THE symbiotic relationship between music making and media technology is often under-appreciated by the public, who only see the so-called glamour and pomp of the entertainment industry.

Music making is hard work and it’s even harder to gain recognition for it. Talent alone can only take you so far.

Artists need the the media as much as the media need the artists.

What the mass media does is to give the artist a sort of seal of approval, a public acknowledgement that you are recognised for what you do.

But for better or worse, recognition will always come from the physical output of one’s work.

When I first started doing home recordings on cassettes and selling them at underground gigs, I used to wonder why even the most supportive music journalists would not review or write about my releases.

As much as I despised the idea, I was also intrigued by the challenge of getting the attention of the mainstream media.

A few years later, when I released my first album in CD format (which is digital in nature but has a physical manifestation), the music journalists lapped it up and wrote me good reviews and even feature articles in the mainstream press.

I realised then that one had to have a physical package – from a thoughful cover design to liner notes – for one’s product to be considered “legit”.

According to Oxford Languages, a format is the way in which something is arranged or set out. News, for examples, comes to us in various formats: print, radio, TV and increasingly, social media. A TV sitcom follows a format that determines the length of each episode. 

As I’m a musician, format to me means the medium in which a sound recording is made for the audience.

Recorded music is actually a very recent phenomenon. Before the advent of recording equipment, music was something that was only performed live and was often part of regular or repeating social rituals from which it often derived its purpose or meaning.

Recording technology may not have been as reverently received as the printing press but it has a similar purpose: to capture something in time and mass produce it for the masses.

Take the mp3 and mp4 formats for music and videos, respectively. They are convenient but because of their digital nature, they are easily duplicatable, albeit with generational sound quality loss, which leads to that age-old problem: piracy.

Yet the accessibility of digital formats also makes makes piracy less lucrative (at least in music and film). But at the same, they devalue musical and film works – ironically because of the ease of access.

This is why physical musical formats remain a powerful tool of cultural resistance.

As much as life is not a format, people are busy and this modern digital world we live in is relentless.

To communicate an idea, one sometimes has to compromise in format. It is a double-edged sword but all useful tools have always been so.

As for me, I have to be pragmatic. As a touring musician, I have to make each performance sustainable. This is why tangible and physical products will never die.

Yes, even the compact disc, cassette or vinyl. Streaming platforms do a disservice to artists but it panders to the laziness of audiences.

Music merchandise such as band t-shirts, stickers and bags can never be digitised.

So, don’t believe the talk that the digital has killed the physical. My cohorts and I are living proof that the digital merely complements the real world, not the other way around.

In an increasingly digitised world, keeping it real literally means to keep it real, physical and tangible – something that will live on after the artist expires. – April 28, 2023.

* 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.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.