specifically Maori youth, and any steps which can be made to address opportunities and take affirmative action on behalf of young Maori is important. We saw that all of those goals could be fulfilled by becoming active in the marketplace.
"If record companies don't understand the genre how can they have the confidence to invest in it? With myself and Manu Taylor (Mai's highly regarded PD), and Dave Bridgman (station recording engineer/producer) inside the building, we possibly had a skill and knowledge base that exceeded most of the record companies. Rather than criticise the record companies or the artists themselves for poor production standards we decided we should make those assets available."
And so it was that Mai FM started to court a number of artists and also enlisted the aid of Darryl Thomson (DLT) to act as artist development rep. Wheelchair-bound South Auckland R&B vocalist Priscilla Thompson was the artist who got the ball rolling with recordings made specifically for the station playlist. An R&B single by Aucklander Carmen Steel, (formerly with Ghetto Poet), one from Richie Campbell's Indigenous Funk Company and a hip hop track from Tauranga's Loniz developed the momentum, until it started to look suspiciously like an artist roster.
"It kind of evolved into working with those various acts, to the point where in November we had a function on the deck here with the Prime Minister, NZ On Air people and others. It was a small formal ceremony where we launched our intentions to record local music, kind of acknowledging the step resulted directly from the Labour Government initiatives."
Other names have since been added and some recorded. Former Southside artist Ngaire is one. Two winning acts from the Coke Rhythm Nation competition, Ranui's 4th Element and Psyco Acoustik from the Shore, both have had singles recorded. R&B/popster Leesa Harpur, considered a major "developable" artist, was signed the very week we talked, with more negotiations ongoing.
Although Mai's own studio, upstairs from the busy offices (there are 60 on staff) on Auckland's Gt North Rd, boasts two Fairlights, recordings to date have been done by Nick Roughan at Phoenix Productions, with Darryl Thomson assisting.
"It would be naive to think that we could record this music and put it to air then just walk away from it. To not have an end game for the artists we are bringing on board would be wrong. So the next step was to secure a distribution channel, which led to negotiations with EMI, Warners, and ultimately Universal."
The step to form both Mai Publishing and Mai Music in early June (Mai FM becoming Mai Media Ltd at the same time), came off the back of that thinking, as Stent explains.
"Essentially we needed a contractual environment to advocate on behalf of this artist community that we were creating and to protect them with regard to royalties etc. So the record company and a publishing entity became a logical extension of the need to look after them and to have a negotiating entity to represent them locally and internationally."
The distribution arrangement with Universal Music is for P&D of the local artist releases. Simultaneously another deal was struck to license the Mai Music name for compilation purposes. UMG will pay a license fee to continue the successful 'Mai Music' compilation CD series, which is up to number six within just four years. Universal have distributed the last couple in the series but without a formal license agreement until now. Part of the agreement is for inclusion of Mai Music artists on future albums, which ensures they get exceptional exposure alongside the international artists on the same albums, without facing the costs of manufacturing poorly performing singles.
As a perfect example both Carmen Steel and Priscilla recently received gold discs from EMI for their first tracks licensed separately to the 'Wassup Vol.2' compilation.
"This will have a great impact on the numbers hearing them and the way they are perceived", continues Stent. "It is the first step for joint-venturing the brand in other areas where we feel it is appropriate."
Mai Publishing is awaiting ratification from APRA for local representation, while negotiating a sub-publishing deal with an international publisher. Contracts are kept simple and publishing is song by song.
"We are not trying to contract artists for their life and beyond. We don't wish to be a barrier further down the track should a major label wish to sign them.
"The te reo thing is an absolute cornerstone of what we are are doing with Mai Music. Mai FM has a charter to bring the language to urban Maori youth, we also have an obligation and intention with the label to record in Maori and to bring that side to the fore. So we are not only talking about recording contemporary but traditional, children's, comedy and all other aspects."
Mai Media Ltd now encapsulates Mai Music, Mai Publishing, Mai FM 88.6, maifm.co.nz the internet site, poised to commence e-commerce, Ruia Mai the biggest producer of Maori language programming in the country, and the recently launched North Shore dance music station known as Red FM plus its website.
Graham Prior, who has the job of convincing the board to accept all these moves, explains how Red FM fits the picture.
"It is a joint venture between ourselves and the tech support company that supports the station's computer systems and all the on air transmission systems. It's a small frequency broadcasting off the Whangaparoa Peninsula, back towards the city. We've had that frequency (95.4FM) for years and recently decided to do something with it. It's playing high energy dance music (125bpm plus), primarily on rotate, with specialty shows in the evenings.
"A lot of Mai FM clients are also interested in the dance market and it's also supporting the local DJs. It has to be treated a little differently, but we think we can make a commercial go out of it."
"It's been fantastic the number of people who have come forward with material and wanting to do shows," says Stent. "Again it's a matter of just doing it, like the record label. We decided to do it and it was real within four weeks of that decision. If we started to add staffing costs to all those entities we would never have got them started so we are effectively just running them out of the management pool. Graham has given us all the freedom to have ideas and put them into action. Pioneering is an odd place, there is no rule book."
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