Kim Taeyeon's Birthday and Indonesian Music Industry

9 March 2011 is Kim Taeyeon's 22nd Birthday. She is a member and the leader of So Nyuh Shi Dae (SNSD) or Girls' Generation. Several hours before her birthday, both "Kim Taeyeon" and "SNSD Sooyoung" were trending in Twitter and on her birthday, she was on top of Global Trends in Twitter. There was a rumor that Sooyoung bought a mushroom cake for her. That's why both of them were trending. Beside that, in her birthday, SONE (the name for SNSD fans) did things more than my expectation (and may be a lot more people's expectation). They did:

1. On 8 March, a fan wrote, sang, and recorded a song titled "Taengday Tribute Song", then uploaded it to various internet sites.
2. On March 9th, "Sisters" (SNSD’s Naver fan cafe), "HwaSuEunHwa" (Daum fan cafe), and "HwaiTaeng" (Taeyeon’s Naver fan cafe) put and advertisement in a sport newspaper to congratulate her 23rd.
3. Fans volunteered and donated 1,000,000 won (in total) to the Chungbok Headquarters and the Junbok Headquarters of the Green Umbrella Children’s Foundation under her name.

Source: SNSD fans go all out for Taeyeon’s 23rd birthday

That made me think about Indonesian Artists and how far would their fans go for them and furthermore about the Indonesian Music Industry. Indonesian Music Industry is growing, some of the indicators are:

1. Music Industry could innovate and make profit from "Ring Back Tone" service (collaborated with Telecommunication Industry).
2. Every year there are new artists and artists that has debuted still produce new albums. People listening local music more than international music. Thus, local music industry is strong. The music is even exported to countries surrounding Indonesia like Malaysia and Singapore.
3. Concerts were held in various locations supported by sponsors. Thus, most concerts for local artist are free. However, even though concerts for international artists mostly were not free, but those could sell out long before the concerts were held. Hence, the hype is still exist.

However, it still lack of development in some activities along the supply chain such as:

1. Lots of new artist come from themselves, not developed by a company. They form themselves, they made their own music, and they show their works in competitions, shows, and elses. It's a good thing, but they may fit to a market that's already tight and they may not have a well-planned concept and furthermore integration with how they should perform, what kind of merchandise will be available, and elses.
2. Digital music download is popular in developed countries, but not here. People are still buying pirated CD, downloading illegal music file (from peer-to-peer network, torrent, etc.), or buying illegal music file through retailers. The digital music has been available for example in Ovi Store and some other local sites, but it failed to gain popularity because it still lack of easiness-to-use and trusted-payment-method (lots of Indonesian are still afraid to use credit card for online payment due to lack of both promotion and law protection).
3. Music store is dominated by a certain group (although there are some local competitors, but it's difficult to compete with the market leader).
4. Paid concerts for local artists (for certain purpose like new album tour) are rare. Thus, amount of paid concerts are low while in developed countries artist can make a profit from it.
5. Ticket distribution network hasn't been well established. Jakarta Concert and Raja Karcis do it, it's not nation-wide enough since they are lacking of counters to sell the ticket and the online site is also not improving significantly.

Hopefully things will change and Indonesian music industry can be more lively.

Happy Birthday, Kim Taeyeon of SNSD!