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Ushar Daniele

Kuala Lumpur is making it easier and cheaper to bring international music stars to the city, hoping that a bigger concert calendar can help Malaysia capture more of Southeast Asia’s booming live-music economy.
But as more global acts come to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian musicians are asking whether the concert boom is creating more opportunities for local artists too.
Fuad Alhabshi of Malaysian rock band Kyoto Protocol said local bands once routinely benefited when major international acts came through Kuala Lumpur, including opportunities to play support slots.
His band has opened for Muse, Death Cab for Cutie and The Killers.
“Of late, I feel there has been a worrying trend of foreign acts opting not to have a local opening act,” he said.

Fuad said venues that could accommodate crowds of between 200 and 500 people were disappearing, creating what he described as a “missing middle” for Malaysian musicians trying to graduate to larger stages.
Federal Territories Minister Hannah Yeoh has argued that the city’s booming concert calendar shows a strong demand for live entertainment.
According to Communications Ministry figures, Malaysia hosted more than 450 concerts nationwide last year, up from 408 in 2024, 335 in 2023 and 104 in 2022. The live-events industry contributed nearly US$422 million to the economy in 2025.
“This shows that there’s a real appetite for concerts here,” Yeoh said in May.
Live Nation Malaysia expects Kuala Lumpur to host 25 international music performances across six major venues throughout 2026, attracting more than 500,000 fans from Malaysia and across the region.
But Fuad said the problem was bigger than a lack of suitable venues for smaller acts.
He said stagnant wages and limited disposable income forced concertgoers to become increasingly selective, particularly as expensive international tours competed for their entertainment budgets.
“In the end, I think it still falls back to the structurally low disposable income of the median Malaysian,” he said.

For Indonesian punk band Dongker, Kuala Lumpur already has many of the ingredients needed to become a regional music hub, being affordable and easy to reach from neighbouring countries.
“I think it is very possible,” the Bandung-based band said in a statement, pointing to Malaysia’s location at the heart of Southeast Asia and its proximity to Indonesia, the region’s largest music market.
The band added that Kuala Lumpur’s cost of living was low enough for audiences to comfortably cover food, accommodation and transport on top of concert tickets.
But what looks like an attractive destination at first glance becomes more complex on closer inspection.
Dongker, currently in Malaysia for a mini tour, said cross-border movement between the Malaysian and Indonesian music scenes was already well established, especially among independent and underground musicians.
The band pointed to acts such as Daighila, Piri Reis, Moneybag and Pasca Sini, all of whom have performed in Indonesia, with Indonesian bands making the reverse trip just as often.
Dongker said Malaysian musicians including Noh Salleh, Masdo and Yuna had built audiences in Indonesia, adding that Singapore-born Malaysian rapper Alyph had also made inroads.
“Malaysia is one of the most accessible countries for alternative and indie musicians from around the world,” the band said, adding “Malaysia’s music ecosystem will grow quickly.”
Kuala Lumpur is trying to break into an increasingly competitive regional market.
Singapore has already established itself as a leading Southeast Asian stop for global artists, with Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Mayday drawing tens of thousands of visitors to the city state in 2024, proving the sector’s economic potential. Bangkok and Jakarta are also vying for a share of international bookings.

Turning up the incentives
Malaysia has responded with a package of federal incentives spearheaded by the Communications Ministry.
Under its Concerts and Events in Malaysia Incentive (Cemi) programme, organisers of qualifying large-scale events attracting more than 15,000 attendees can claim back up to 30 per cent of eligible Malaysian expenditure, capped at US$368,000.
The scheme, administered by MyCreative Ventures, is designed to stimulate the local economy and attract international acts.
To qualify, productions must spend at least 20 per cent of eligible expenditure locally and ensure Malaysians make up at least 30 per cent of their crew. Organisers can claim an additional US$24,500 for featuring local artists if ticket sales exceed 60 per cent of capacity 30 days before the scheduled event.
Alan Foo and Johnson Lowe, the chairman and deputy chairman of the Arts, Live Festivals and Events Association, have lauded Cemi as a sign of growing alignment between government and industry.
“This grant gives our industry the momentum to do just that with structure, vision and urgency,” Foo said at the scheme’s launch in April 2025.
The ministry has also overhauled regulations governing foreign performances under its Puspal Guidelines 6.0, revising blackout dates, speeding up approvals for smaller events and introducing pre-approval requirements for foreign artists’ promotions and ticket sales.
Local councils have followed suit: Kuala Lumpur City Hall has halved the security deposit for foreign concerts to US$3,680 while keeping the cap at US$2,450 for local concerts.
But Fuad questioned whether the growing investment and attention directed towards international performers was being matched by efforts to develop Malaysian artists, noting that major record labels were increasingly tilted towards promoting foreign acts.
One way to redress that imbalance would be to harness the growing presence of Southeast Asian musicians in Malaysia to promote cross-border exchanges, he suggested.
But this would only be a success “if the domestic industry is able to take that experience and put a considerable amount of effort into developing home-grown capabilities across the value chain”, Fuad said, pointing not only to performers but also event organisers, distributors, songwriters and producers.
‘Controlled’ experience
Attracting more international acts to Kuala Lumpur is unlikely to stop Malaysians travelling abroad to see them, however.
Aaron Matthew, a 45-year-old trader based in the city, said the restrictions governing live performances in Malaysia diminished their appeal.
“Why pay so much for a ‘controlled’ performance or experience?” Matthew said. “If I can afford it, I’d pay for the full experience in a foreign country where the artist is allowed to perform their true self as much as possible.”
Malaysia’s live-music scene has weathered a string of controversies over regulation and management in recent years.
In 2014, the Future Music Festival Asia was abruptly cancelled on the final day of the electronic dance music festival after six attendees collapsed and died. Postmortem and toxicology results released two months later attributed the deaths to severe heatstroke.

The most prominent controversy to date came in 2023, when the government cancelled the final two days of the Good Vibes Festival after Matty Healy, frontman of the British band The 1975, criticised Malaysia’s anti-LGBT laws on stage before kissing a male bandmate.
The incident prompted authorities to require organisers of foreign concerts to have a “kill switch” that can shut off performances if necessary.
Matthew questioned whether the current concert boom represented sustainable demand, suggesting social media had turned some shows into “must-go” events driven by fear of missing out rather than genuine fandom.
Those who felt otherwise should embrace “Jomo”, or the “joy of missing out”, he joked.
While Matthew said he preferred smaller, more intimate shows to large-scale spectacles, he conceded that one November performance could tempt him: “I might attend the MCR concert. There’s a ticket waiting, but I don’t know.”


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Artists question efforts to develop local talent, highlighting ‘worrying trend’ of global stars with no Malaysian opening act


Artists question efforts to develop local talent, highlighting ‘worrying trend’ of global stars with no Malaysian opening act.


Malaysia’s local acts feel left out of live music boom: ‘missing middle’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Artists question efforts to develop local talent, highlighting ‘worrying trend’ of global stars with no Malaysian opening act

Artists question efforts to develop local talent, highlighting ‘worrying trend’ of global stars with no Malaysian opening act