acat said;
houston we have a problem. 90:10 is about creating opportunities. opportunities for the local talents to show what they got. that our music is at par or even better than our aural neighbours. u do have to wonder how they do it. i mean u have to admit that their songs are good. so how? even if u have 90% local content, the 10% still have a big influence on how people buy music. well those that buy anyways.
rather than limit the influx of foreign music to 10%, why don't we just play the 10% that just sucks. expose people to the uglier side of their music. i'm sure not all coming over here are that good anyways.
but then we come across the dilemma of who decides who sucks? coz clearly music is very subjective and one person's shrieking banshee cries might be an angelic serenade to the other.
for me i feel that good music is good music is good music. u listen to the music that makes u feel good. be it local or foreign. i for one do not want to be told that hey i can't listen to this band or that band just because they're not local.
but i guess it boils down to opportunities. maybe by having this 90:10 rule we would have more opportunities to uncover the hidden gems in our local music industry.
whether or not that's enough to make you go out and buy their cd's is another thing all together la kan.
Acat,
I agree that good music is good music. The reason why we get more good Indonesian songs over here is simple mathematics. Said country is huuuuge, the more people they have, the bigger the ratio for songs to be written. Let say that only 1 out of 10 songs that are played on the radio will be a hit. The more songs you have, the more hit songs you gonna get as well. Do the math.
Most of the foreign musicians that perform here are already "kaya raya" back at home. They have managed to tough out the competition there, of course we only get to taste the cream of the crop. But what about finding our own cream of the crop? That's why we need more opportunities i.e. slots for our musicians to tough it out, I believe, instead of unnecessarily promote music that has already made it (popularized).
The idea is that the more you play local songs, the bigger the chance that more good songs will be discovered by their target listeners.
When you have the same old song played over again and again, you're not changing anything.
effi said;
I wrote a mini blog in here just now. I think it was in access of 800 words. But somehow it was deleted by blogger due to some internet shit
But I will soldier on and try to rewrite it again. GOD I HATE BLOGGER sometimes
Here is a cliff note on what I wrote earlier. Penat!
1. 90:10 will be NEP kind of directive.
It is then open to abuse with people just trying to make the numbers with disregard to quality. We are in a modern world with an open market. This is not the 80's anymore. People will still listen to music asing even with 90:10 in place. As a result 90:10 will be a failure anyway resulting in radios having to close shop. Worse case scenario, not many radio to play songs and we are back to square one.
2. Malaysian voted with their ears and wanted indo songs because of two reason.
a) Malaysian artistes are mostly prefab, fake, factory assemble , pretty face automatons forced to conform to what the record execs wanted to sell to the people. They have no say on their musical direction or what they think is good for them. All Malaysia artistes started this way. Only when they started to carved their own name they have a say on what they want. This is a very small percentage. It is not we don’t have talent but we have stunted talent no thanks to record execs. 90:10 will give the execs more reason to pigeonhole the talents into specific genres. We don’t need 90:10. We need a revamp on the way music is being managed here. Torn down the old regime and I say we will see marked difference sharpish!
b) Malaysian artistes mostly don't write their own song. As cool as Wings, Search and XPDC are they relied on LOLOQ, MNASIR and JS KEVIN to write their stuffs. It came as no surprise that XPDC died a horrible death as soon as JS KEVIN passed away 5 years ago. They just dunno how to write good shit. Butterfingers in the other hand write their won music. You can actually see the musical evolve over the past 15 years. Now that is one band that will always get my vote! Will the implementation of 90:10 guarantees better music quality or we are just giving "writers" silly excuse to dump mediocre composition on us?
I am sure you have heard this argument before right Anna? I see your points but 90:10 will be a failure. It won’t change a thing. They should have instead champion the right for musicians to have the freedom to choose what they want to be and play. That would be a worthy cause to fight
Good luck in your career Anna. I love your stuff thus far. I like your stuff because it's better than the crap I heard on the radio. Not because you are Khalid or Jannah's sister
When will the album be out? I want to plug your album on my blog nanti.
P/s: abaikan typo. I was pissed the last comment was lost in cyberspace!
Sunday, September 28, 2008 1:13:00 PM
effs,
I don't think the objective is to curb people to listen to what they like. So if you like Indonesian songs, go la buy the cd. Support the music that you love!
It's just that with the way things are going, it's just isn't helping our local music industry to grow. The reason why 90:10 could make a whole lot of difference is that it targets the origin of how a song gets to be popular, through the local radio which is accessible to almost everyone provided they have a mechanism that allows them to tap into the stations.
You never know whether a song is good or not unless you hear it out. Most good songs get buried in the pile of unknowns because radio stations would rather prefer to play sure-fire hits than experiment and take risks. Why not cut down on the old hit songs and give us potential new hit songs for a change.
I see your points as well, Effs, but I do believe that since 90:10 is the brainchild of composers and musicians within the local music industry, they have the full knowledge of what's really going on. It's not something that was thought out overnight or cooked up at parties or whatever. This is serious business, and who else should take the business seriously if not for the people behind the music business.
Changing ideologies and mentality is rather optimistic if not idealistic. You want people to start having the freedom to choose what they want to be or play. What makes you think that the freedom is not there? I just think it was never really exercised by some people. Maybe they honestly want to, but they can't because they don't really believe in themselves and their music to fight for it. Or their interest was in the money from the very beginning and not for the sake of the art. Doing nothing is as much of a choice as doing something. There's always an alternative.
On a personal level, I am grateful for the fact that I am able to write songs that are close to my heart, songs that are not based upon a formula that was dictated by the music industry since I have no idea what that formula is and even if I do, it would be to avoid it. I'm trying to make a small difference here, but I realized that my efforts would be in vain without being given the chance to be heard.
