Maliq & D'Essentials Releases Album 'RAYA' Coinciding with 18 Years of Career, Insert Special Mission

Kapanlagi.com - The corona virus pandemic has had a significant impact on the music industry in Indonesia. However, this did not stop Maliq & D'Essentials from coming up with ideas. In fact, in the midst of this challenging situation, they were able to gather songs and release an album titled RAYA.

"At the beginning of the pandemic, we were relaxed, then after a month, we started to panic. Finally, we surrendered and did something by creating songs. Before the pandemic, we actually wanted to release a single, we had prepared the mock-up and everything, but it got postponed. Because we had nothing to do, we ended up with 6 songs. Finally, we released an album," said Angga Puradiredja, the lead vocalist, to KapanLagi.com last Saturday.

1. 18 Years of Career in Music

Maliq & D'Essentials' new album is titled RAYA. The choice of title is intended to celebrate many things, one of which is commemorating the 18 years of the singer of the song Untitled in the Indonesian music scene.

"RAYA will be released on August 18, simultaneously celebrating 18 years of Maliq and D'Essentials' work. This is very special, showing that Maliq has evolved, and its evolution has reached a stage where we don't have to force anything, don't have to prove anything. What needs to be proven is that we can create art in any condition. If we look at the songs now, they are effortless, they feel good and we like them, we don't care how others perceive them, whether they're cool or not, whether they'll sell or not. We just enjoy them and we like them," Angga continued.

2. Released on One Music Platform

Maliq & D'Essentials / Credit: KapanLagi - Akrom Sukarya

The release of Raya itself is not like other musicians who immediately distribute it on various music platforms. For a while, Angga Puradiredja and his friends agreed to distribute it exclusively on Inspigo and divide it into three parts. 2 songs will be released on August 18, 2 more in October, and the rest in December.

"We won't release the songs online on platforms like Spotify or Joox, instead we will release them on the Indonesian platform, Inspigo. We will be exclusive there for an indefinite period of time. Why? Because we see that in this era, musicians find it difficult to sell their music, because the revenue we get from selling songs is small," explained Angga.

"In the past, we could buy CDs, but now in the streaming era, we all know that the revenue from streaming is small. So, we want to try in this new era, whether people are willing to buy cheap music instead of coffee, whether they will buy it. It's also a test for us. If it succeeds, it will be a solution. We intentionally take a gamble first to see the results. If it works, we can say that we're not against others, but this becomes one of the options," he concluded.

(kpl/abs/gtr)