2015 Taite Music Prize

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The ceremony and its main award share the "Taite Music Prize" name. This award recognises New Zealand's best album of the previous year (2014). The winner, Sines by Hawkes Bay post-rock band Jakob, was selected by a panel of expert judges.

Criteria for the award include artistic merit, creativity, innovation and excellence. Sales and popularity are ignored. The winners received $10,000 from Recorded Music NZ and recording time at Red Bull Studios.^[1]

2014 Taite Music Prize winner Lorde introduced the award, addressing a room of "some of the most technically talented, painfully underheard musicians New Zealand has to offer". She called the award "special" because it matters to "people who actually care about music".^[2]

Jakob had been surprised to make the Taite Music Prize final and hadn't expected to win. After the prize became theirs, guitarist Jeff Boyle said they were "honoured and blown away". They put the prize money towards an upcoming European tour.^[3]

Sines was the band's fourth album and their first in eight years. Over that time they had experienced failed recording sessions and injuries, including a time in 2008 when all three members were recovering from different hand and wrist conditions.^[3]. In the early 2010s they had abandoned the idea of making the album at all.^[4] As Boyle put it, "the fact that we were forced to split the recording of this album over multiple studios and long periods of time, meant that the album ended up quite eclectic and dynamic, which is what our original vision was".^[5]

In 2014 local reviewers had called Sines "utterly beguiling, intelligently nuanced, repeat-play art-music of the kind that gives post-rock a very good name",^[6] and "capable of wholly enveloping you and spitting you out minutes later with no recollection of the lost time in between".^[7] One of the Taite judges, Pennie Black, said, "Listening to Sines, one is spirited away to a mystical place, from which you don’t want to return".^[1]

After an open call for nominations, a total of 65 albums were entered. This list went to a vote of all IMNZ members and selected industry specialists, which found ten finalists who were announced on 19 February.^[8] @peace made an unprecedented third consecutive final and their leader Tom Scott became the first four-time finalist after a previous appearance with Home Brew. Tami Neilson made the first of her four finals (as of 2026^[update]).^[9]

2015 Taite Music Prize finalists

Artist	Album	Label	Result
@peace	@peace and the Plutonian Noise Symphony	Young, Gifted and Broke	Nominated
Delaney Davidson	Swim Down Low	Outside Inside	Nominated
Electric Wire Hustle	Love Can Prevail	EWH Ltd. / Okayplayer Records	Nominated
Grayson Gilmour	Infinite Life!	Flying Nun Records	Nominated
Aldous Harding	Aldous Harding	Lyttleton Records/Flying Out	Nominated
Jakob	'Sines'	Shoot The Freak	Won
Kimbra	The Golden Echo	Warner Brother Records	Nominated
Mulholland	Stop & Start Again	Mulholland	Nominated
Tami Neilson	Dynamite	Neilson Records	Nominated
Tiny Ruins	Brightly Painted One	Arch Hill Recordings/Spunk Records	Nominated

The judges of the 2015 Taite Music Prize were announced at the same time as the finalists. They were:^[8]

• Nick Atkinson, NZ Music Commission board member and artist manager
• Pennie Black, 95bFM programme director
• Greg Churchill, DJ
• Sarah Crowe, NZ On Air
• Marty Duda, 13th Floor and Radio NZ
• Lucy Macrae, The Label
• Peter McLennan, Hallelujah Picassos, writer and IMNZ board member
• Henry Oliver, journalist and former member of Die! Die! Die!
• Julie Warmington, music publicist
• Natalie Wilson, (Music Supervisor, The Other Side Music)

John Taite (BBC America) was again named as the "11th man" of the otherwise New Zealand-based judging panel. As well as being an international music executive, John is the son of Dylan Taite, and played an instrumental role representing the Taite family during the establishment and early years' administration of the Taite Music Prize.^[10]