"Ultimately the two most important things for artist is to make music and have people listen to their music," said Mark Mulligan, a London-based digital music analyst at Midia Research. A key challenge for BandLab now is to scale the business and amass listeners, he said. "The actual people who create music, there is absolutely a market for this, but it’s a much smaller number of people. There's always going to be far bigger audience than contents being created."
BandLab isn't Kuok’s only musical endeavor. He's also turning Swee Lee, a sleepy 70-year-old distributor of guitar and audio equipment in Singapore, into a modern enterprise, selling merchandise online and offering music lessons. It's now the biggest distributor of instruments and audio equipment in Southeast Asia, with shops in Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam. Sales have doubled since he bought the company in 2012. Swee Lee is also where Kuok bought his first guitar. Kuok declined to say how much it cost to buy Swee Lee.
Kuok’s efforts, backed by his father, also underscore the fact that he’s part of a bigger dynasty that goes beyond palm oil. The older Kuok is a nephew of Robert Kuok, one of the richest men in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Worth $13.2 billion, the family patriarch controls businesses from sugar and fertilizers to hotels and logistics companies.
While the blues-playing younger Kuok acknowledged his family's support, he said that much of the clan's success came from taking risks and setting out on their own. His father mortgaged his apartment at the age of 40 to start Wilmar, Kuok said.
"We don’t believe in entitlement," said Kuok, who declined to say how much of his funding came directly from his father. "Our family is about, 'You earn what you build. You will get support but you need to deserve it.' My father built his business in my lifetime. Having witnessed firsthand that building something meaningful takes time, it’s incredibly important to be aware that overnight success is the exception, not the rule."
Kuok said he also learned about hard work from his other role model, B.B. King. In 2011, he went to his first (and last) concert by the blues guitarist.
"His success came after years of touring experience and hard craft," Kuok said. "That’s something we try to bring in everything we do at BandLab."
—With assistance from Sterling Wong.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.