AT a recent solo acoustic gig I played at Live Fact in Kota Damansara last weekend – since band gigs are still not allowed and that venues in Selangor continue to struggle thanks to the state government’s recalcitrance to waive the entertainment tax which is unfairly targeting the small (and hardly lucrative to the state’s coffers) arts venues – I had an interesting conversation with an intern at the venue.

As I was laying out my John Bangi Blues album merchandise – music CDs, T-shirts and tote bags – we broke the ice with me talking about how music CDs and other physical formats seem to be going out of favour with the youth now.

He smiled as he took a closer look at my CD album and remarked that youths from his generation (he was a Gen Y studying audio engineering at a local college) actually appreciate these so-called “ancient” formats in the streaming age.

“It’s nostalgia for us because we personally never had the chance growing up listening to music on these formats, only our parents did,” he said.

I found this interesting indeed because Gen Ys are often slagged off by older generations (including mine – Generation X) as being unappreciative and cynical of almost everything.

And this is why I still go out to perform and engage with whatever crowds that come to my shows – you never know who you’ll strike a conversation with.

As an underground musician (I try to refrain from using “indie” because as a terminology it has gone “mainstream” academically and connotes some degree of commercial intent), I need to be clear that most of us, if not all, are wholly against consumerism.

The lifeblood of any underground or DIY (do-it-yourself) music event is the merchandise table.

In fact, if you want to ascertain whether a live music event you are attending is authentically underground, look for the merchandise table.

The merchandise table is usually set up right next to the entrance for maximum visibility, naturally. You can find band albums (in almost all formats – vinyl is making a resurgence too, if you didn’t know already), T-shirts, posters, badges, tote bags, stickers, zines (photocopied DIY music magazines made by the community), hats and many more.

Of course, the highlight merchandise would be the ones released by the bands performing on the bill of the event or gig – usually their latest album or releases since live music gigs are also essentially a promotional campaign but with grit.

These collections of merchandise are what keeps bands and the community sustainable – just like any economy, there is a supply chain involved.

The nature of commerce doesn’t judge whether it’s a high-end Birkin handbag or a crusty punk band’s silkscreened T-shirts.

To put into context, let’s take a band that decides to release their new album in CD format.

Once band members commit to the project, the chain of events unfolds.

There are the music studios rented for practising the songs, the music studios and personnel to record the songs, the persons involved in mixing and mastering the songs for the album, the CD duplication company that prints the compact disc, the printing company that prints the album sleeves, the social media sites that the band uses to tease and promote the release, the fans who eagerly pre-order the album ahead of the release date, the postal or delivery companies that deliver the albums that have been ordered (sometimes the band members deliver these themselves direct to the fans in person – an excellent value-added personal touch which I practise), the music stores (now mostly independent stores) that stock the album, and so forth.

I haven’t even started to lay out those involved in the supply chain of the T-shirts, posters, badges, tote bags, stickers, zines, hats and such.

Hence, I dislike really using the word “scene” to describe most music cultures – a music community is a more apt terminology.

Now let’s ponder about that appreciative intern generation’s consumption habits – in contrast to my generation’s cultural experiences with music. I can empathise with his perspective: the cultural lives of most Gen Y youth are lived digitally and ephemerally as Instagram Stories.

We are physical beings that seek tangible cultural experiences, not just digitally air-brushed ephemeral moments and herein lies my undying faith (so far) towards physical format music releases.

There will always be a place and demand for it albeit in smaller quantities. In fact, it is advantageous to release something in smaller and limited quantities – it’s essentially the scarcity principle: you make something desirable because of its exclusivity based on its limited availability.

However, you must declare that it is scarcity (“Only 300 copies printed!”).

Yet, people are generally swayed by the evil demon of abundance – every young musician I’ve come across on social media loves flaunting how many plays on Spotify they’ve had by a year’s end but not revealing how little they’ve earned from those plays.

We live in the shallow age of self-promotion where we’ve all become living and breathing billboards of ourselves and usually when something is in abundance, the value drops.

I must say I was tempted to give a free copy of my album to the intern but resisted since giving something away for free will devalue any work. I refrained but with the assurance that at least some from his generation will keep the torch lit for physical artwork to remain relevant in the real world.

As opposed to something digital which you can make disappear for good with a click (or a blackout), you can throw something physical in the face of naysayers to get your point across. – March 18, 2022.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.