Meet Isaac Miranda, a music lover who founded his own record label and artist management agency
Meet Isaac Miranda, a music lover who founded his own record label and artist management agency
ISAAC MIRANDA, a rather normal 26-year old Malaysian who is currently based in Singapore. A boy who literally started from the bottom to now, being a founder of a record label, and artist management and development agency. Having started music when he was as little as three, he has always had a profound passion for the arts̶-not only for chords and melodies but also literature and visual arts. With such a desire brewing inside of him, it comes to no surprise that he would eventually take the bull by the horns and decide to lead a team of his own. Being exposed to music at a very young age, Miranda has evolved from being a musician and songwriter behind the scenes to managing a number of renowned artists in Southeast Asia.
We recently spoke with Isaac to find out more about his career and what he has installed for the future.
What first got you into music?
I was lucky - my parents exposed me to music from a young age, and allowed me to pursue different musical instruments as I was growing up. I started playing with bands as a guitarist and drummer throughout high school, before becoming a session musician on the side for a variety of acts from around the Klang Valley region.
From being a musician yourself to co-writing songs, how did sta ing your own a ist management and development company come about?
My first proper job was as a music writer with a regional street culture magazine, and that exposed me to a little bit more of what the music business was about. I moved on into advertising and tech for a while after that, and realised that infrastructure was lacking in
terms of what we had in Malaysia, compared to what was available in more developed music markets.
On the side, I had been organising showcases, festivals and parties around
Kuala Lumpur for a few years, and one of the acts that I booked made me believe that there was something more we could do for budding artists in Southeast Asia. I started working with that artist - NYK, and we learned a lot of lessons the hard way, as we were both pretty green. Over the next few years, we identified, and were approached by other artists who had the potential to really represent the local scene on an international stage, and have been trying ever since to make that a reality.
Can you give us an introduction about PLAIN PACK?
PLAIN PACK is the culmination of a lot of work that I’ve been doing over the past few years. We’ve got our artist management and development section, a small label that distributes music from artists who we believe in, as well as a marketing and consultancy vertical that works with brands, labels and other artists who want to make a mark in this region. Most recently, we’ve been developing our songwriting and publishing division, and working with producers and songwriters from around the globe to pair the right artists with the right teams. At the end of the day, our aim is to make careers in music more viable and accessible in Southeast Asia.
Being in the music scene for quite some time now, how has music in Southeast Asia come to evolve?
I think that we’re on the precipice of something truly amazing. Internationally, the region has already been identified as a key trigger market in the current digital streaming landscape. Now, all we have to do is figure out how to convert those listeners to regional English artists.
Most of the majors aren’t doing a great job - they’re trying to copy and paste templates that worked in other markets, which just don’t work here. Localisation is key, and throwing money at the wall doesn’t solve anything. Another issue plaguing the scene right now is a distinct lack of quality control and discipline to constantly create, which stems from the fact that not many artists can afford to work on music full-time. We are getting some gems now and again from artists in the region, but the consistency needs to improve in order for listeners locally and internationally to really fall in love with acts here.
With K-pop dominating cha s nowadays, will we be able to see you and your team collaborating with any up and coming K-pop bands in the near future?
Well, we’ve been working on some very special projects that I can’t talk about just yet, but there are some amazing things coming up at the end of the year and early 2022. In the meantime, we’ve started to collaborate with artists from the Korean
R&B scene, as their sonic direction is more compatible with that of the artists we typically work with.
We’ve been making some amazing headway into a parallel market - over the past year songs that we’ve worked on have topped national charts, gone viral, and garnered over 100 million streams in the Greater China market. I think that we’re going to see much more music from this territory appear on the world stage over the next few years, so stay tuned!
Speaking about K-pop, boy and girl groups are undoubtedly the more dominant acts in the industry compared to soloists. What are the chances of Plain Pack launching their own bands?
I think that in order to really make groups work, there needs to be a lot behind it beyond just talent and money. What we’re seeing now from the K-pop industry is decades of trial and error before getting to this point, where the process of identifying, training, crafting and curating these bands is almost perfected. What might work is a collaboration with Korean companies in order to leverage off of the knowledge, similar to what is happening in the Philippines with acts like SB19. I have thought about it, but I don’t think it’s a profitable venture for now. The market cap in Malaysia is still too small to make it a truly lucrative prospect, yet.