BOXER Manny Pacquiao’s endorsement of a portable music-video microphone proves the Filipinos’ penchant for singing and reflects the market is deep and wide.

But Butch Albarracin is unimpressed. He says revenues from the domestic market are proving to be unreliable for his entertainment-focused business.

Albarracin, founder of the Center for Pop Music Philippines Inc., is setting his sights on eight million overseas Filipino workers who, despite temporarily or permanently living or working abroad, shares one dream: becoming the next pop superstar.

Founded in 1984, Center for Pop emerged as the country’s top music training school, aiming to develop a curriculum to incubate the next superstars in the entertainment industry.

It has outlived other music training schools set up by other top musicians and composers in the country, after the Center took the marketing part of the business seriously, Alabarracin said.

“We balanced our focus on the music and selling the Center’s services,” he added.
That strategy paid off for Albarracin, who was recognized recently by a local marketing group for his success in medium-scale entrepreneurship. Today, the music school has 21 branches and extension classes in about 20 schools in Metro Manila.

But instead of moving to the provinces, Albarracin said he’s more inclined to expand outside the country.

While he said he has received an offer from an investor in Daly City, California, Albarracin said he’s setting the stage for entry in Hong Kong.

“If we can go there and teach them how to sing, they can contribute to the growth of the [Filipino] community [there]. They can have a skill, and they won’t be shameful [of their jobs],” he added.

Sing-call

It was also in Hong Kong that publicly-listed Filipino firm Intellectual Property Ventures Group (Ipvg) Corp. found not only the next singing sensation but a unique market for its prepaid calling card.

Launched in July in Hong Kong, Ipvg partnered with HK-based IDT Corp., subsidiary of IDT Telecom Inc., to search for a “Philippine Idol” version among an estimated 200,000 Filipinos in the former British colony.

The contest required contestants to record their Filipino or English song entries – acapella, or with a music accompaniment – while using a pre-paid calling card sold by IDT Asia.

Just recently, Ipvg announced the winner of the contest as Elvira Manacmul, 31, of Dinalupihan, Bataan, who bested four other finalists, namely, 17-year-old Elija Clave of Malasqui, Pangasinan; Irene Aquino, 33, of Cagayan Valley; and Julie Ann Jereza, 25, of San Narciso, Zambales. All live d in Hong Kong when they joined the contest.

“They outperformed over 800 other participants who phoned in …to record their songs for the contest,” IDT said. The recorded songs were played weekly in the Philippines Tonight Show on Metro Plus AM 1044 radio, which also encouraged listeners to vote for their favorites.

The firm said over 400,000 votes were cast by listeners in the five-month period that culminated in the Grand Finals on January 28, 2007. The Ipvg statement said around 12,000 OFWs braved the chilly weather to attend the show.

Manacmul was selected during the live radio broadcast performance at Chatter Road in Central Hong Kong where a panel of judges augmented her share of the estimated hundred thousand votes the contest generated.

Manacmul, a mother of two girls aged five and seven, won a a recording contract with VIVA, a round-trip ticket to Manila, a mobile phone, tickets for two to Hong Kong Disneyland, pre-paid call cards worth HK$500, and a Magic Sing, the portable music-video player-microphone endorsed by Manny Pacquiao.

While Ipvg’s partnership with IDT Asia appears to be working, it is not envied by Albarracin.

“I am through with partnership. You end up fighting each other and one will go away with the money. That guy who will run away are usually those who are only after [the] money. Me, I cannot run because I’m a musician ,” he said.

License to sing

Albarracin, who’s also a voice coach, said that to expand abroad, he must hurdle first the issue of whose license he’ll use: the singer’s or theirs.

Either way, he said, it could be tricky. “Using the singers’ license abroad could mean going into partnerships, while having our own license to operate in other countries meant tons of documentary requirements,” he explained.

Still, he’s looking at other possible arrangements in order to expand to the foreign market.

Albarracin’s plans and Ipvg’s tack come at a time when the Philippine music industry’s top revenue earners seem wanting even as there seems to be a plethora of talent.

But whether or not the plans of Albarracin and Ipvg –the firm is eyeing other countries – push through, they admit that OFWs teem with potential.

“These are new markets. Sometimes people here (in the Philippines) have money, sometimes they have (none). So we should have reserve sources of income,” Albarracin said, referring to OFWs.

Ipvg spokesperson Eric Paragas was quoted in a newspaper report as saying the success of the singing tilt has led the firm to consider “holding the contest again in Hong Kong and/or other countries.”

Indeed, both Albarracin and firms like Ipvg are singing the same tune: the country’s talents – and revenue sources – can be found outside its borders.