Is it a Good Idea? "Threatened Filipino Artists Urge Higher Taxes for Foreign Acts."

Artist Kuh Ledesma urged the government to study a possibility on how to protect the welfare of local artists. Curiously, Alcasid and Ledesma will have separate Valentines concerts so the timing of the request couldn’t be better as foreign talents traditionally come to the Philippines to serenade fans who celebrate the popular occasion. Alcasid proposed that imposing higher taxes to the visitors could help members of the OPM survive the cut-throat competition.

Ledesma’s concert will be held on 12th and 13th of February with Rico J. Puno, Marco Sison, Nonoy Zuñiga, and Rey Valera. Meanwhile, Alcasid will have his concert on Feb. 12 with Pops Fernandez with special guest wife Regine Velasquez.

The group of local artists are worried and feel threatened that public attention has gravitated towards foreign artists who come to the Philippines for concert. Among them are Janet Jackson (Feb 4th), Stephen Bishop, Dan Hill and Yvonne Elliman (Feb 11th), Deftones (Feb 12th), Fra Lippo Lippi’s Per Sorensen (Feb 13th), Taylor Swift (Feb 19th) and Yellowcard (Feb 20th).

Under a democratic regime, fans can select their favorite concerts to attend to. And this could mean the Filipino artists could be left behind in ticket sales, realizing that the concert dates of foreign acts fall close to their performance dates. With expensive tickets, concert goers might save up for their intended event to attend to. And that means giving up the less popular acts in favor of their favored artists.

In a society heavily influenced by foreign media, coupled with deterioration of good quality locally-bred songs, it may be easy to conclude that foreign singers have an edge over their local counterparts. Asking the foreign artists to pay more taxes when performing in the Philippines would then be an unpopular move not only to the artists themselves, but more importantly, to their Filipino fans.

I wonder how will these Filipino singers feel if wish to go abroad and get taxed heavily for being foreign artists. If indeed they would entertain the idea, given their lineup mostly consisting of revival songs of other artists. If you look at the list of OPM members in its website, assuming it is accurate and updated, there are a lot fewer artists in the list. The likes of Rico J Puno, The CompanY, Rivermaya, Sharon Cuneta, Basil Valdez, Freddie Aguilar and Rey Valera, among several others are not in the lineup. Other names in the group look new to me. This Organisasyon ng Pilipinong Mang-aawit group is not as big as I thought.