On the profitable social media bit. I have been a worker in the scene for 8 years, running events, promoting other people, pushing the scene. And i'll keep doing it here because I love it, not because theres money in it.
I love the older style layout, it is much more readable that 99% of websites available today. Also that Classified section is wonderful.
Is that inflation-adjusted? And as the article points out, very little of that is local talent, so it's likely some of that's due to the cost of tickets.
As someone who lived in NZ (although Wellington) for 10 years until last year, the local music scene was there, but at least in Wellington, the change in the 10 years I was there was considerable: The earthquake in 2016 progressively caused several venues on Cuba Street to close due to building regulations, and Covid was a significant shock as well, with some of the smaller (although most places in Wellington were small!) gig rooms / bars / breweries that would often host bands closing.
There was still Valhalla, San Fran, The Rogue & Vagabond and others, but it just didn't feel as much was going on other than for things like Cuba Dupa street festival, etc, or the Jazz weekends that would be held.
As the article points out, this is not localised to NZ, it's happening in Australia and the UK as well in terms of venues/pubs closing and live music not being quite the draw it once was because of that.
Sometimes it feels like all we have is King Gizzard occasionally and then nothing but DJ's and cover bands to fill the gaps at the local RSL. Places like The Croxton still put on a great spread however.
It has been about 8 years since I was last in Wellington, it seemed to still have some stuff going for it but it was also clear that the decline was setting in.
I can't speak to what the scene was like 10 years ago, but to say that its rare feels very wrong to me.
I suspect that people went out more in 2023-2025, but then they reversed to the mean + economic impacts (of money printing everywhere) hit.
* by the way, did covid officially ever end? the new variants seem to be still there, but it just stopped being covered by media after Russia invaded Ukraine)
Most everyone is vaccinated except the young who seem to have relatively mild infections. Of course there are probably excess cardiac deaths due to immune response, but that's even smaller and much more difficult to measure or determine cause for.
However due to other reasons people definitely have less money for discretionary activities, especially the youth.
And no, Covid never ended. It's still here, it's still killing and disabling people, but due to vaccines and antivirals it's less prevalent than it was.
Other countries had longer lockdowns or even when they didn't people were not going to concerts etc.
The international border quarantine was quite extreme, but the rest of the country was (mostly) business as normal.
The strictness index (which is what I'm assuming you're referring to) varied over time as the response changed.
This seems amazingly high for local content in a small English speaking market, unless that's all just Crowded House.
So the long and short of it seems to be an advertisement for the site itself?
I think this should've been a show HN as your affiliation with the site is not obvious from the outset.
Good luck with your project, but I suspect it will take more than a Claude subscription and a dream to replace what the article claims has been lost.
Open topic is if anyone is reading those or not.
But decline of quality press & local press is a very big problem.
On another board there is a person who (for free) collects information about people who lost their lives in car accidents during every summer vacation. That person tries to link to articles that described what happened. More and more, there are simply no articles -> because there is no more local press, even a local portal that would write about it.
In a way it's on the people - who dont want to pay for content. Perhaps due to some content shifted to youtube, tiktok or facebook.
which leads to the next piece of the puzzle, “we lost our quality writers and what we’re doing to get it back.”
there are people who enjoy writing about their passions such as music scenes, tech, arts, maker scenes, etc,.. how do we put them together with the people who are passionate about building something for local music scenes? and no, i don’t think the answer is, “oooh, let’s build another app.”