Review Consumed #01: Music Consumption Issue
In this year of 2023, I am more engaged to music journalism, especially when I was accepted as a participant for a music journalism mini-program held by Cherrypop 2023 called Pena Skena in August. I got new experience because I was technically a journalist during the festival and I have new friends which are, of course as I expect, consist of mostly not from music education. That is the reason recently I am less being technical and get to more popular issue. During that month, I discovered from Krowbar’s Instagram story that the brand he have worked on published a new music magazine, Consumed.
My initial thoughts are I was so interested in the name itself and the edition theme: Music Consumption Issue. Rather than promoting themselves as a music magazine, the publisher seems more focus on the music consumption, not the music itself. It was interesting for me because I often disappointed to many events, programs, and publications which promote themselves as a music-based but actually are not talking about the music itself. They are just cover the crowds, the business happened there, products aka physical releases, artistic “ideologies” and the title of the songs featured there; which is more about music as an industry, not the music as the art.
I will cover this later because Indonesian people seems couldn’t distinguished music in the industrial and artistic context, wether it in media, events, conferences, government programs, and many more. But anyway, Consumed clearly implies that they are in the music industry side, not the music as an art, which makes me relieved so much. I won’t be disappointed because I don’t need to expect a large music group like BanPhil to be featured there. Because of this crystal clear context offered by this baby magazine, I decided to order a copy. You got my praise, boys.
I was excited to know that Consumed had a complementary CD and THE JACKET, and I even more thrilled when the copy finally came in person. This magazine is physically gorgeous. It was printed in artpaper pages and THE JACKET gives the exclusive feel. Yes, this may sounds funny because I am too excited about the jacket, but for your information: the jacket, or specifically the obi, is rare in Indonesian publishing. The book obis are mostly found in Japanese publishings like comics, magazines, and CDs (FYI, you will get the CD obi in Grimloc Records’ releases if you want to get more familiar), so it will be understandable if you don’t get why there is a red paper around the cover in the first place. You can Google it why the book obis are exist, but I love THE JACKET.
Because of THE JACKET and the cute furoku (inclusion) CD, I felt nostalgic. Contrary to many music public figures in Consumed’s social media contents who said that they were nostalgic of the printed media like HAI or Rolling Stone Indonesia, I was nostalgic because this magazine reminds me to the time when I collected Animonstar (previously Animonster) magazine. It was printed beautifully in thick pages, sometimes featuring some furoku, and have that tiny-wini-biti-sized font in the body (which was blamed by my mom every time we checked-up to doctor because I often read Animonstar in less light lol). This is obviously not a weeb magazine, but because it has the book obi and the furoku, it feels so weeb. Can we get more furoku like band posters without getting a price raise? Lol.
Then let’s go to the contents. I think for a magazine, Consumed is pretty standard. There is a cover story, then some interviews with many styles like narrative, direct transcription, and even “garbage” interview so you don’t really bored with just a single style. For the writing style, well, I don’t have much comment about them because it’s like what will you get in a fanzine with down-to-earth, little bit hyperbolic, code-mixing with English or regional language, you can get them. There are so many ads in this magazine and even most of them are in a full page, which is kinda cool to show that you got enough sponsor. In the latest part of the magazine, there are some non-music rubric like food and book review so it feels more magazine-y. I kinda wish for Consumed to have open submission for gigs, food and book review since most of them are still Bandung-centric; it’s okay for the first issue, but it will be much better if some cities in Indonesia had a little representation for local attractions.
Oh, I almost forget: the CD. So they have 8 tracks of the songs performed by the artists and bands featured in the magazine. Some of them are taken from their most popular album, some are from their earlier releases, and even there is an unreleased raw version of a song. Most of them are punk rock but there are emo and hiphop. My favourite track is the last one. I don’t have much review about this because most of them are out of my preferences, but I like the idea Consumed include this CD, it’s enhancing the reading experience even more.
Overall, Consumed is beautiful. As a product, it’s perfect for me; I love the experience of reading the whole magazine, love THE JACKET and the inclusion, love the full-colour pages. Wether you come for the nostalgia or not, Consumed successfully brings the experience of enjoying a magazine even since its first edition. It’s timeless too, so maybe it’s more suitable as a mook (magazine-book) than just a magazine. I can see how the editorial staffs have tried their best to curate the topic, avoid the Jakarta or Bandung-centricism, and feature some women artists to balance things out. Obviously not perfect, but we need to appreciate.
But will I buy the next Consumed issue? That is a though question for me. I personally not really like the cutting edge music (well I like some symphonic metal and hiphop, but it’s very minority lol) and music scene news, and it’s unfortunate to me that Consumed shows that it will be their direction. It’s kinda a bummer to find Consumed introduced themselves as ‘oooh yeah we are a music magazine’ but most of their contents are actually covering a specific scope of music so it makes question why most of the music news in this media are mostly cutting-edge (with a little bit of hip-hop) music.
[Little Intermezzo: It gives me a kind of the same feeling when I was in high school I had a walk with a friend in Malioboro, then I found a ‘music t-shirt shop’ aka ‘jual kaos musik’. When I entered there, turns out that all of their goods are black t-shirts with cutting-edge band logos, no pastels or colorful t-shirts like FLEUR! and The Dare’s merchs at all so it made my friend kinda ‘worried’, then we were only in the shop for less than 5 minutes. I was kinda disappointed because why the shop wrote ‘music t-shirt shop’, not ‘band merch shop’ which may make me more to expect that most of the goods will be black. Lol.]
You can clearly see it in their news coverage. Even though this first issue is about the music consumption, Consumed didn’t cover the K-Pop fan market, which is much more profitable and distinctive than local scene market (I doubt if the official product shopping proxy sales, photocard trades, fan merchs, the heck PHOTOCARD HOLDER, etc. are also available in local music industry. CMIIW but so far I thought that the first organised public concert trip in Indonesia were pioneered by the ARMYs, I don’t know if that happened in rock or punk music). I mentioned in my previous article that K-Pop successfully make their music more product-based rather than just concert-based; how they can monetise the parasocial relationship between the fans and the music, then turn their audiences into their customers. Because of how crazy K-Pop market is and some fans can even technically build a shrine for their group or bias, I thought this can be a good coverage for a music consumption issue.
However, after more thoughts, it is understandable for Consumed not to do it, because it is clearly in opposite direction. Some writers even wrote that they are still a junior, and since Consumed will be read by more seniors and abang-abangans, they try to “pay respect” to them as humbly as possible. Maybe they want to avoid like the HAI situation when their Instagram account made a post about BLACKPINK news and then their followers trashed the comment section and mentioned “plastics” so much times, almost nobody cared about the actual news; so yeah, scenesters can be that crazy.
So the answer is, it depends on the next issue. If it will be in the topics I interest and if I in the good mood for scene news, I will get it. Or if I will consider to collect the CD inclusions. I don’t know how many times they publish in a year and if they still cover the “music consumption” in the next issue. And at the end, well… you can take my whole opinion with a grain of salt since I am not an avid scenester, which is more of the Consumed’s market target. I definitely recommend it for the experience of reading a magazine and enjoying the inclusions, but at the end of the day is it up to your musical preferences to decide to get this magazine or not. Thanks for reading and see you on the next review!
PS. So this post would be longer and the PS here is so much long because when I initially bought this magazine, I got scammed. So for a context, nowadays it’s not rare for brands and franchises especially in Indonesia to have their reseller make another social media account based on the location, like @xbeauty_semarang, @xbeauty.makassar, @xbeauty.mkw and so on because it makes their customer buy from them rather than from the official store so they can save more money from the enormous shipping fee. Then to get a copy of Consumed, you need to buy it from a brand called Maternal Disaster because the magazine is out of stock in the official Consumed site.
So based on that experience, I decided to search the Insta by writing ‘maternal disaster semarang’, even though the I already went to their official account, and an account called ‘maternal disaster semarang’ was popped. I chatted with the number there, filled the information, and made a transfer. For around a week, there were no news about when my order would be shipped, and then I discovered that I was blocked. Then I returned to the official MD account and turns out, the official distribution point in Semarang is actually has different number.
Then I contacted the number there, and they said that they don’t have online shopping services, all of their products are shipped from Bandung so basically even if you are in Merauke you need to contact the official CS or buy from Tokopedia. The Semarang branch also said that they already tried to report the scammer and asked me to do so, but obviously I can’t do that because I am already blocked. I tried to offer the scammer’s bank account, but it turned out to be no use because the scammer will always have another one. So yeah, I officially got scammed. At the end, they didn’t offer me any omotenashi PR messages like “well so sorry it happened to you, we can’t do anything but at least we can take this as an improvement for our brand so thanks for informing us”, because the reason I contacted them is to inform them so they can do something for the brand, I didn’t even ask for compensation, so I feel contacting them is kinda…. “that’s it”?
I didn’t tell them this, but in this post I wish that Maternal Disaster pinned a highlight for beware of scams warning aka ‘hati-hati penipuan’. They can list which account are actually scammers if they can’t report them since Insta is that sucks. Other small brands even dare to share their official bank account number to avoid this. In my case, they don’t have the warning announcement wether in highlight or pinned post so I thought that their reseller could do online shopping services too so I could save money. Please understand that some customers can be from the outside of your market target and have different experience than what you know and expect.
Last but not least, here is the scammer’s red flag: uneven and weird customer form, BRI account (which is for me is the most sus) with a down-too-earth name, and a desperate ‘assalamualaikum’ to make you pay ASAP. I don’t want to be SARA but a scenester said that during a transaction is kinda… weird?
