The Jakarta Post
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsIndie musicians make a living from everything but music
Three Indonesian independent musicians with growing audiences on Spotify share a common reality: streaming does not pay the bills, so they built something else that does.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Set as preferred source
Growing roots: Enamore drummer Ezra Adinugroho stands among orchid plants on June 3 at DD Orchid Nursery in Batu, East Java. (JP/Puti Cinintya Arie Safitri)
O
n a weekday morning in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Wendra irons his shirt, packs his bag and arrives at his government desk at the usual hour.
By most measures, his band, Murphy Radio, is doing well. The math-rock trio draws 226,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. They have toured China. A government creative economy program commissioned a music video for their song "Graduation Song." None of that changes the morning routine.
"Everything I do basically comes down to, just keep going. Nothing is forced," said Wendra, the guitarist and vocalist of Murphy Radio. "Nobody saw this coming. Murphy ended up with this many shows and this many listeners, especially with how fast things moved in 2026."
Wendra is not an exception. Across Indonesia's independent music scene, the gap between a band's visibility and its members' actual income is wide enough that nearly everyone has learned to live on the other side of it.
For Ezra Adinugroho, the drummer of Enamore, a post-hardcore band based in Batu, East Java, with more than 127,000 monthly Spotify listeners, it means tending rows of orchids at a nursery outside Malang before most office workers log on.
For Bimantara Septianto, guitarist of Bandung-based "skramz" band Swarm, it means spending evenings behind a mixing desk after a full day managing merchandise and communications for an independent label. Skramz, a tongue-in-cheek term for traditional 1990s screamo, is a highly volatile, emotionally intense subgenre of emo and hardcore punk.
"It is less about having an exit plan and more about having income first, before the band." — Wendra, guitarist and vocalist, Murphy Radio
More from The Weekender
The quiet chapter: the society of silent book clubs
Silent book clubs are rising in Jakarta as a new way to socialize through a shared love of literature, without the pressure of conversations.
The long plié
Having discovered ballet in her forties, a writer-cum-dancer learns that mastery is less about talent than the willingness to return, and the joy that comes from learning and growing.
Of cats and writers
After 19 years, a beloved cat leaves behind more than memories: he survives in a family’s lore, two novels, and the peculiar bond between writers and their feline muses.
