KEY POINTS:
He doesn't sing, but Campbell Smith helps keep the beat of New Zealand music.
The chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand, or RIANZ, Smith is also the founder of CRS Management, a talent firm that includes Bic Runga, Breaks Co-Op and Brooke Fraser
among its clients.
As if that weren't enough, Smith is also the local promoter behind New Zealand's biggest music event , the Big Day Out.
Chances are, if you're into New Zealand music, you've heard something that's got Smith's fingerprints on it.
"Music's always been a passion for me," Smith says.
Smith, 41, didn't set out to become one of the New Zealand music industry's most prominent behind-the-scenes players, he originally studied as a copyright lawyer at the University of Auckland, graduating in 1989.
He then worked for law firms for a few years , but always kept one ear to the stereo.
"I lived in record shops," he says.
Smith wanted to become a lawyer in the music business, but it's a hard and small field to break into.
A stint hosting a legal advice call-in segment on student radio 95bFM introduced him to a variety of music industry folk.
Then, in 1994, he began managing The Tufnels, a band started by some of his friends. But it was singer Bic Runga who launched Smith into the big time.
"I heard a demo for Drive by Bic Runga and when I heard that the hairs stood up on the back of my neck," he says. "That was the tipping point."
Runga went on to become one of the highest-selling New Zealand artists of all time.
"Our careers are entwined."
The Runga ties are stronger than just business, as Smith is married to Bic's sister Boh Runga, who leads her own band, Stellar*.
Smith says he found himself advising many musicians as a lawyer, but it took a lot of "hustling" to break an act in a big way.
As he started a management career, Smith spent most of the late 1990s in London and New York, trying to establish his name and clients like Bic and band Garageland.
Diving into the deep waters of the global music industry after working in New Zealand, opened his eyes to exactly what was involved, he says.
"I just worked real hard trying to meet people and make contacts," he says of the hectic era that he still fondly recalls as "probably the most exciting time of my career."
The work eventually began to pay off, with small success such as getting the Bic Runga song Sway on the top-selling American Pie movie soundtrack.
When Smith came back from overseas, he began setting up the foundations of CRS Management, but says he found a lack of musical industry infrastructure in this country.
"You need professional people whose business it is to drive those careers. I decided to really try to build a significantly-sized management company."
Teresa Patterson and Paul McKessar also joined CRS as partners in recent years. Patterson came from 10 years of working for record labels.
Management of a musician requires a wide variety of skills, from getting contracts and setting tours to simply keeping your clients happy and productive.
"At one end it's quite high level negotiations - at the other end, it's glorified baby-sitting," Smith says. "The best way I've ever described management is you're a luck minimiser [in a musician's career]. You want to make that luck factor as small as possible."
His work with CRS Management led the board of directors at RIANZ to approach Smith about the job of CEO.
He started working with RIANZ in March 2005.
RIANZ is a non-profit group representing the rights of record producers, distributors and recording artists throughout New Zealand.
Among its work is copyright protection, overseeing the official local music chart and the annual music awards.
An affiliated group is Phonographic Performance New Zealand, or PPNZ, which Smith is managing director for. PPNZ runs the RAP (Recording Artists and Producers) fund, which ensures licensing fees for the broadcast or performance of recordings are paid directly to the copyright owners - a change from when such fees were paid to the record labels, which then distributed them on.
"We're delivering money directly to the artist," Smith says, a function that was a deciding factor in his involvement with RIANZ.
In a presentation to the Parliament commerce select committee in March, Smith discussed how illegal downloading is hurting musicians.
He told the committee that of his 11 clients, "eight have had to take day jobs to sustain themselves. They can't survive off music."
Illegal downloading is something that needs to be fought with education as well as legal maneuvers, he says. Despite the piracy threat, he still believes the digitisation of music presents a lot of oppotunities.
"The consumer is king," he says, adding that downloading is here to stay. "But we need to reach out to the people about what the creator's rights are."
He points to recent moves like the introduction of iTunes to New Zealand as a way to combat illegal downloaders, and despite falling music industry CD sales, he's not pessimistic about the future. "It's not that it's ever been easy [to be a musician] anyway."
New Zealand artists have a smaller audience to draw on, but given the right factors, they can make it.
"I'm extremely motivated to see our people do well."
But to triumph in a global economy, it takes more than just succeeding in one small country, he notes - a lesson he learnt during his time in New York and London.
"I came back to New Zealand with the firm conviction that the way to get New Zealand music out there is to get New Zealand musicians out of here."
In 2004, Smith was offered New Zealand management of the Big Day Out music festival, which originated in Australia. He now works with the Australian promoters on the line-up and helps arrange the local show's logistics.
"It's the biggest live event in the music calendar. It's iconic." Much of the latter half of the year is taken up organising the event, he says.
Juggling RIANZ, CRS Management and the Big Day Out means long hours for Smith, who says he can go into work at 6:30am and not leave until after 7pm.
Fortunately, CRS Management and RIANZ are currently headquartered in the same Grey Lynn building.
"I have a great staff who do their jobs really well."
And despite the day-to-day details of the jobs, Smith is still an avid music fan. On a recent morning, he cranked up a copy of David Bowie's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) before heading off to the office. However, the tunes weren't on an iPod or a CD. The man who is looking at leading New Zealand music into tomorrow admits he has a preference for that old standby, vinyl.
"I listen to nothing but vinyl right now. I just think it sounds better."
And getting the best sound is what it's all about.
