[PRESS RELEASE] Breaking Barriers: Empowering Musicians Through Digital Technology Difussion #89

Nowadays, technology has a big impact on many sectors, including the music industry. With the presence of social media and digital music platforms, Spotify has succeeded in transforming the way musicians promote their songs. At the same time, technology also contributes to helping musicians survive amidst the difficulties and challenges they face. Responding to this, CfDS UGM examines this in more depth through Difussion #89 “Breaking Barriers: Empowering Musicians Through Digital Technology”. This event presented Mario Hartanto (Reseach Assistant CfDS) and Rizka Herdiani (Reseach Assistant CfDS) as speakers and was moderated by Allysa Putri Rendry (Partnership Assistant CfDS). Difussion #89 can be watched through this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLCkxHLl4yA 

Mario Hartanto started the discussion by illustrating the challenges and difficulties that musicians have often experienced so far. In the early stages of production, musicians are often faced with expensive production costs, both for production and marketing. Roles in the music industry also seem to be required to become an “all-rounder” because there are many roles needed in producing music. Furthermore, the creativity of independent musicians is also limited because it is bound by the rules of their record labels.

Not only that, Covid-19 pandemic also became a very tough challenge for the development of the music industry in Indonesia. According to the data, as many as 30% of Indonesian musicians have stopped working in the music industry due to the pandemic and 43% have lost their jobs.

“Technology plays a role in overcoming these challenges. Digital technology encourages the shift of the music industry to the cyber world. We can see this from concerts and fan meetings which had been held virtually,” said Mario.

Rizka Herdiani also enriched the discussion by illustrating several examples of technologies that can help optimize the music industry in the digital era. One of them is Blockchain technology which is capable of increasing the optimization of the use of smart contracts, converting royalty profits using conventional currency, and increasing the value of music. In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) can also be used to manage music metadata through the process of music tagging.

Thus, digitization can be seen as a hope for the survivability of musicians in their careers and in producing their music. “Digital technology serves equality, transparency, and system decentralization in the music industry. However, the following and upcoming challenges regarding this must also be considered and dealt with wisely,” said Rizka.