[Manic Monday] What You Can Learn From Krayola

This time I want to tell you a little bit about myself - more specifically my experiences several years ago, as part of a band called Krayola. Krayola is a band that actually has been around for a while in Jakarta's music scene, and once often played at various high school events. Because all of its members had jobs, the development of the band itself was somewhat slow - a quite standard tale in Indonesia's music industry.

Some day in 2007 (I forgot exactly when), when I was still working for a music label, a friend of a friend contacted me, offering me to audition for a band called Krayola. I was given some of the material for study, to be played at audition. After playing with a band called Oracle (which turned out to play music not suited for me), I was actually looking for another band to play in and extended out some feelers if there was a band looking for a bass player.

Long story short, I was accepted after the audition, and Krayola began recording its first serious album. I at one point objected to this, asking "why record an album? What will you do with it?" The idealism of the vocalist, Eriz, who wrote all of Krayola's songs, was so that Krayola had a recording of their music. Simply that. Recording music in the studio takes time, energy and naturally, money. We still went ahead with this, with the help of a friend who owned a studio in Bogor.

When the recordings were finished, we were a bit confused with what to do with the material. Krayola eventually signed a master license contract with Spillz Records (now non-active), and at one point had a hit song on an indie chart of a certain radio station, but the EP was never released. Spillz Records did not have any deals with the telco operators, so there was no way to submit Krayola songs to become ringbacktones or for other digital services, until the contract expired. When later on, when we were performing at a mall event, we were approached by content providers, looking for content to sell as ringbacktones.

To this day, Krayola's songs are still 'just' the MP3 and WAV files stored on our hard disks, doing nothing other than being uploaded to our website and our Myspace page. The result of our recording sessions, completed after more or less a year, currently does not make any money for us, not even a return of investment on the recording efforts. Since we last played at Java Rockin' Land 2009, our band has effectively been inactive, without so much as a practice session.

The number one lesson for me would be, that there is a big difference between playing music as a hobby and playing music as a career. If you want to make a career in music, you must be serious about it, plan it well, and probably ask for the help of a manager or a management team. The decision to record music must also follow this principle - if you're recording as a hobby, you might not need to think about the business side; but if the recording is for your career, you must think about the money going in and out. And for sure, before stepping on any area, digital or otherwise, you need to think about the strategy behind your creation, and not just create for the sake of creating.

Ario is a co-founder of Ohdio, an Indonesian music streaming service. He worked in the digital music industry in Indonesia from 2003 to 2010, and recently worked in the movie and TV industry in Vietnam. Keep up with him on Twitter at @barijoe or his blog at http://barijoe.wordpress.com.