ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the journey of the Indonesian popular music industry since the colonial era in the early 20th century: Sukarno’s “old order” era (1945–1965), Suharto’s “new order” era (1965–1998), and the post-Suharto reformation era (1999–present day), overshadowed by the political context that characterised each governmental period. With the collapse of the New Order regime, political reforms were initiated to attempt to change the previous order by starting to think about social justice through a systematic decentralisation of the government. The change from a Javanese centralised system to regional autonomy inevitably changed the voyage of Indonesian popular music industries. Market logics and pop music operate as an inseparable dualism. Both have major implications in the formation of ideology and in building supporters. These implications, according to Adorno, are the starting point of the cultural industry logic movement that developed as a project of homogenisation of taste.
