Inspired by an interview with Ely Buendia on the topic of the next OPM wave, I personally feel like there are a few obstacles as to why it hasn’t been happening sooner than later.

1. Colonial/Western bias in legitimizing innovation.

I feel that many Filipino stakeholders only consider a new idea or innovation legitimate if it is published and executed by western artists and economies. Pag Pilipino yung artist, “nage-experimento”, “nag-iimbento”, or novelty lang. Pero kapag hinain ng West, nagiging “innovation” and “trailblazing” ang perception. I have a feeling this also badly influences A&R decisions in bigger record labels in the Philippines.

I currently don’t have any idea as to how you can solve what I personally see as a deep-seated, widespread, and culturally-ingrained bias. Maybe just keep on cranking them out like Tanya Markova until everybody gets accustomed to it.

2. Mainstream media and multinational record company partnerships.

The budget and the marketing and PR machinery behind today’s most popular artists on Spotify is very hard to match, in my opinion. Money talks. At the end of the day, primetime radio and national networks will play those that are willing to pay. What gets played over and over is what sticks to the mind of the consumer. Big media truly has the power to influence the public’s preferences, and big labels understand this.

I think this one is also a tricky problem to solve. At one hand, you need investors with a high-risk appetite and a genuine heart for the local music industry, possibly allowing him to hold it out for a longer run. And on the other, you need a very strong risk-taking, forward-looking, yet sober-minded A&R, skilled production, and savvy PR and marketing to make all that investment worthwhile.

3. Separation of craftsmanship and showmanship.

Being able to perform well on live gigs or shows is one thing. But being able to package your act so that you can be sold as a product that people want to buy in a competitive public economy is another.

In my view, the choice to me has usually been between great and skilled artists with images that are less than commercially viable (no X factor) — or well-groomed, charismatic, and outgoing personalities whose outputs unfortunately lack artistic substance (all X factor). To their defense, maybe label A&Rs have been having a hard time finding artists that are worth the investment for this reason.

In other words, we need more artists like IV OF SPADES if we ever want to create more substantial comparisons against today’s popular foreign artists who work on both talent and X factor to create their recipe for success.

We need artists with firepower. We need artists that bite.

4. Being pigeon-holed to a specific sound in every generation — through its own fault.

Either item number-one is true: that people don’t admit innovation unless introduced by the West — or a lot of people aren’t very willing to risk innovating especially at the peak of a trend.

I’ve been listening through curated Filipino playlists on Spotify and one thing I noticed is that they all seem to sound alarmingly the same.

I’ve noticed that in each wave, OPM tends to have a certain prevailing sound. Before the rock/band-centric boom of the early 2000s, solo ballad artists were the trend and their faces became the “faces of OPM” to many younger audiences. The lack of diversity would lead the younger audiences to look for other styles — and they find it from foreign sources that invest on their development.

I’m not sure as to why a certain style tends to prevail for every wave but I worry that it negatively impacts a given generation’s perception of what OPM sounds like by having itself pigeon-holed to a certain sound. Moving forward, I think playlist curators, DJs, editors, program managers, etc. need to be intentional about diversifying their selections to serve the diverse stylistic tastes of Filipinos for long-term competitiveness on all fronts — to every generation of Filipino listeners.

Photo by Sava Bobov on Unsplash.