Saturday, January 13, 2007

Why Popular Kadus Songs Unable To Penetrate Global Market?

Interesting topic started by apai at Kadus Entertainment Forum. Although this topic has generated over 10 pages of mixed opinions from the forummers, some are just 'chats' as usual. Only few posts contributed to the topic at hand. However, after reading most of the posts, I still couldn't make a good conclusion "Why Popular Kadus Songs Unable To Penetrate Global Market?".

Is it because of the following factors?

1. Lack of promotion
2. Lack of radio airtime
3. Song composition
4. Poor song arrangement
5. Overall production quality
6. Poor design for album cover
7. English language not mixed into the songs
8. Quality of voice
9. Personality of the Kadus artist
10. etc

I consider these posts related to the topic:

1. Post by apai here.
2. Post by pinolobu here and here.
3. Post by ATAMA

My opinion on this matter is actually very simple. For me, it is because the lack of budget for promotion. If the overall budget to produce an album, including cover design & printing, duplicating, promotion is only RM5,000 to RM10,000, which is quite high especially for indie artists, don't talk about going global. Efforts should be concentrated on the local market first. Strenghtened the base for Kadus music industry locally. No matter how good the quality of song or album production is, the album must be promoted and money for promotion must be spent, especially if selling high is the main target. A bigger budget MUST be provided if global market is targeted.

I also tend to agree to the post made by kippo here.

"Was there any attempt made to promote Kadus album globally? If yes, was it made correctly?" I don't think so considering the very small budget for overall album production. I'm quite sure none of the Kadus albums were meant to be promoted globally. Even local promotions were very weak and usually hardly noticed by Kadus music fans.

According to apai in this post, very few (may be none) recording studio owners in Sabah dare to invest a big sum of money to produce an album. Now, it's quite clear "Why Popular Kadus Songs Unable To Penetrate Global Market", it's because lack of budget for promotion, even locally and nobody (just a wild guest) actually attempted to promote Kadus album globally. So there's no surprise actually on why even the locally popular Kadus songs unable to go global. As a supporter to the local Kadus music industry, I really hope someday our songs can go global.

I think producer of Kadus album as well as Kadus artist, especially the indipendents, from now on should consider using the popularity of the internet as one of their marketing tool.

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