Over the weekend, we gather a spirited group of youth in Kuching as an effort to innovate solutions for the many challenges present in the local industry that would leverage our local music industry. Their challenges include solving marketing challenges for musicians, increasing access to discovering new musicians and mutual gains approaches for venues and musicians.

Participants were mentored by industry experts such as Hairul Ekzan (1M4U ambassador), Natasha Juan (a radio DJ in Hitz.FM), Yuri Wong (music composer/producer) and Adruce Azman (vocalist of Sonar Instict / sound engineer) and they spend most hours prototyping and testing our their ideas.

“I think local independent musicians face challenges with connecting to an audience and getting them to listen to their music because everyone listens to music from the west. So I think that local musicians need the opportunity to present their music,” said Yuri Wong.

The energy was great at the event and everyone was up and about, bantering about what ideas worked and what didn’t. The ideas varied from band tracking & audio streaming devices to that of crowdsourcing & venue rating platforms.
The winning idea came from the team consisting of Awang M.Nasuha, Mohd Hafiz bin Abdul Wahab and Mohd Afiq bin Wahed from Kuching who came up with an app that let the public vote for the local indie bands that they would like to see performing. Their winning idea won them the 1M4U Dream Fund worth RM10k which will be used to kickstart their project.