Hoping for some light in the darkness

PETALING JAYA: COVID-19 has changed the way we live and introduced a ‘new-norm’ into our life.

When the first movement control order was first announced in March last year, musician Mazli Hasan decided to stream his performances on Facebook as he needed to earn an income.

The first article was published in FMT.

Pubs and entertainment outlets were closed. Entertainers, musicians and DJs had a hard time to make a living.

According to Mazli’s sharing with FMT,  he only managed to get RM 40 which affords him to buy a pack of cigarette.

The hard earned money was obviously not enough to manage his daily chores, paying rental and other expenses.

With MCO 2.0 in place, another dark future is seen ahead of these local musicians. Many of them are hoping, when they can see the light in the darkness.

It has been a roller coaster year for everyone not excluding musicians.

Hipz portal was started in an idea to give platform, support, encouragement for fellow musicians to keep rolling in all possible way until COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end.

In a regular point of helping fellow musicians, we kicked off live streaming not only to entertain the music lovers out there, but also to figure out any small, nitty-gritty help that can be given to these local musicians to keep performing and earn some token while sharing their love for music.

Last week, Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah announced Prisma, a short-term initiative by the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM) to ensure the survival and sustainability of the country’s creative industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prisma focuses on three main strategies, namely facilitating the financing of creative content production; enabling the capacity and skills of creative industry players; and providing market access for local creative products.

More than 9,000 creative industry players are set to benefit from the Malaysian Creative Industry Stimulus Package (Prisma) amounting to RM89.2 million.

The programmes would be implemented in stages from today until June and further information on Prisma could be obtained at www.kkmm.gov.my.