The musicians Serene Cheam knew had the technique. Many of them had trained for years, worked through examinations, released original recordings. What most were missing had less to do with ability than with everything around the music. Royalty registration. Copyright filing. The mechanics of earning from what they made.
That gap, visible to anyone looking at the Malaysian music industry from the inside, is what Cheam set out to close.
She is the founder of Serene Music Group Sdn Bhd, a Kuala Lumpur company that operates Musicpreneur, a platform covering production, publishing, distribution, copyright management, music education, and sonic branding for corporate clients. The company has been running since 2015. Its reach now spans studio recording, streaming distribution, music licensing, and a separate corporate training program registered with Malaysia’s Human Resources Development Corporation.
Her route into the industry was thorough and long. She started with Yamaha’s junior programs as a child, then worked through Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music examinations for roughly nine years, reaching Grade 8 in both practical and theory. She later completed a music degree at the University of Westminster in London. Back in Malaysia, she built a performing career. By her own account, she released four albums and earned a nomination for Best New Singer Songwriter at the Anugerah Industri Muzik, Malaysia’s principal music industry awards ceremony. She has since worked on the judging side of the industry as well. In 2016, she served as a judge for the Borneo Voice Star Singing Competition in Miri, covered at the time by the Borneo Post.
At some point, performing felt like only part of what the situation required. The structural problems she had navigated as an artist, copyright registration, getting music licensed, finding commercial clients that paid reliably, were problems she kept seeing repeat in younger musicians around her. Building Musicpreneur was the response: a deliberate attempt to give working musicians the commercial and intellectual property knowledge that formal training rarely covers.
The platform now runs across several lines. On the production side, Serene Music Group works on commercial jingles, brand music, library tracks, and original compositions for advertising. According to the company’s own records, clients have included WWF, World Vision, Warner Music Group, Malaysian broadcasters TV2 and ntv7, Tsinghua University, and telecoms Maxis and Celcom. On the publishing and distribution side, the company handles copyright filings with Malaysia’s Intellectual Property Corporation, MyIPO, and coordinates placement of music across streaming platforms.
The argument Cheam makes is that companies systematically underuse music when they treat it as decorative. Her company addresses that from two angles: producing original music for brands, and helping musicians understand the commercial structures that make such work viable.
MPEdu, the education arm, runs music production courses registered under HRD Corp, which means the training qualifies for Malaysia’s human capital levy rebate and can be funded through corporate training budgets. That qualification opens the program to companies rather than only individual students. It reflects the recurring logic in how Cheam has organized the whole operation: music and business get built together, or they stay separate. She chose the first.
Musicpreneur Asia runs alongside the core business as a membership community where musicians access video courses, a learning library, music licensing tools, industry events, and equipment. The platform’s “Traveling Around the Music World” event series has now reached its fourth edition, with recent gatherings in Hong Kong.
Cheam’s professional profile lists her as music director of the Malaysia Cultural and Creative Industries Chamber of Commerce and as one of the founding initiators of the Malaysian Nine Arts Cultural Association. The company reports that she has lectured at Xiamen University and was interviewed by China’s CCTV for a documentary on Chinese-language music’s influence in Southeast Asia. Serene Music Group has received the Malaysia Influential Intellectual Property Brands Award, the company says.
The central position has not changed since 2015. A music career with a functioning business beneath it is a different proposition from one without. Cheam built Serene Music Group on that difference.