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Jakarta Post

Kolase a financial pulse for struggling musicians

For music: Kolase works as a crowdfunding website, pooling money from donors so musicians can work on projects that donors are interested in seeing completed

Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, March 15, 2019

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Kolase a financial pulse for struggling musicians

F

or music: Kolase works as a crowdfunding website, pooling money from donors so musicians can work on projects that donors are interested in seeing completed. (JP/Dylan Amirio)

With funding being the biggest obstacle for a relatively unknown musician to develop and find a stage, very few outlets outside of rigid corporate sponsorship or networking with the right people exist to accommodate the aspirations and potential of musicians just starting out.

All it takes are platforms that are able to bring genuine fans to the artist without the middlemen of transactions.

Enter Kolase.com, where musicians are able to centralize their efforts to find money to fund their projects.

Essentially, the service works as a crowdfunding website, pooling money from donors so that musicians are able to complete projects donors are interested in seeing completed.

Aside from giving musicians a new channel of funding, the people behind the company emphasize the platform’s importance in tackling the age old problem that has been the bane of many musicians in Indonesia: piracy.

With rampant piracy in the country, fueled by a relative decline in record stores and the apex of internet sharing, it is rather common for an underground musician to make very little to no money from their music sales, unless they are part of programs supported by big name companies.

The lack of managerial infrastructure on the music world’s fringes to secure any financial result from one’s art and lack of awareness about the amount of work that goes into creating music is what drove former musician and Kolase.com CEO Raden Maulana to find a solution.

“I know how hard it feels to survive as a musician in Indonesia. I thought, was there really a good solution so that musicians are able to focus on creating without worrying about how much they have to spend to produce a song or record and in handling the risks when their work unfortunately fails in the market?” he asked.

Crowdfunding was one of the best ways, according to Raden, to handle the situation, because it had worked successfully in other scenarios outside of Indonesia.

Indie musicians around the world have utilized general crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter or Pledgemusic either to fund production costs for records, hold shows, help them gather money to fly somewhere to play a show or help pay the wages of additional players.

Naturally, these campaigns come with little reward for the donors as a thank you for their support, which according to Raden is a very crucial aspect of the crowdfunding mechanism due to the importance of making the donor feel “like they are part of the process”.

Closer look: Kolase provides space for campaigns such as charity drives and meet-and-greets but the primary focus is music-related campaigns. (Courtesy of kolase.com)
Closer look: Kolase provides space for campaigns such as charity drives and meet-and-greets but the primary focus is music-related campaigns. (Courtesy of kolase.com)

“And through this process, the paths of distribution for an artist’s music widen organically. A Kolase campaign helps musicians tap into a new fanbase. But in the end, it comes down to how good their music is,” Raden says.

One of Kolase.com’s success stories is pop singer Teddy Adhitya, who has a history of self-funding the creation of his merchandise and most of his debut 2017 album Nothing is Real. 

In a recent Kolase.com campaign, where he set up a campaign to fund a one-year anniversary showcase for his 2017 debut at Jakarta’s Salihara Theater, he reaped over Rp 70 million (US$4,902), which was well more than enough for him to hold the show.

Teddy attributed this success to the loyalty of his fans and their desire to become part of his music making process.

“Some fans came and talked to me after that show, and they were the ones who also donated to the campaign. From talking to them, I felt they really had a sense of belonging because they technically paid for the lights and the stage. ‘It feels like it’s our show’, one of them said to me, and I couldn’t really agree more,” he recalled.

Typically, those who provide Teddy with financial support are treated to a small reward from the artist, be it in the form of merchandise. “Any kind of merchandise,” said Teddy, “is enough for them to feel like [we] are thanking them for their support in a tangible way.”

Aside from Teddy, several independent artists and groups such as Agrikulture, United by Haircuts, Bam Mastro, Tulus, Fourtwnty and Dekat have or are currently hosting their own campaigns on the site.

There are several campaigns on Kolase that aren’t music related, such as charity drives, meet and greets and comic book financing, which in itself makes Kolase a go to creative crowdfunding site.

However, Raden said the primary focus of the site would still be music-related campaigns.

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