The local music industry held its award show tonight in the Anugerah Industri Muzik 2002. The whole show was pathetic to say the least. Lacklustre performances, un-inspired speeches and what the heck was Bob Lokman doing up there? Afdlin wasn't really at his best. His pairing with Bob was something that fell short of many expectations. In the past, the AIM was setting new benchmarks and standards that other award shows try to live up to but this time around, AIM just fell flat and short of many of its past shows. The presenters who presented the awards and artists who come up to receive awards mostly repeated through and through what was reputed to be the theme of the night: "Buy orinigals, do not support piracy". Album sales are reportedly down over the past two years and they're saying that it's attributed to the pirates at large selling bootlegged copies of their albums. It struck me something. When you come across any stalls selling pirated stuff, how many of them are actually pirated goods of locally produced music albums? Not many right? It got me thinking along this line instead. Perhaps it's those artists and record companies themselves who are at fault. How? Well, to put it bluntly, most of the stuff that they're giving us just plain sucks! Local album sales are down mainly because the public has gotten sick of the same kinda stuff that's being put out there in the market again and again. Most new artists that come into the market are not really giving us refreshingly new but rather, songs from the same set of composers of other artists. I don't think the piracy factor holds much water anymore when sales of local artists' albums can only reach 50,000 units (at most!) while album sales of foreign artists can reach up to 200,000 mark these days. Or is my logic seriously flawed? Local artists need to get their acts together as far as their art is concerned. They really need to break out from the mould and give us something that would make us all take the cotton wools out of our ears.