The Missing Eighth Ask

A perspective that missed the invitation list

The 2026 Music Industry Manifesto was developed over approximately five months through consultation and conversations with music organisations and sector bodies.

Its twelve signatories include APRA AMCOS, Recorded Music New Zealand, OneMusic, the New Zealand Music Commission, Independent Music NZ and a number of other established sector organisations.

Heart Music Group was not invited to contribute to, or consulted during the development of, the Manifesto.

We recognise that no consultation can include everyone. Still, there is a certain irony in a manifesto about the future of New Zealand music being prepared without input from a New Zealand organisation that has spent years building a different licensing pathway.

So we are adding that perspective to the conversation: the experience of an emerging New Zealand music-licensing organisation attempting to establish an alternative pathway through which creators can take their rights to market.

That experience has led HMG to believe that any serious strategy for the future of New Zealand music should consider not only how the existing industry is supported, but whether our market provides sufficient room for new models, new entrants and genuine competition to emerge.

Copyright should give creators choices

The Manifesto rightly places considerable emphasis on copyright and the importance of allowing artists and rights holders to choose how their work is used.

HMG agrees.

That principle should apply throughout the music economy.

Copyright gives creators valuable rights in their work. Collective licensing has provided an enormously important mechanism through which those rights can be administered efficiently and at scale.

HMG is not seeking to dismantle collective licensing.

We believe there should be room for another option alongside it.

Heart Music Group works with independent New Zealand creators to make music available for direct licensing to businesses and public organisations. Our objective is to create an additional pathway through which organisations can use New Zealand music and licensing expenditure can flow to the creators participating in that service.

Direct licensing is not contrary to copyright.

It is an exercise of copyright.

And creator choice is meaningful only if those different choices can practically be exercised.

The difference between having a right and being able to use it

In principle, creators can directly license rights that remain available to them.

In practice, building a competing licensing service around those rights can be considerably more complicated.

Consider a business that wants to obtain part of its music directly from New Zealand creators while retaining access to other repertoire through an existing collective licence.

Some very practical questions immediately arise.

Will its existing collective licensing costs adjust to recognise rights or repertoire being sourced elsewhere?

Can the business understand the likely adjustment before deciding whether to adopt the alternative service?

How will that adjustment be calculated?

When will it take effect?

Can creators efficiently appoint an alternative organisation to administer relevant rights?

Can those arrangements be processed at scale?

Can a competing music supplier obtain sufficient information about the licensing consequences to give a prospective customer reliable pricing?

And ultimately:

Can an alternative music-licensing organisation genuinely compete?

These may appear to be technical licensing questions.

They are also competition questions.

The Commerce Commission is currently investigating certain conduct by APRA AMCOS

HMG's concerns about the operation of this market are not merely theoretical.

Following engagement with HMG, the New Zealand Commerce Commission wrote to us in April 2025 confirming that it had opened an investigation into certain conduct by APRA NZ, Recorded Music New Zealand and OneMusic.

The position has since narrowed.

The Commission closed its investigation into Recorded Music New Zealand in October 2025, explaining that it was not clear to the Commission that RMNZ was engaging in anticompetitive behaviour.

The Commerce Commission's investigation into APRA AMCOS remains open, including OneMusic, which the Commission states APRA operates.

The Commission has confirmed that its investigation is being conducted under sections 27 and 36 of the Commerce Act 1986.

It is important to be equally clear about what the existence of this investigation does not mean.

The Commerce Commission has expressly stated that, while its investigation remains underway, it has reached no conclusions or determinations about the investigated conduct. It has made no decision about whether an enforcement response is appropriate and cannot commit to the investigation producing any particular outcome.

HMG does not suggest otherwise.

The investigation should therefore not be interpreted as establishing that APRA AMCOS or OneMusic has breached the Commerce Act.

What it does demonstrate is that questions about competition in New Zealand music licensing are legitimate matters for serious consideration.

As the music industry asks the next Government to consider the future growth and structure of New Zealand music, we believe there is a parallel question worth asking:

Does the structure and operation of our music-licensing market provide sufficient opportunity for creator choice, innovation and genuine competition?

Competition can benefit creators

Competition in music licensing should not simply be understood as a mechanism for businesses to pay less for music.

It can also create new demand and new pathways through which money reaches creators.

Consider a business that currently directs its music expenditure entirely through established licensing and music-supply channels.

If that business is given a practical opportunity to obtain part of its music directly from independent New Zealand creators, some of that expenditure can potentially flow through a different pathway to those creators.

That creates another route to market.

It creates another potential source of licensing revenue.

It gives businesses another reason to choose New Zealand music.

And it creates incentives for entrepreneurs to develop new ways of connecting music users with creators.

Competition therefore does not have to mean taking value away from music.

It can mean creating more pathways through which music generates value.

Supporting an industry is bigger than supporting its existing institutions

Established music organisations perform important functions and have made significant contributions to New Zealand music.

But an industry is bigger than the institutions that currently administer it.

If New Zealand wants innovation in music technology, licensing, rights administration and distribution, new entrants need a realistic opportunity to develop alternatives.

The next generation of New Zealand music businesses may not look like the organisations that exist today.

That should be welcomed.

A healthy music market should be capable of accommodating collective licensing, direct licensing and hybrid arrangements in which music users access both.

Creators should similarly have meaningful choices about how rights available to them are taken to market.

There is an important distinction between protecting copyright and protecting a particular mechanism through which copyright is administered.

We strongly support the former.

Proportional licensing is essential to genuine choice

One issue is particularly important if collective and direct licensing are to coexist effectively.

Where a business genuinely obtains relevant rights through a direct licensing arrangement, there needs to be a transparent and workable mechanism for recognising the rights being sourced elsewhere.

A prospective customer needs sufficient information to understand the commercial consequences.

That means being able to determine:

• which rights within an existing licensing arrangement are affected;
• how any corresponding adjustment is calculated;
• when an adjustment takes effect;
• what information or evidence is required;
• how actual usage of directly licensed music is recognised; and
• how the process works where a music service contains both directly and collectively licensed repertoire.

This is not simply an administrative issue.

If an alternative provider cannot reliably tell a prospective customer what adopting its service is likely to cost overall, that provider faces an obvious obstacle to competing for the customer's business.

A right to compete on paper is valuable.

A practical ability to compete is better.

The missing eighth ask

Heart Music Group therefore proposes an additional priority alongside the seven contained in the 2026 Aotearoa Music Industry Manifesto:

8. Competition, Creator Choice and Direct Licensing

Ensure New Zealand's copyright and music-licensing environment enables genuine competition between licensing models and allows creators to exercise available direct-licensing rights in practice as well as in principle.

We believe five areas deserve consideration.

1. Competition

Examine whether existing music-licensing structures, practices or administrative arrangements create unnecessary barriers to alternative licensing models and new market entrants.

2. Proportionality

Support transparent and workable mechanisms for recognising rights and repertoire that music users source through legitimate alternative licensing arrangements.

3. Creator choice

Support practical and scalable processes through which creators can appoint alternative representatives and exercise direct-licensing rights where those rights are available to them.

4. Transparency

Ensure businesses considering alternative licensing arrangements can obtain sufficient information about the licensing consequences within a reasonable timeframe to make an informed commercial decision.

5. Innovation

Ensure any future Music Industry Growth Strategy expressly considers competition, new licensing models and innovation in music-rights administration.

We support the seven asks. We think there should be an eighth.

HMG's response should not be interpreted as opposition to the priorities contained in the Music Industry Manifesto.

We support much of what the Manifesto seeks to achieve.

New Zealand creators should be properly compensated.

Copyright should remain meaningful in an era of artificial intelligence.

New Zealand music should travel further internationally.

Māori music should be supported and protected.

Young New Zealanders should have meaningful opportunities to participate in music.

And New Zealand music should be easier to discover.

But if we are having a national conversation about how to grow the music industry, we should also be willing to discuss the market through which music rights are administered and bought.

Growth does not come only from additional public investment.

It can also come from competition.

It can come from entrepreneurship.

It can come from technology.

It can come from alternative licensing arrangements.

And it can come from giving creators more than one pathway through which to take their work to market.

An invitation to broaden the conversation

Heart Music Group welcomes engagement with the organisations behind the Music Industry Manifesto, creators, music users, government agencies and political parties about how these issues could form part of the wider discussion.

There does not need to be a choice between collective licensing and direct licensing.

There should be room for both.

There should also be room for models that have not yet been invented.

If New Zealand genuinely wants to build a stronger music industry, our objective should not simply be to preserve the structures we already have.

It should be to create an environment in which creators have meaningful choices, businesses have genuine alternatives, innovators have the opportunity to compete, and more of the value generated by music can reach the people who create it.

That is the missing eighth ask.

Heart Music Group
Fair Play Aotearoa