[citation needed] The theme song entitled "Menuju Puncak" was the same as Akademi Fantasia from Malaysia, composed by Aubrey Suwito.
When the Inauguration concert was over, they went straight into the recording kitchen to make a compilation album from Indosiar's collaboration with Sony Music Indonesia.
Indosiar, creatively bought the Akademi Fantasia Malaysia broadcasting rights at Astro Ria and La Academia Mexico at TV Azteca at the end of 2003.
Starting from auditions in four major cities, Medan, Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya, 12 academics were chosen to compete in AFI.
AFI has many attractions that make people keep on following it, including the theme song Menuju Puncak and its choreography, moments of elimination involving audience emotions, transparent SMS polls that make viewers vying to send SMS and Premium Call, drama in academic life at the hostel AFI, and many more.
[2] In the first season, the Indosiar and AFI judges selected candidates for their students or so-called "academics" from 4 major cities in Indonesia, including Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Medan.
From the 4 cities, an audition was held which was attended by thousands of participants to get 12 people who would later be selected to be educated by lecturers during approximately 90 days in Jakarta.
The comments and good performances displayed by Mawar and Kia on the night of the Grand Final still did not make Veri's SMS poll able to be overtaken.
Veri whose past is told is enough to reap a lot of bitter trips to make the SMS poll suddenly jump towards the 7th week, and cannot be pursued until the night of the Grand Final by other finalists, including Mawar.
In the Pre-elimination concert 1 was selected Micky and Cindy from Jakarta, Rindu and Lia from Bandung and Pasha and Haikal from Medan.
The following week, at the Pre-elimination 2 Concert Tia and Nana were selected from Semarang, Adit and Nia from Surabaya and Adi and Jovita from Yogyakarta.
Tia, who every week managed to get positive comments from the judges, was also able to record some of her best performances through the song My All (Mariah Carey), Tak Ku Duga (Ruth Sahanaya), Bring Me To Live (Evanessence) and Pengabdian Cinta (Krisdayanti).
At the Hip Hop concert, the cities of Medan and Palembang failed to send their representatives, namely Nonie and Marissa because they were eliminated.
In the end, the best 12 were selected, namely BOJES (Jakarta), TIKA & TIWI (Bandung), FIBRI (Semarang), YONGKI & ANJAR (Yogyakarta), LURI (Surabaya), DEWA (Denpasar), INDRI & ARJUNA (Makassar), RIZWAR ( Banjarmasin) and ADE (Manado).