Transforming Spaces and Sounds

Robin Malau
...and we're live. Anton, what's up brother?

Anton Wirjono
Hey, what's up? I've been long time no see, long time no see in real life. We see each other on social media.

Robin
How you doing, man! I'm yeah. I mean, but I see you, like really, you're a really busy man. Like crazy. How can you, how can you, how can you spare your time with doing everything? Your family, business is growing so fast lately eh!

Anton
Yeah, I just like to keep busy, I guess. I wouldn't know what to do otherwise. You know, we had two years of being at home that whole time. As we grow older, I just thought that there's not a lot of time left, so let's do things. But no, it's exciting times. mean, lots of things happening in Indonesia. We're a country of lot of young people.

Robin
Right! Right!

Anton
Everything's growing, yeah. So we're just taking the opportunities as they come, you know?

Robin
Yeah, that's great. Okay, so let's start from the beginning. When we first met, 2014 I believe, it was in the British Council event in one of your restaurant in Goods Dept. And before that we met... So you were DJing there and then you were DJing...

Anton
...in Brighton. Oh yeah yeah that's true.

Robin
Yeah, there's British Council Award and then after that we met again in Brighton (UK) for the Great Escape. Yeah, it was a great time, man. It was a great time.

Anton
The great escape, yeah, exactly. It was a great time. It's a great event, right? An event for new music, so it's exciting.

Robin
Yeah, it was exciting. There's always something new in The Great Escape and there's always life changing moments where your brain is like, oh, this exists? Then, oh, so it's like really, really great time. It was great to spend time with you there. We share a lot of like, like common, how we call it... Uh, we want to, each of us want to be progressing and then we want to build something and then you build your part of community, I built my part (of my community). But the thing that struck me was seeing you combine a lot of things, but then you don't seem to lose focus. You seem to still like doing this one line and then the line is just growing bigger and bigger. So tell me how did you start!

Anton
How did I start? Well, interestingly, I think everything I do now has been inspired by music. Even though I'm doing things outside of music, I think it's all been inspired by music. So I think my thing with music was when I was in boarding school, know, sad that I was stuck there, unhappy with my parents, feeling like they were trying to get rid of me. I was 12. My mom came around and I said, buy me the best set of headphones that you can find, you know, because at nine o'clock the lights go out, you can only wear headphones for the next one hour and then 10 o'clock you have to go to sleep. So I had this one hour that I can listen to music and my headphones were not good. So she felt bad for me, she bought me really good headphones, right? And so every night I listened to the headphones I had was really good, it was electrostatic, whatever. I don't even remember what headphones they were. But they were so good that I was so inspired by a lot of different kinds of music. This was in the 80s, you know, there's like a lot of weird things going on with music, exciting times for music, you know, from across the board, from early hip hop to like new wave coming at that time, interesting rock and punk and stuff alike.

So from then on, music is my thing. And these kids would come out, the seniors would come out usually to like beat you up in a pillow fight. They came to my bed at night. They're like, hey, can you DJ, can you play music for the school dance? So as this kid that I thought was going to beat up by my seniors. And then instead they're like, oh, we think you listen to good music. You know, we play the music out loud, boom boxes and stuff.

Robin
Hmm, okay.

Anton
From that time on, was like, wow, it's interesting that it seems like other people also like the choices I make around music. So I think it was an important, I just realized...

Robin
When was that? How old were you?

Anton
12.

Robin
Oh, around 12, alright, that's quite early.

Anton
I was 12. Yeah, 12 until I was about 15, I was in the boarding school. But I think foundationally (as a foundation), that's what kind of set me on this journey until now. And I'm applying this thing where I think I have this kind of ability to curate interesting music. But it's music I like, right? But it seems, you know, from that time, I realized that there's quite a bit of other people that like my selection of music. So this, you know, little 12 year old Asian kid in boarding school gave me a lot of kind of confidence that, you know, that I was doing something that was like something on par with everyone else. mean, everyone liked my music.

Later on I picked up playing the drums. I had my drum teacher. I was trying to play in bands, but you know not that easy. I would go into nightclubs, and then I would see this DJ, this person playing other people's music, right, which was super interesting. And he was controlling the whole room with music played in his way, right? It was like mixed together. I said, hey, maybe I can try to pick this up. I know beats and stuff like that, basic music theory. So I picked up my first turntables and records and I was living in the States, one dollar bins, right? Like the music that people didn't like, but they're super interesting. And then I went on that journey of selecting. music even in the states and I...

Robin
So you're always DJing, you're like curating. That's how you describe yourself. You're a good curator.

Anton
I, you know, the thing is, I think....

Robin
How do you describe your musical identity?

Anton
Maybe what I learned when I was 12 by being not confident and me being this Indonesian kid in boarding school that my selection was good for a lot of people from a lot of different countries. And so I thought, yeah...

Robin
Hmm. Oh, where was that? What, what country was it? Was it in the state?

Anton
I was in Singapore and boarding school with a bunch of people from....

Robin
Oh, Singapore. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then you, and then after that you moved to the States?

Anton
Then I moved to the States for high school. Picked up drums, bought my first turntables. And in college, started doing I was trying to DJ. I couldn't really DJ anywhere. You know, it's hard to break into the business, especially in the States. And then I got into the..., I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and I got into the Bay Area kind of rave scene, underground rave scene.

Robin
Oh, gotcha!

Anton
And that really, really inspired me.

Robin
What year was this?

Anton
Yeah, early 90s.

Robin
Oh, gotcha.

Anton
I had my record collection, I had my turntables and mixer at home, playing at home. And, you know, had my friend who in college, he's like, hey, let's do an event. So I okay, we'll put our money together. We rented an airplane hangar. We couldn't get permits, so we did it illegally. We did it illegally. We hired security, we hired people for the door.

Robin
Oh, nice!

Anton
...our friends, you we didn't really hire other people. We hired security. We asked our friends to guard the door and everything else. And we had about 5,000 people on the airplane hangar. We booked the DJs that we liked...

Robin
Oh, that's not... That's... a good number!

Anton
Yeah, about 5,000 people, but only about 2,000 paid. 3,000 went through the back. The security, there was, you know, the hangar had two gates, had two doors, big doors. And the security was letting people into the back. They were getting like $10 to get in people through the back and we were charging $20 at the front. Rookie mistake, lesson learned. Lesson learned. But we were still make a lot of money. We still took some people paying $20 US. So we made some money. But we got busted at 5 AM, so we were supposed to go until 7 AM. The best DJ was going to come out at 5 to 7. We would open the hangar doors. The sunlight would come in.

It didn't happen. We got busted at five o 'clock in the morning because it was illegal. But that was my first foray into like, you know, business basically. And, know, that night that I started DJing, I DJed in front of people on the rave scene. It was my own event because obviously I couldn't get a gig. Who was I? But from that night on, I had bookings. Other promoters, et cetera, would come to the event because it was a pretty big event. And then I had other promoters call me for bookings. So again, I was like, hey, I think people do like the selection of things that I do. And then people like the event that I did, that we do. And actually, interestingly, that event, someone just bought me this. San Francisco Rave Flyers. It's like, you know, out of England. And my flyers are in here.

Robin
Oh, that's nice,

Anton
I guess you remember my flyers are in there. I mean, if somebody can get a hold of this book, it's all they've documented all the flyers from the rave scene from the early nineties. And yeah. And our few of our flyers are here. So to me, it's a big, big kind of achievement.

Robin
Oh, that's so cool.
Dude, that's so cool.

Anton
I wanna show it to you!

Anton (showing the booklet)
I took it for it. Oh, this was here. That's one of the things I did. My name's on there. But there was a production, I mean, I think that we did this, you know, this one here. But there's some other ones, some super underground ones. We were doing like warehouses and, you know, super underground, underground subculture parties, which I really enjoyed and got inspired by. Get down. That's our culture!

Robin
Oh, that's... Dude, that's so cool.

Anton
...and then this thing with subcultures was that I thought was interesting. Things that are weird, know, from the headphones that I used to have, music that was weird become super interesting because, you know, good fidelity and everything else. that was that.

Robin
Right, right. As you know I'm a metalhead. But I know there was a rave movement as well going on, going on in, at the same time in like everywhere, because I know my friend in Australia, was into that kind of scene as well. Then I think it's happening also in the UK. Correct me if wrong.

Anton
Yeah, I think it actually went really big in the UK. I was in San Francisco and I found again with these things, super underground, super subculture. Someone met me and said, hey, I think you would, the music that you like and the way you are, might like the rave scene. You can come and check it out. There's a party going on, you know, later than, oh, actually the first one was like a full.

That's one of the things that inspired me. It's, uh, until now is that there's this thing that happens every full moon in San Francisco by this, this one group and, uh, no flyers, no promotion basically. It's all word of mouth. And they tell a few people at, uh, let's say midnight and they say at three AM the party is going to start at a beach somewhere, you full moon, full moon night. And, um, you would hear news at like 12 o 'clock, one o 'clock and you, uh, you... you get news that it's on this beach, Santa Cruz or whatever, you head down, you head down and by 3am there's like 3,000 people there. And everyone is there because they knew someone, they knew someone. It was like super word of mouth before social media, way before social media. And you know, it's a community of people that are into like, seeing the music.

Robin
You just get there. Oh, shoot. That's cool!

Anton
...and the Full Moon Parties as a brand, know, community latches on to. So that's like for me, it's super, super inspiring. You know, in business you have customers, in music you have, you know, from having bands and all that as fans, right? And I think fans are just like super, super, they're super charged customers. They will travel whatever time to come to gig because they really believe in what you do and you you do it from the

Robin
Right, right. So what next after that? Where did that bring you?

Anton
After that, yes, so I was this Indonesian kid in the States dreaming of becoming a DJ and a promoter. I was well on my way. I was getting booked by the big events and the big promoters. Record shops would let me into the special room. The scene accepted me. And then the partner I was doing my events with, he had a job in LA and he had a motorcycle accident, he passed away. Right? That was like one night before my graduation, graduation from college. And actually, you know, I was supposed to be coming back to Indonesia after graduation, one year after that I would come back (to Indonesia). And I was just talking to him the night before he passed away. I was like, yeah, I'm going to go back to Indonesia. I don't think I can do what I do here. And he kept going like, no, you know,

Robin
Oh, shoot!

Anton
...you've brought all of us, you've introduced all of us into the scene and we're doing this and we're doing something really special. You should continue it. When you go back to Indonesia. I'm like, Indonesia is not the same thing as you know, It's just not the same. I don't know if I can do it. I have to go back and be responsible, be an adult. The next day, he passes away. So that was stuck in my head. You know, maybe a couple of years later, my parents called me and said, I have to come back, help us out here. Financially, you know, they needed help. So I didn't even blink. I came back.

So when I came back here, it was like, do I get a nine to five job or, you know, or try to do what I do there (in the States)? Right. And so what I did was I, you know, I came back with a few suitcases and a couple of boxes of my best records that I
you know, back in the day then, anywhere I go, I was this new kid that was playing a lot in the events. You know, every time I played it, people would like it. So I come back with these records, I come here and I try to play in different places, in clubs here. And every time I would play 15 minutes, they would kick me off the decks. I would go to another place, play 10, 15 minutes, they would kick me off the decks. They would say, your music is too weird. That's not what people want. In Indonesia, you know, here at that time it was, uh, you

Robin
Oh really, okay. Right. It was house (music)...

Anton
I was also playing house music, but it was house music that is like, yeah, you know, the one here was a lot more commercial. Was a lot more catchy and people actually culturally, like Indonesians are used to requesting songs. You know, it was before DJs, was bands playing in cafes and they would just play the hits and like you have a request form and pay the money and they would play the song, whatever song that the customer wanted. And here they wanted the DJs to be that. Like it's this kind of Asian culture, Indonesian culture. And so DJs would just play songs that people would request. Kind of top 40-ish, top 40 stuff, you know, and the same song, the same hit songs could be played like six, four times in a night. And I wasn't about that. I was about like people coming to a DJ performance.

Robin
The top 40, top 40 culture.

Anton
...because that DJ is performing his set, not playing music that you (the audience) like. Most of the music I will play will be things that people have never heard. I would throw in some classics, of course, to keep them happy, but 90 % of it will be music you haven't heard, but that you would like. But it's all about the energy and the selection and putting it together. That's the whole kind of DJ.

Robin
Gotcha.

Anton
DJing is half knowing all your shit, like knowing all your music, but half improvising, right? Because you're playing a selection of music, especially in the vinyl times, maybe you have 100 records you have with you, you know what they're like, but when you're in a club, it's always different every time. So you don't know what you're gonna start with, what you're gonna play in the middle or end up with. It depends on the club and the people that are there, the energy, et cetera. So it's half improvisation. You know, I was getting kicked off the decks and everywhere I went, you know, I like, why come back from the Bay area where I was playing all the time, but not here. So, yeah, I was depressed for a bit. I was like, maybe I just go back to doing like, you know, to make a living, kind of working. And then I said, no, I remembered my friend that passed away, like you should continue it. And so,...

What I did was I actually opened up a record shop using a credit card to buy all the records, because I knew people back in the States. I opened a record shop with the credit card and it was the best record shop in Jakarta because I sell things that were different. I had friends in the States telling me what to buy. I had like the most rare stuff. My first foray into retail and again curating the best. It was probably at one point the best record shop that was here, even though it was not big, but I had the best music. From there I met some...

Robin
What was the name of the name of your record store?

Anton
Ritma was the name of the record shop.

Robin
Okay, in Jakarta, yeah?

Anton
In Jakarta, it was in Grand Wijaya where our office until recently, we just moved until recently. And one night, one day, a DJ came and goes, oh, I have a resident DJ. So I started working at this venue. They bought new turbo sound system. It's all set up. It's an old club in the park. In Thamrin (name of one of the main street in Jakarta), it's called Parkit.
Wahid Hasyim, that's the place, right? It's an old kind of lounge, bit sleazy, but they just bought a new sound system, but they could not get anybody there. Right? So I'll be like, oh, And he goes, oh, there's a second room that's in the back. So the two rooms interesting. So I go, hmm, interesting, right? Turbo sound in the second room. So I went there and I said, okay, let's try to do something. And I...

Robin
I heard that (about Parkit), yeah I heard that, right right...

Anton
I'll bring in the DJs, I'll fill the second room with like, you know, play house in the front and funk and at that time like, know, funk, disco, like all the classics, soul, and also drum and bass that was coming in then. Drum and bass is getting big again now with the Gen Zs. And I go to the club owner and say, look, you give me 50 % of your take that night, door and bar. And they said, yes. They're like, okay, we cannot get anybody here, take 50%. So we did. That night it was a Saturday night and we had about 700, 800 people. I had like all my friends promoted and my brother and sister and their friends promoted. Yeah. And so from that night on, I told the club owner like, look, let's just do this every Saturday, you know, and they go, okay, but not at 50%, maybe, you know, there's a 30%. So I said, okay, you know, we shook hands for the next year we would do this.

I would be 30% of the takings from the door and the bar. And they became like the business model of how I would do things after that. So I was making good money. I was like, you know, was getting 900 people on average. Yeah. On average, 750 people through the door every Saturday. So I was making a living. I could pay the other DJs. I had like artists do kind of doing visuals. I I had other DJs playing music in the back room. So I was able to make a living for myself and for the people that I would take in to kind of do this night. And it was something super, super different than the other clubs. In the end, getting more attention than the other clubs and the other clubs sending police out to us to bust us and all that because traffic, because of all these things. So interesting times, but you can do that. You can pay the police to do stuff like that here.

Robin
That's right, right.

Anton
Less known, maybe less known, but even more back then. The other clubs would send out police to bust them. But it was interesting. from that time on, I figured out there's this model where I can... venues need revenue, they need customers, they need content. So I would go to these other DJs and say, look... There's this club that, you know, because we had so many people every week, they're like, hey, can you also fill up our club? And I said, okay. And then I would send out other DJs and even other kinds of music. I would get DJs, I would get the people doing promotion. I would hire a graphic designer. Before I would just do it myself, went to the printers myself. You know, we still did flyers back then. But I was, you know, I was running four clubs at a time. I was sending DJs out.
you know, promoters and, you know, making interesting money. And then sponsors came. They were like, hey, you have this kind of community of people. I was early with like emails and everything else. And we had the early adopting customers. Many people didn't use emails back then, but our customers did because they adopt early.

And so it was easy to reach out to them. I was using SMS machines and things like that. And so, I was running an operation out of the office. I had like eight people just were promoting different clubs one night and sending DJs out to play and promoters to promote. And then sponsors came.

Robin
So how long did it take from the start of that you managed the clubs to you start getting orders and then you're starting (DJ) management and then sponsors?

Anton
One year. One year.

Robin
Oh crap, that's fast.

Anton
As fast actually even before that, but, you know, I didn't want to leave my Saturday night at Parkit. You know, I wanted to dedicate because it was just super special. I didn't want to do other nights, but you know, at the end of that one year, I had a fight. I had a fight with the manager because, you know, I was taking all the glory basically. So he was trying to make it like, make life hard for me. So after one year, I had a fight with him basically one morning. We left and we just started managing the other clubs. And I started doing DJing in different clubs instead of just one because there was a quest from other people. So it built onto that. And then the sponsors came and they're like, hey, can we tap into the things that you do? Because you have the market that we need, this influential communities, Indonesians would say, people in the know, we want to tap in.

We started doing things with sponsors and it became more substantial. Something was still underground. It was still the music that I wanted. I didn't compromise because, you know, people came for us, right? But it was backed by sponsors. So it was the best of kind of both worlds. I mean, that's the whole thing with the nights that we did in Par-kit was that I put up a sign in front of the DJ booth saying that “NO REQUESTS”, right? You know, if you want the songs that you want, there are other clubs play them. So go ahead and go to the other clubs to listen to the songs. We play the songs that we want here. And it worked. It was a concept, you know, because it was just so different and the music was different. And we built a community, a community of early adopters and people that was into subcultures as well around us.

We built that community, sponsors start coming in, more venues start coming in, and it became interesting. And that's when we started the company called Future10. That's when we started doing that. I took in some more DJs, in people doing promotion and things like that. And the sponsors after that, first was tapping in with sponsorship, and then they came in like, hey, wait, can you produce our events? And so for a long time, I mean, for years, was not easy work, but we were doing events for cigarette companies and at the height of it, like we had Sony electronics for like two years. Had drinks companies, we did events for BMW. All these things that I didn't chase it, but they commissioned us to do it because we had a pool of talent around music, DJs, musicians, artists, visual artists, you know, to do our parties. And we started producing like corporate events that was interesting and different. We didn't chase, we didn't pitch, you know, we didn't go for pitches. It was all commission work. So, yeah, so we got a lot of kind of experience and network and portfolio, right?

If we've done events for these big companies, then, and they're really cool events too, like Nike, we did Nike for years. Adidas before that, some really interesting clients that we built, right? From doing these kind of really underground music events that had a community behind it, to doing interesting kind of events for, you know, for more people. But all that time, like there was no compromise. was the things that we... Well, I'd be compromised a bit if it was like big corporate events, but it was still the things that we like to do with the people we like to do it with. So, consider myself lucky that we it that way.

Robin
Right, so how did you get interested into retail?

Anton
First actually is because of

Robin
Or is there any other things that you did before you go there (retailing)?

Anton
Yeah, no, it's an interesting connection. Then looking back, it's interesting of like connecting the dots with it. Again, the first exposure into retail was the record shop, which I thought was interesting, you know, like, and it's all the same, right? I think to me retail or music or the show business, it's all about entertainment. We're all in the entertainment hospitality business.

A customer comes to a record shop, buys a record that they've been looking for for their whole life and it keeps them happy. It makes them happy. It's just like me being on a beach, on a full moon with a few thousand people that are in it with the craziest music I've ever heard. I was a happy person. It's the same. You come to a store, you find things in a store and you purchase it, bring it home. It's the same kind of happiness. And so that's what we try to deliver in the record shop.
So with that experience and also the thing with curation, people like the music that I selected and maybe even the decorations that we did, et cetera. People then would ask me about other things like, hey, what's that shirt you're wearing? What's that hat you're wearing? So I was like, hey, wait, there's some interesting things going on. So they trust you with selection of things. It means that you can maybe curate more things for people. Like, so there's this trust of like, me not compromising on things and me showing, like, you know, showing people the best music that I can find, right? In a way that I put it together. And they would ask me at the vintage and I say, well, maybe we can do something with this. And so then this is like another kind of dot connecting.
And then after that, actually the jump before retail was that I I got picked out by this big venue, the biggest venue in South Jakarta, actually called Bengkel Night Park. Well, I named it Night Park. This big pyramid building as a multi-purpose venue, doing like live music and DJs in the weekends. And they're like, oh, can you manage this place? I was like 25 or 26 at the time. 25.

And you manage this place, we're doing like, you know, some bands, some live acts, some international, smaller international acts, and then you DJ every Saturday to, you know, this venue of like 7,000 people. So of course, yeah, I said, yeah, so I'm like, you know, that's another challenge. So I did that, in the United States for a few years, and I got my hands into like, kind of promoting, you know, doing live shows and like promoting a venue at that time, one of the biggest in Asia and in ASEAN. So I did that for three years. So I got a lot of experience in running a company. I was managing 350 people, a lot of people older than me at that time. So that was an interesting experience. And after that, I

Robin
Is this still in the Future10?

Anton
Oh no, it was me personally. Yeah, so Future 10 was still happening on the side. I was doing this. But you know, this club was so big and that everyone was going there in the weekends would fit. We had 9,000 people in there one time, one weekend. We emptied out like the whole of most of Jakarta nightlife. Every Saturday night. And so, you know, anything else that's going on was, I didn't feel good about it, but it was just what happened. You know, because it was so big. The building is still there. If you Google map it and you go to SCBD in the middle of Jakarta, the pyramid building is still there.

Robin
Right.

Anton
And so after that, after three years, I quit that and I started doing music festivals. This idea where, you know, in Singapore, they have ZookOut, you know, they already had it at that time. How come Jakarta doesn't have its own? So was like, hey, maybe we can try to do music festivals. So I teamed up with the investors. I was running a radio channel, I think it was Prambors, company behind Prambors radio. And so we did, I had this idea called Jakarta Movement and they go, oh yeah, let's do it. And so we did that. We had 25,000 people. We did well, we did okay, but permits and like, oh, the whole police thing here is hard, You know, the government doesn't have any, know, Singapore government supports like the music festivals the DJ festivals, et cetera. But yeah, Indonesia, again, different story. So our event was not getting busted, but they had like police out in front of our gates and stuff like that. And so, you know, we lost money in the last event and, you know, we stopped the business basically. But yeah, I put together like DJs and even before like the other festivals did it, we had bands, we had DJs in one festival. You know, because all the things that I like basically in place. We brought people in from Europe, from America. We had the best indie bands playing. Had all kinds of music. But that ended because the whole permit, it was just difficult. And after that, started going into this connection to retail. So I had a friend that I knew from music. He was working at a big shopping center. And I said, can we have the space? Do you want to do a music event there?

Let me look at it. It was like a thousand meters squared. And I said, wait, I have this idea. So one time we did an event where we had, it was a Sunday event where we had DJs bands, et cetera, playing. And then in one area we had retail, you know, because we had friends that were making like t-shirts and all these really cool things. We didn't know where they would sell. We would do this kind of market on the side on a Sunday event. We had a few thousand, couple of thousand people.

And people were selling things. I mean, was the same people that are interested in really good music, really different music, are interested in really cool and different products and fashion and all these other stuff like art and vintage stuff. And so I go, maybe we can put all these things together. Like my whole experience of selecting things and people asking me for things because they trust in my selection.

The experience of putting events together and people together to manage it. I say, maybe we can do something. So when that friend asked if we can do music, I said, yeah, maybe we can try another type of festival, but not of music, but of this creativity in general. You know, things, people selling other things, you know, there'll be music there for sure, because that's what we do. But there's people selling the best food that they can make and that we can find and selling the best clothes and at that time, like fixed gear bicycles and like art pieces. You know, there's this girl that went to a culinary school in France and she's selling these cakes that were like super expensive, but really good. Couldn't find a market for it. You know, we put all these crazy people together and we had to assemble 25 brands into this thousand meter squared space. We couldn't find 25. We had to make up a few booths. We have to pretend that we filled all the booths. I basically paid people to fill it up basically. And we had 5,000 people come to it. We called it BrightSpot Market. At the time it was just at the end of the recession that we had in Indonesia. So there's a lot of empty spaces and malls.

Robin
So it's late 90s...

Anton
This is 2008, 2009. So this is the 2007, 2008 recession. A bit later. I forget when the rupiah.... Yeah.

Robin
Yeah, so (the economic crisis) it's 1998, 1999, and then again 2008. That was a global recession and stuff. Because it happened in America too. Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

Anton
That was a global recession. Yeah, exactly. So was a lot of empty spaces in these shopping centers and a lot of people not having jobs and trying to do something, but not finding the market for it, not finding the channel for it. So I figure, yeah, we can try to do something. So we did the first one, 25 vendors, 5,000 people came. You know, 5,000 people that we knew from music or the database from before, which is, interesting. The developers were happy, but, you know, other developers heard of it and they contacted me and said, hey, we have space, come and do it. So the next event, we have 35 vendors, we had 12,000 people. And then it went on and went on. I said, so it was like 2009 or 2010 we did the first one 15 years ago, 2009, 15 years ago. First event, 25 vendors, 5,000 people. The last one we did, we took over a dead mall, Rate Plaza, you probably know it. We had 200 vendors on show. We actually had a thousand apply. So we said no to 800 and we had 130,000 people. We had 130,000 people!

Robin
...for one weekend, for one day, for...

Anton
Yeah. Again, inspired by kind of music festivals. the recurring theme, this thing with music. Glastonbury would happen over two weekends. Coachella would happen over two weekends. And I go, wait, if our mission is to get these vendors to sell more things, what if we do it for two weekends so we can get more people to come and buy stuff from these guys, right? I suppose more people. So ever since two years ago, I said, you know, let's just go and try two weekends.

It was a big move. But in the end, you get more people, the vendors get more sales, and we can have more bands playing, more DJs playing, more artists do things, and it works out, and it's crazy with that many people. And then, so we've done, over the 15 years, we've been doing BrightSpot Market. We've been doing it in different places all the time. Again, inspired by the rave scene where they would just go to, they go find like an empty warehouse. Find all these like crazy places, outdoors and caves and beaches. My thing was like, we could go to a convention hall and do that every year there, but it'll be boring. And so I think it's this kind of adventure of this curation of everything, including the space we do it in. So we would try to find raw spaces, empty spaces, underused spaces.
throughout the city, becomes part of the whole experience. People follow us because we travel around every year, different places. So the dots are connecting.

Robin
So when did you start to think that, okay, I'm going to like settling in, like building like the real retail shop and then focus on that.

Anton
You know, actually, three or four years into BrightSpot Market, right, it was obvious that there's this kind of marketplace of people making cool things for, I'm saying cool for the lack of a better word, it is just people doing different things, non-mainstream things. People from the subculture doing like fashion, doing food. Because of our platform, right? People started making things for it and more people appreciate these kind of interesting things and it grows. Like it becomes like a flywheel of just like cool things like creativity, people doing big sales during the event. And so it built up. So after three or four years, it was obvious that we were onto something. And there was like a lot of brands becoming big, getting invested going into like proper stores because of our platform. We had this idea, we need to do something more permanent, right, on the site because then they'll have a place to sell on a daily basis. And so we did that. The first few years, we just had like friends and family invest, like, you know, a few friends and it went well, but it big, it got big and it's like again, know, saying like there's a lot of compromises because he got like too big and then investors came in and there was a lot of compromise. In the end, it's not something that we wanted to do. And basically the investors took over, the people took over. But actually I'm in the process of buying that company back. It's called The Goods Dept. It's a place for retail, but as a different retail. We do music events there, we do art events there.

But it's retail and dining. It's like a community center, it's transactional. It's a place to shop. But again, it became something that was more compromised than passion. I lost a feeling for it. It was not something that we wanted to do. And we thought we didn't do it well because it was not what we wanted to do at the time. We didn't have full control.

Robin
Okay. So you give up?

Anton
But it's coming back to us. It's coming back to us in the next few, in the next month. So, think about what to do

Robin
Right, right. Okay. I missed that story.

Anton
I haven't made it public, right? It's in the process, but it's coming.

Robin
Gotcha. Okay I see you were like walking in this line. It's not a fine line. Like all the events that you mentioned. I was a teenage kid in Bandung, a metalhead in Bandung. When you did all I heard about Jakarta movement, heard about Parkit. I heard about all the events in BEngkel. I didn't know it was you. Like a hundred percent. I just know that like half an hour ago. And it was amazing because we, cause I was in the different market. I wasn't the folks that, you know, attend your shows. But we hear that like it's like amplified by other people that is not even in your target. So the noise is like really loud.

Anton
Yeah, it was loud. Actually, just for the fact that it was something different. Actually, back then there was MTV Trax magazine and they put me as one of 10 people with the Midas Touch in Entertainment. I forget who the others... They were all big people, but they put me there because of Jakarta Movement, because of the nightlife scene and how it changed people's perception about nightlife. And that's just the thing too.

Back then, if you hear DJ now, he's getting paid $100,000 a night to play for a couple of hours and fly private jet. But back then it was just really very underground, very small and very negative, especially for Indonesia. What are you doing DJing? But it applies to maybe a lot of people in the creative industry.

People don't think that you can do something beneficial for a lot of people. You know, the more I get treated like that, I get people, what are doing? DJing. you know, I went to business school or whatever, but I became a DJ. And I was feeling that, like with other people trying to be DJs, you know, again, the same as saying, why are you in a band? Why are you DJing? Why are you doing paintings? You know, why are you doing graffiti? Like make something of your life.

And so I just wanted to do my part to show that like, you know, creativity can be meaningful, can be beneficial for a lot of people. That you do something different, but you do it as well as you could. It could be something. Then, you know, MTV Trax Magazine put me on that thing. So that's why it was like a lot of noise. People from other scenes that was not from that scene, but have the same kind of this kind of subculture underground mentality would support us because we were something basically, you know, very kind of similar in a way, even though the music was different. So interesting. It was interesting. And then, you know, I applied that to basically people making things like, you know, curators in different fields, you know, at work. There were all these like in music, like all these kind of younger kids will come up to me and say, Hey, you know, I want to be a DJ too. You know, I want to start doing a night's day. Can I join your crew? You know, I was like, wait, just do your own crew. Right. Then with, you know, it's open source, man. Yeah. Go to clubs and ask them for a revenue share. If they won't pay you for it, you know, if they won't hire you, just say like, you can bring the crowd, get a cut from their bar, the door. You know, we did it that way. You can do it too. Start like a crew, start a brand. You know, we would say, no, these kids coming to our crew, but, you know, I said, like, do your own. And so a lot of kids started doing that, you know, like built up the scene for venues and for DJs at that time until now. That was the model that has been used, you know, from then until now. Like a lot of clubs actually then open clubs and have nights where they would do revenue sharing with promoters with the DJs. So yeah, interesting to see. And then you would see these guys now they've become like big producers or big DJs or they've grown to become like business people, et cetera. And you we've known them from back then. It's all network, right? It's all great. it's a good practice in like, you know, making money from your passion, right? And so, I mean, that's what I do. That was this Indonesian kid in a field or a beach going like, holy shit, this is the best thing ever, With music and with the people. I thought I do that to the city that I didn't really want to come back to Jakarta. But I was asked to come back from my family and say, the best of it. A lot of things were not here. So I figured I have to leave this place better than I found it. So I do my part.

Robin
Right, right.

Anton
And that's what I've been doing.

Robin
Right, that's a good one. So, what other ventures are you pursuing now in music or in other fields?

Anton
A lot of the things I do is again, maybe kind of outside of music. I still actively DJing at my age, still being asked to DJ. I think actually after the pandemic, I DJed more than I ever did before. Like I was playing two times, three times a week. Yeah, that point too, was like, you know, before, we would chase it (DJ gigs), but now I would get people asking me to do it and I said, okay, I will do it for a certain fee, you know, because otherwise I just, yeah, I'm tired too, at this age to be going out at night because DJ gigs are late at night. But the thing is I enjoy doing it, right? I don't think I will stop. Like a lot of people that started with me have kind of retired or are not relevant anymore. They don't get asked to play anymore basically. But I'm lucky that I still can do it. That's just one of the best things you can do. It's the best job

Robin
Right.

Anton
And that was my thing too, right? If I didn't get paid, if I didn't get paid, I was still DJ, right? Because I like doing it.

Robin
So, okay. Now, how do you define yourself? Are you entrepreneur first or are you artist first? I don't know if this is a fair question...

Anton
Yeah, no, it's actually a good question, right? I don't...
I don't think I'm a full business person, because whenever I feel I'm compromising, I don't feel like I'm doing great work. Right? I would rather not do it. And I'm not in my element either. So I think I'm more of a entrepreneur...

...Yeah I would say artists first. Just for the fact that... I'm uncomfortable when there's compromises.

Robin
Yeah, that makes sense.

Anton
So I would say I would never be a really good business person, in my opinion. Because I cannot fully be that. It's all these things that would stop me from doing things only for money.

I'm not driven by that. It's great to do it. It's great to be able to make money for yourselves and people around you and other people create like what I do with Brightspot Market, creating opportunities for hundreds and hundreds of brands. It's great. But it's not, that's the result. That's not the activity.
The activity is doing, creating something interesting for people to come and enjoy and be entertained and happy about, be inspired by. And, you know, and I think if you do that well, you will make money.

And if you don't, you'll still be happy because you're doing what you like to do, right? Or you're making other people happy. That's what I think. So I would never be a really good business person, entrepreneur, I think, because I'm not fully driven by that. Partially, maybe.

Robin
Yeah, no, it all makes sense now. So, where did you acquire your business acumen? Where did you find those?

Anton
You know what?

You know, I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know. You know what it could be? It might be from playing music. It might be from... I think it could be that, as I said before, that it's (DJing) an interesting art. I'm lucky to be able to do it. I make some of my own music. I don't make enough, but I don't have too much time, but I love doing it. But as a DJ, you're playing other people's music, right? So basically you're promoting other people's music and you're putting it...

Robin
Hmm, interesting.

Anton
...together in a way where a person can enjoy it from beginning to end. Let's say a DJ set is two hours. That's where you start and where it goes and where it ends, right? And throughout that time, you have to make sure that the whole journey is interesting, right? And music have different intensities, different feelings. And putting it together, programming it... It's like, you know, when, when you're playing a live set, you have your repertoire, you know, you think about what you're going to play the first song, the third song is super important. The second song is very important. And then the last song is going to be really important. Right. So it's a bit like that. Uh, but even more intense when you're DJing, because then it's a longer duration. It's other people's music is half improvisation. Cause you don't know what's going to go next. You know, we were doing like live band sets. We know we're going to play beginning to end, know exactly what, we write down the setlist. When you're DJing, you're not writing a setlist. DJs that do are horrible DJs. I shouldn't say that maybe some DJs are great by doing that, but I think the best DJs are the ones that play from the heart and are the ones that actually can read a room or a festival or, you know, now they're playing to 50,000 people, whatever.

You know, depends what you do, depends on what is happening around you. So I think I've been able to read that. I've been able to read the room because when you're DJing, that's what you're supposed to do. It's not about you. You're just channeling energies from this different music to these people, right? You're a good DJ if you can do that well from beginning to end. People love your set.

People want you to come back, venues want you to come back, you build up your kind of following and then more people come, more people come, more people come, more people tell other people about you in the age of social media than it's people posting about you. So I think that built up my kind of business, I think, I don't think I'm great. I think I'm far.
There are more things that I could have done better or more things that I could do. But being able to read that room and being able to use the tools that you have and it's different every time and you have to respond to it every time, I think it has maybe made me a better person in business. This is what I feel.

Robin
That is great. So you transpire what you learn or what inspires you, you don't even understand that you're in the process. You're just doing it, and then you catch the things that you see, all these things happening in front of your eyes, and then you connect the dots.

Anton
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's feelings, right? It's not a set list. That's what I find. We would perform in our band and we would have a set list, right? We know what we're going to start with, we know what we're going to end with. And actually the last song on your set list, you're done. You don't. The encore has been planned.

With DJing it's not. I used to practice two hours a day, but I don't anymore. But back in the day, it was my discipline to practice two hours a day. Even if I stopped enjoying doing it, I still had to do my two hours a day to make sure that I can perform well when I perform in of people. So I know exactly what the arsenal I had in my music... my record box, I know exactly what I can do with them and what each song does. Practice until I know them really well. And when I play out, it's a lot of feelings and intuition and... ...Peka, Bahasa Indonesia, Peka, I don't know what it is in English (being sensitive to surrounding). Like you have to be so aware with the feeling of the room, the energy and like people's faces and people's reaction and people's reaction in aggregate, in total. But even sometimes you look at individuals, they're (looking) happy, they're not happy. It's all these things processing. Obviously, maybe AI later on can do this a lot better than us. But, you know, it will not have kind of that feel that humans do. But it's just kind of analyzing that I just do on the back of my head, even without thinking. And it's not thinking. It's never like the best nights I have DJing, don't think about, do it sometimes, I don't remember what I played, but somehow automatically I just picked the right things. And sometimes a lot of it I feel is like magic, but that happens when you absorb other people's kind of energy. That's what I feel. I mean, it sounds like strange,

Robin
No, think it's just a process of you acquiring the ability of reading the room, as you mentioned. Because how to read the room is different every time. The more you're in the room, the more you can read different situations, right? That's the nature of it.

Anton
Yeah. It's different every time.

Oh, then also one thing was that sometimes I would have residencies. Remember I would say at Bengkel Night Park, I was a resident there every Saturday night for a couple of years. Every night is kind of different, but I know the room. Um, it makes it easier when it's familiar, like all the time. Right. But when you're a traveling DJ, you're not, you know, when I was a resident that was happening, if you're not a resident DJ and you're like a DJ traveling around, it's different rooms every time, different people, different needs, you know, even if you say, okay, my first song is going to be this, my second song, this, my third song, this, it could completely change because you don't know what's going to happen. You know, I'm playing in a different country. I used to actually play around the region, (including) in Australia. They know different songs, they like different things. The room is set differently. It's big, it's small. It's packed, it's not packed. It's different every time. It's like life. Different every time.

Robin
Right. So, how do you think running a business, like running a show or performing, there's a risk on doing that, right? So, what if you miss? How do you getting back to the rhythm when it, like oh shoot... I read it wrongly or your solution just doesn't work?

Anton
Yeah. That's a good one. You know, you correct yourself. That's actually a good one. I mean, there's times when you are not on it, right? Maybe you play the wrong track. It's supposed to be like this. After that, you think people going to respond in a certain way and they don't, right? You play like banging track after that and people didn't want that, people want something still mellow. You know you've made that mistake and after that in DJing you have to kind of fix that. The next song you have to make sure that you don't go again in the wrong direction, you kind of go back to what they will enjoy, right?
You correct yourself.

I think in business the same thing, it's owning up to what you've done wrong. And what I find being in a band or maybe DJing, especially DJing, is basically you yourself performing in front of these people. When you're a band, you have your drummer, have your bass player, you have your guitar player, vocalist, keyboard, whatever. So there's more people as a unit doing it. In business, especially if it gets to a certain scale, it's a lot of people.

You're responsible for, especially that you're responsible for a lot of people to be performing. And so it's harder. Being in a band is harder than being a one person DJ. Being in an organization with a lot of people, a second orchestra. There's someone on the oboe, a bunch of people on strings, on horns.

It's harder. You know, imagine you're the conductor, you have to make sure that everyone, you're not playing an instrument anymore. Right? That's the big difference. This is what I challenge to. I'm still learning and that I maybe feel that it's, you know, somebody else could do it better than me. I can come up with the concepts and strategy direction, but operationally, you know, I'm not, I don't think I'm the, I'm learning. I want to. I don't think I'm the best conductor. It's hard being a conductor,

You have to put all these people together and to play in harmony, they have to play, know, their skill has to be right. You know, cannot have a bad oboe player. You can't have a bad pianist, you know, in your orchestra. It's going to ruin everything about your orchestra. And so you have to assemble the best people you can find. They have to play in symphony with everybody else. And that's the best analogy for business in music, I think.

So the one man DJ person, maybe with the advent of AI, think possibly they could be a one person company with AI, they can be big. That's probably coming soon. But as it is now, it's an orchestra. And it's It's hard. I've made my mistakes.

Robin
Alright, is it lonely up there? (in DJ booth, or as the big boss of the company)

Anton
Yeah, it's definitely that.

Robin
Tell me about it.

Anton
You know, as a conductor, again, the music analogy, as a conductor, you're possibly the most responsible for anything that happens in your orchestra. Right? If you have the string session go bad, it's on you. You're on the pedestal, you're by yourself, you know, everyone is working for you. And so it's tough to be in that pressure, like all the time. If it's going well, it's going well. Some days it doesn't go well. And it's on you.

So better to be the lone DJ guy.

Robin
Right, Okay. Um, wow. This is eye opening. Man, I learned so many things today. It's amazing. One of the thing that I like doing this is that, remember when you start your story, it was in early nineties or in boarding school even, and then up to today where you're in a month away to acquire back your company. That's like 25 of the best years of your life, you know, compressed into one hour. And then I absorbed those stories doing this and it's amazing. So I used to be a person who got...

Anton
Yeah, the best and the best and worst, The best and worst. mean, you know,

Robin
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the best meaning the top or the bottom, the extreme top or bottom. And that's really like a journey of back into one hour, 20 years since you, know, flyering back then until someone doing the flyering for you. And then at the time when you just announced something and then people were just...

Anton
Yeah, the best of both. The extreme, yeah.

Robin
...you know, spread by its own. That's like a journey, iteration cycle that is, like, you know, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Then, you take where you are at now. It's been amazing. I couldn't connect that. Like, I don't know if there is one place where people can know your story, that you were this guy and then you're still the same guy now, it's just that you manage bigger things. What is your, what do you, what would be the ultimate question? Like not the ultimate question, something that, what is your best learning?

Anton
You know, the thing is I feel even though I'm at my age, right? I don't know, I still feel that I don't know enough. That I think maybe I've done a lot of things. Pretty much an adventure. I've been lucky to be able to do these things. And then, I probably take a lot of lessons from it. Good and bad, right? And a lot of learning. I mean, scar tissue from all the mistakes I made, you know, in music, in business, you know, a lot less mistakes in music because it's mostly a lot of feelings. But in business is, you know, making that feeling
going to more people and having more people probably have the same vision as you, have the same excitement, have the same competence to do this together. It's not as easy. Right? I've lost control of my company because I don't think I've done it well. Luckily, we'll be getting it back. And again now, I'm saying I don't know if I am able to then scale it to a certain level. Maybe I can bring it up to a higher level, but then, you know, should be other people running it operationally. Because I say, maybe I'm not a conductor. But I'm also not just a violin player, right? I don't know where I should be. If we're talking about a business or an orchestra. There's, I mean, there's a lot of learning in my part, but I learned... maybe the thing is if I'm not comfortable with the situation, if I'm not in my element, if it's a lot of compromise on what I think is right in my passion, then a lot of times it will not go well. That will not end well. There's been some ventures I would say, let's do this. It's not exactly what we should be doing, but I think there's opportunity in money. So far, I think I've failed all that. That if I take an opportunity for purely for money, but whenever it's an opportunity that I feel that we can make impact, then it goes a lot better and you trust that the money will come. Right, so that's what I learned. And I don't think it applies for everyone. I think there's other people that are better than me in other things.

But from my perspective, I think what I've learned is that kind of your intuition and your gut, especially as you get older, like when you're young, you make all the mistakes and it becomes your knowledge, becomes your intuition. But as you get older, I think you just have to listen to your gut, it seems like. So, and put yourself around the best people that you can find.

Robin
Right. Yeah, that's the best one. So what next?

Anton
You know, don't... I'm thinking if I... Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that I feel that I want to do and I've done it. So, you know, I've been lucky that I could. And I think, you know, part of the reason why I could do what I do, I think if I were still living in the States, I don't think I'll be able to do these things as many things as I could do in Indonesia. Again, coming back from another country here, my thing was, all these things I saw there, I tried to bring them here because it wasn't here yet. I was trying to make my city as good as other cities. I've been to more established cities. We were in England together, et cetera, like all these things we were talking about. You know, infrastructure and like social, you know, society wise and government and even society, like all these things are happening much better in other places. But, you know, my thing was coming back here, like, you know, we need to catch up, right? You know, we need to be doing things culturally that maybe can speed up that progress to become on par and have our own identity.

I think we've made good progress in that way, but we still have a lot of ways to go. I'm happy with what I've been doing. actually, there's other people now that are doing... When I started, there was not really anybody else that cared about a kind of like culture. But now I think more people are into it. I think it's just the times are different too. And it's the era of social media and TikTok and everything else. Things are spreading faster and there's just a whole bunch of people doing really interesting, interesting things. You know, we were there early, you know, happy to have started, kicked everything off, but there's some interesting people doing things nowadays. So maybe I don't have to be doing them. Maybe I can just enjoy going forward. We'll see, you know, I don't think I can keep still at the same time, so we'll see.

Robin
You will create something, you will create something. I can smell that. I mean...

Anton
Hahaha.

Yeah, Maybe, but that's interesting about creativity. It's like sometimes you don't know what's... You know, it's all these little happy accidents that will happen and then, hey, maybe this is interesting. Hey, this haven't been done before. So we'll see. Again, I cannot keep still. Just, you know, with two years we stayed in our houses during COVID. So it's nicer to be doing things.

Robin
Right. Yeah, of course. OK, I think we talked so many things today and I believe I learned a lot today.

I didn't know, like I genuinely don't know what you did. I just know that you were successful and you make all this. like, cause when, when I try to find a guest for this podcast from Indonesia, I find it hard because I want someone that is covering other parts that I didn't cover, you know, or something that, that I cannot achieve or, you know, so something or something else that I can learn.

Anton
Yeah, other scenes, yeah.

Robin
Um, and then, I mean, I made the right choice. You know how hard I chase you, like, Anton come on, come on. I emailed you so many times and then, and then finally you are here and then, yeah, I made the right choice. And then I think, it's really great to have you here, man. It's, it's an honor to have you.

Anton
Yeah. No, I feel like this has been as much for me an interesting time as well. Because yeah, sometimes I don't go in depth with, you know, with other people when we're discussing, let's say, something particularly in business or particularly in retail. But this like conversation of putting it all together with this inspiration from music and being able to kind of tie everything together. It's not a conversation I have often and as deep. So I find that I've tonight also learned tonight... my time. What time is it there? Morning. That I've learned as much as you probably learn as much as you about this whole journey. Sometimes I don't even think about it as well. So thank you!

Robin
It's morning and it's 10:30.

That is cool. All right then. All right then. We've been here for one hour, twenty minutes. So I guess I'm going to edit a bit, but I think I got the best bit. It's a pleasure again. Thank you so much. We'll stay in touch. And if you want anything, yeah, if you want to like, hey Robin, I have something that I want to talk about. Just reach out and then let's see what we can do together! Awesome!

Anton
Yeah, that's it. Okay. Yeah, yeah for sure for sure for When are you coming back to Jakarta, never coming back, right? Yeah.

Robin
I still don't know. I mean, I just got started. You know how it is moving to a new country. I moved after my forties. I have a family, so I have to, you know, survive first. So I learned all those things in the first six years (in the US). And then in the past couple of months, I was like, hmm, I need to go back to music. Spend a bit of my time doing this. So here I am and it's it was the best decision ever. It's been great so far. It's been great.

Anton
Yeah, you've been a man of music, that doesn't go away,

Robin
Yeah, yeah. So, so it doesn't go away, correctly. That's the best way to put it. It doesn't go away. It just stay there. It just, you're sleeping somewhere, and then you just wake them up and then, you know, it become part of your life again. And it's great. I embrace it. I embrace it a hundred percent. I enjoy it so much.

Anton
Yeah, exactly.

Robin
That's it for now, it's not the end but we'll talk again. But thank you so much Anton. Of course, of course man, of course man. Peace!

Anton
OK. Thank you for the time. I've had a good time. Alright, see you, Robin.

Robin
Peace , bye.