The launch last month of the New Zealand Music Industry Centre (NZMiC), in the former Radio New Zealand studios in Albany St, means music made here can travel the globe at the speed of light.
"We want to promote Dunedin as an industry hub, with the university and local music industry driving it," University of Otago music department head Prof Henry Johnson says of the centre and the collaboration behind it.
"The aim of NZMiC is to act as a mechanism through which the music department can engage with the music industry and foster research outputs and the recording of albums."
The project, a collaboration between the university and music promoter DunedinMusic.com, has come together as if it were destined to happen.
It includes the only studio in New Zealand capable of recording a full orchestra.
It had never been on the market before it was bought by the university in August, 2007. It was valued at $1.1m at the time.
"You could never build this building today," senior music lecturer Dr Rob Burns says.
"You just couldn't afford to do it.
"We're introducing 21st-century technology to a vintage 1960s studio that was built, originally, to record an orchestra," Prof Johnson says.
"We're bringing the studio into the current day, but maintaining its integrity."
The nerve centre and crown jewel of the facility is a $1m Solid State Logic C200HD mixing desk, built by English musician Peter Gabriel's company.
It was funded for the music department through a special equipment grant from the university.
The console looks like something from the future and, like the studio, is the only one of its kind in New Zealand.
"It's certainly a far cry from the old Tascam 512," former Fish St Studio owner and veteran sound engineer Stephen Kilroy drily noted at the unveiling on May 5.
It is like comparing a Model A Ford to a Maserati.
Kilroy was recording Dunedin bands on four, eight, 16 and 24-track magnetic reel-to-reel tape up until 2000.
The new console can simultaneously record from nearly 100 "inputs" or microphones directly to computer hard drive.
And those inputs could be split between several performances, recording them at the same time.
As a community resource, it has the potential to record performances at any of Dunedin's big venues, once fibre pathways are established.
One of the most excited music department staff is studio technician Stephen Stedman, who has played in a string of Dunedin bands since the 1980s.
"You'd have laughed at someone who said this was possible, back then. This creates an uncompromised recording space with the benchmark console in the industry. It's almost hard to believe it's here," he says.
"For me, this has been a once in a lifetime opportunity to be involved with the installation of a desk like this. It's professional equipment, as opposed to semi-professional equipment. There's a massive increase in quality and productivity.
"It may as well be on a different planet to the '80s and even the '90s," senior music lecturer and Verlaines singer-songwriter Dr Graeme Downes says.
"Technology is such that, for me at least, error and miscalculation in the recording process has been greatly diminished. It captures more depth and nuance in the recorded performance more than anything and, like most digital technology, aids efficiency and productivity.
"In short, it maximises all the qualities of performance and composition."
The initiative allows "real-time" collaborations with musicians around the world.
"We hope, in the very near future, to be collaborating in many different directions. New Zealand generally, and Dunedin even more so, has historically suffered from the tyranny of distance.
"To collaborate one needed to travel - pure and simple. In the very near future this will not be the case and projects will ensue irrespective of the location of the artists involved.
"Perhaps not next week, but within a year certainly," Dr Downes says.
"Dunedin has a fine heritage of music-making with or without the centre and the new desk, and is already 'on the map', so to speak. But the centre will allow that heritage to be ongoing, evolve and be presented to the world at a technologically very high standard."
The new console has also allowed the university to introduce a new degree, a doctorate of musical arts (DMA) in studio production, to the curriculum this year.
"This will be a drawcard for any student pursuing music as a career, because we can now give them real industry recording experience while they study their music degrees. This really raises the bar in terms of what's available in New Zealand," Prof Johnson says.
"The skill set of the modern musician is inflating constantly, such that no-one can reasonably expect to be an expert across every facet of the profession," Dr Downes says.
"I think the model whereby a wide array of expertise can be accessed via a facilitating organisation like NZMiC will be tremendously useful for all manner of projects, in Dunedin, New Zealand and even beyond."
However, technology is nothing without people.
Dr Downes has been running a contemporary rock degree course since 2000.
English bassist Dr Rob Burns (who has played with everyone from Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour and The Who's Pete Townshend to Ian Paice of Deep Purple and Eric Burdon of The Animals) joined in 2001 and former Billy T James drummer Ian "Dr Glam" Chapman arrived in 2002.
"A lot of people have come in, in the last nine years, with diverse experience," Dr Burns says.
"In the '80s and '90s, all the Dunedin bands had to record elsewhere. This is a reversal of that trend.
"It's enabled a cross-pollination of different disciplines. Graeme [Downes] and I have long harboured the opinion that we should be doing something like this in Dunedin. There's a hell of a lot of talented people here and we should be rivalling Auckland.
"Dunedin is like Nashville to Auckland's LA."
"The Dunedin heritage - or 'Dunedin Sound' - music is what people make of it," Dr Bendrups says.
"But, in the fullness of time, it ascribes an identity to the place, and that's nothing to be sneezed at.
"We want NZMiC to be an ongoing force. The studio is a university resource, so part of its use is teaching and research. But, the university also wants us to engage with the music industry.
"Over the next three years, we'll be examining the New Zealand music industry from an academic perspective. What is it? Is it sustainable? Is it measurable?"
The centre is already encouraging innovation.
Dr Burns has started a "Live at Albany" recording series, while The Verlaines began recording their new album in the studio last month.
The centre has already hosted its first live concert - a packed auditorium attending a jazz improvisation collaboration featuring Portuguese virtuoso percussionist Pedro Carneiro and Subject2Change on May 20 - which was recorded and filmed.
"It is a real privilege to have the opportunity to work with an artist of Carneiro's calibre," Dr Bendrups says.
"He's probably the best example of what we're going to be seeing here. He's an international superstar of marimba. To have an artist of that status come to Dunedin for an improvised, experimental project is testament to precisely the sort of direction we see this heading.
"It's very exciting."
DunedinMusic.com strategic director Scott Muir says he had been working with the university's music department for several years before the Albany St collaboration came off.
The local music industry is now "abuzz" with the potential it offers, he says.
"We are about facilitating a strong sustainable music industry in Dunedin and all five of the record labels domiciled here see potential in being involved one way or another."
It would, though, be a university resource first.
"In relation to the studio, we have some criteria that need to be met as it's a teaching and research facility first and foremost, but commercial and community service projects are also high on our agenda and we are already receiving many inquiries in this area.
The centre is open to inquiries from all sections of the music community - we are outward looking and interested in collaborating on many levels and in as diverse a manner of ways as we can."