Status

What was made. Three linked projects: "Can I Get a Whiskey?" (about 23 local releases), Nothing Polished / Rauw (one album in nine languages) and "Another Rotten Year" (about 23 language and market versions). Each version has its own fictional local artist identity, built on one fixed composition per project.

What we expected. That translation would be the main problem.

What we learned instead. Localising music is not a language problem but a system problem. Translation gave way to native songwriting; one song gave way to brand architecture; production capacity stopped being the bottleneck, and selection, quality control and asset management took its place. AI-assisted tools made iteration cheap — which is what made 23 market tests economically possible at all — but they did not make judgement cheaper. The working pipeline is now: concept, musical master, frozen structure, local songwriting, lyric check, audio with fixed composition and directed vocal, separate quality check, artist identity, artwork, platform assets, short video, distributor copy, campaign hypothesis.

What the market showed. [DATA NEEDED: release dates per act, streams, save rate, completion rate, playlist pickup, territorial spread and short-form engagement per local act.] Until those figures are in, the commercial side of the thesis is untested.

Not yet known. Which local identities perform organically better than others, and why; the true cost per market prototype; whether "Another Rotten Year" works as a seasonal catalogue asset that can be reactivated each November.

Next decision. Build a structured release database (artist, market, language, title, spelling, master, artwork, prompts, bio, copy, release data, identifiers) before any further versions are made, then decide per market which acts to continue, pause or stop on the basis of the first data report.