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The post-pandemic era search for music's next superstar begins
Faced with a growing pool of prospective talents and a recovered music industry, Indonesian music labels start scrambling for what resonates with modern audiences as the pandemic fades away.
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Fresh debuts: New artists such as Aruma (pictured), Meiska, Raissa Ramadhani and Awdella hint at a regeneration in the local music industry. (Courtesy of Screengrab from YouTube) (Archive/Courtesy of Aruma)
K
eke Kananta, head of artist and repertoire (A&R) at Sony Music Entertainment Indonesia, kicked off the year 2023 with a jolly start. One of his newer artists, the 19-year-old Aruma, managed to break through the upper echelon of Spotify’s Indonesia Top 50 chart with her debut single "Muak" (Fed Up). It was not just Aruma. The label's recent recruits, such as Meiska and Raissa Ramadhani, have also started gaining traction.
Keke later concluded that as the Indonesian music industry entered the post-pandemic era, music audiences started craving new voices. However, with the new generation and new pool of talents, he concurred that his most significant task was still yet to come.
"Now the [music industry] is content-driven, which translates to data-driven. As an A&R, I have to be able to examine the data. If I relied on my sense of music alone, I would fall behind," he told The Jakarta Post on Feb. 3.
Time for 'regeneration'
Keke equipped himself with a few insightful discoveries as he embarked on the new year. Case in point, he discerned how local music audiences had stopped "idolizing the idol" but instead started "idolizing the song." This shift, he found, resulted in audiences opening themselves up to the works of the more unfamiliar names.
"The emergence of these new artists, I think, painted a color that might lead to regeneration," he deduced.
