Deconstructing democratisation: an ethnographic analysis of independent/DIY music work in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand

This thesis is an investigation and critique of the claims propagated by discourses of democratisation through an ethnographic analysis of independent/DIY musicians and music scenes in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Where democratisation envisions an idealised entrepreneurial subject, I contextualise the conditions of independent musical labour to unveil the ongoing and pervasive presence of industry hierarchies, biases, and power dynamics. As a nation typically characterised by its peripherality to major centres of cultural production, Aotearoa/New Zealand presents unique investigation opportunities. Digital tools promised to collapse the tyranny of distance, incorporating Aotearoa/New Zealand musicians into global music industries. Furthermore, popular music production has been deployed as a resource for economic generation and national identity construction under a third-way regime, with the state playing a salient role in moulding contemporary conditions of musical labour. 

Contrary to a rhetoric of empowerment and autonomy, this thesis reveals how those tools of democratisation – streaming platforms, social media platforms, state arts initiatives, and so on – reinforce unsustainable labour conditions and normalise the precarious labour subject. I position the so-called democratised musician within a web of commercial, political, and technological structures, probing the intersection of these structures and musical practice to unveil how Wellington’s independent/DIY musicians internalise, embody, and navigate the trope of the democratised entrepreneur. However, I am not just concerned with the independent musician as a precarious subject trapped within discriminatory power structures, but with how independent/DIY musicians engage with and manipulate these conditions to forge sustainable practice. Accordingly, this thesis illuminates the creative and innovative methods used to alleviate precarity, with collective practices acting as a counterbalance the inherent risks of the independent, entrepreneurial ideal.