13th Floor - New Artist Showcase Sessions

The 13th Floor is a Not-for-profit organisation that has been operating in central Auckland for the past 12 years. Led by award-winning music journalist Marty Duda, The 13th floor is made up of a team of about 25 writers, photographers, and technical staff.

What do we do?

While we cover a broad range of musical genres, our passion lies with promoting the work of new local artists. Over the years we have seen so much emerging talent come through our doors including Aldous Harding, Troy Kingi, and Mermaidens. We have been lucky enough to work with them and see their musical careers progress.

While our concert and album reviews help musicians in building a name for themselves, we go further than many other music publications in our endeavours to help new artists. We help with creating high quality material for them to use to promote themselves, as well as a platform to do so. Our live music sessions and interviews are shot, mixed and edited by a professional team and given to the musicians for them to use as they’d like, as well as being featured on The 13th Floor website and social media.

Why we need your help

This has previously been something we were able to do for free to help musicians. However, times have changed and we are no longer able to afford the costs and time it takes to produce these sessions free of charge. As you probably know, new musicians rarely have any money to fund these kinds of productions, even at a meagre cost.

We believe this is an important cause to support because in the current climate, music journalism is dying and there are so few credible platforms available for artists to promote their work. Many of the music journalism platforms that are still going often regurgitate press releases and little else. Every day we are getting emails from artists trying to get their name out there and pleading to us to help them create meaningful content.

 Where does your money go?

Each of these sessions takes a total of 16 hours work across a crew of 5. On top of this, we need to maintain our equipment and beautiful venue.

By reaching our target, we will be able to pay our crew for the hours of work they put in to creating these videos. As well as trying to help new artists, we also want to support new talent in sound, lighting, and camera work. We have an amazing team who work with us for nothing and we would love to be able to give them the compensation they deserve.

By reaching our stretch target, we will be able to put money towards the expenses and equipment to make these productions possible and keep The 13th Floor alive, as well as investing in marketing to promote new musicians.

What’s the outcome?

• For brand new artists we would like to invite a new artist up to The 13th Floor each week to perform three songs and give a short interview to let people know who they are. This would be shot, mixed and edited professionally and would be given to the artist to promote themselves as they like. We would also promote their work on our website and social media.

• For emerging artists with an EP, album, or tour coming up, we would like to start doing a monthly live streamed showcase at The 13th Floor for new talent. For these sessions the artists will be given the opportunity to perform 3 songs, and potentially do an interview. There will also be an option to have a small studio audience and to livestream the showcase with professional live mixing. The artists will be given a professionally edited video of their session for promotional use. The 13th Floor will promote the artist by posting the session to their website, YouTube channel, and social media pages, as well as promoting the upcoming live stream beforehand.

 How do I know where my money is going?

We’re sure you would like to know where your money is going.
If you decide to become a financial contributor, you can choose to be updated on where your funds are going and the new artists you’re helping to support. 

All donations are eligible for a 33% tax credit. Tax receipts will be issued at the end of the campaign.

Help us keep The 13th Floor alive!