Today, April 17, is a special day for JaME. Not only have we launched our new version, but at the same time we are celebrating our fifth anniversary! On April 2, 2004, the first version of JaME was launched, and now five years later, we have many achievements to look back on.
We hope you're just as excited about the new version as we are. Not only does version 7 have a completely new, fresh look, but there are also a number of new features, such as the video section. We have also gotten a separate contests section, which will certainly prove its worth the following month.
Seeing as we are very happy about reaching five years, we decided that we should definitely celebrate our fifth anniversary and have prepared a number of articles which will be launched in the following four weeks. This article is the start of it, and next to that, we will be featuring an enormous amount of contests where you can win various items from around forty bands! Also, we have a number of other articles in store like this one, which will show JaME's history.
INTRODUCTION
With that said, I would like to continue with the history of JaME, from the point of view of the English version. My name is Kay and I am the manager of the English version of JaME. Or if you prefer the official terms, one of the vice presidents and the executive editor of the English version. I'm sure that in the past years, you've seen my name on JaME's articles and files plenty of times, though it hardly happens that I'm addressing our readers so directly...
The history of the English version overlaps greatly with the general history of JaME, but has also some things in common with the general development of Japanese music overseas.
HISTORY
So, let's start at the very beginning, which is in 1999 and in Paris, France. Tanja, who is currently still our French team manager, started a visual kei fanzine called PROTOTYPE. Such a fanzine was quite a rarity back then and in 2000, the online counterpart of PROTOTYPE named Ongaku da! was launched. This website, as well as the fanzine, consisted of news, reviews and other articles about Japanese rock music.
Around this time, another French Japanese music fan using the nickname Reyep felt the need to spread the word about his favorite bands and created the French language site, Japan Music. From old screenshots, you can see there are a few tiny similarities with JaME.
Well, as one can probably guess, Tanja and Reyep met and decided to team up together. Ongaku da! and Japan Music were merged in 2002, using the name JrockFrance.com. Two years later, the concept changed again and so did the site's name.
2004
In March 2004, JrockFrance turned into JMusicEuropa, which was officially launched on April 2. The concept was different now: instead of being a French-only website, more language versions were added, starting with a French, German, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Finnish and English version. We were frequently asked why 'Europa' was chosen instead of 'Europe.' Well, 'Europa' is the ancient Greek word for Europe and we chose this in order to not make it sound too 'English' because the website was not only available in English, but in many other languages as well. Another reason was because it sounded a little more unique and exotic.
Around this early period, I also joined the JaME team. Originally, I was recruited by the Dutch team as I am from the Netherlands. However, soon after, I started to work for the English team because I thought it was more useful to have a regularly updated English version, seeing as pretty much all Dutch people know English anyway.
Back then, there were no native English speakers on the team and the English version was mostly run by people from the German and French teams. When the former French English team manager left, I took her position, and I’ve been managing the English versions since then. In the beginning, it was quite hard to find team members whose native language is English. Whereas the J-music scene was slowly growing on the mainland, in the UK, there weren't a lot of J-music fans to be found. In the US, the situation seemed to be the same, though with Japanese bands performing at anime conventions once in a while, J-music was slowly gathering more attention. At that time we were only focusing on Europe, we didn’t have any American versions yet.
In the beginning, our activities as the English team mostly consisted of translating news and biographies from French to English. The French version had a big lead on the other versions as they had been working on the site for quite some years before.
At first, we hardly had any opportunities for any other type of articles, but in mid-2004, that fortunately started to change as more artists came over to Europe. The scene started to bloom with the first few performances in France, namely the shows of
BLOOD and
Kisaki Project. Our website partnered up with these organizations and featured interviews and live reports of these shows. A few months later, we also had the opportunity to interview
Mana of
Moi dix Mois, which was a great accomplishment for such a small site!
During fall that year, the first 'bigger' J-rock artists came to perform in Europe.
D'espairsRay not only performed in France but also went to Germany. Whereas
D'espairsRay considers their first European tour a big achievement for them, it was also an achievement for us, as we got the opportunity to cover their overseas performances. At the end of 2004, we also held our first interview in Japan.
Around this time, the J-music scene started to bloom slowly in Europe. Behind the scenes, we were asked for advice and suggestions by European companies that wanted to start focusing on Japanese music. Of course, we gladly provided them with the information that they had a hard time gathering by themselves, and together we continued to build on spreading the popularity of J-music in Europe.
2005
The following year brought even more interesting things for JaME. In January 2005, the Japanese Music Entertainment (JaME) association is officially registered. Slowly, more and more Japanese artists dared to take the risk and hold short tours in Europe. Most of these artists only performed in France or Germany, but with the help of JaME as tour management, the band
BLOOD was able to perform in England, Sweden and Finland. These concerts were a success, and since then, more bands started to include these countries in their tours as well.
At this point, the artists coming over to Europe were mostly visual kei related artists, but in this year, we also got the opportunity to focus on more non-visual kei artists. Another fact worth mentioning is that in 2005, the JaME UK team was finally able to hold their own first interview. Before this, only the German and French versions had opportunities for coverage like this.
However, the most interesting thing of that year was that we expanded our activities to the Americas. Several South American versions were started, but also a US version. At first, the prospects of a US version didn't seem all that bright because at that point, not much had happened in the J-music field there except for artists performing at anime cons, which was completely different from the happenings in Europe. However, after a while, we began to realize what great opportunities the United States could bring us.
2006
In 2006, we got a better idea of our possibilities in the USA. Various new team members from the USA joined, and we were able to hold our own interviews and live reports. Though it might not be so clear to the readers, for us as the English version, it was a big step forward because from then on, we weren't an exact English copy of the French version: we were able to feature our own content.
With the experience and relations we had already built in Europe, it was quite easy for the American companies to accept and trust us, so in the first year of the opening of our US department, we were able to cover major artists such as
HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR, HYDE, YOSHIKI, MUCC, OLIVIA and many more.
The USA didn't only bring more opportunities to cover interesting artists for us, but also for the team it brought positive additions. As we got more visitors from the USA, more people applied to join. For the first time in two years, I had gathered a team of enthusiasts around me that were a tight-knit team and worked regularly on the site. In the two years before, it had always been hard to find new team members, with people disappearing in no time and hardly anyone working on the English version on a regular basis. However, with the new team, we were able to get a whole lot of work done!
2007
During the following year, the activities of the English team started to increase even more. Not only were there more artists to cover while they performed in the US or UK, but more reviews were also written. Whereas interviews had been sporadic before, we had about ten or more interviews to publish each month.
We also started to focus more on pop artists around this time. However, JaME was still seen as a site that mostly focused on J-rock or visual kei instead of as a general J-music site. By featuring more pop artists in our database, reviews and even a number of interviews, we tried to appeal more to pop fans. However, pop artists are often a little harder to reach and work with than visual artists, and even now we are still struggling to be taken seriously by J-pop fans and companies.
At the end of 2007 we added a new feature to JaME, the weblog. As if we didn't have enough to do yet! However, with the weblog, we were able to do some different types of articles and it gave us the opportunity to move away from the usual set standards.
Another big happening in 2007 was the launch of our sister-site
KoME. KoME follows the same concept as JaME, but instead focuses on Korean music and caters to the wishes of the ever-growing group of Korean music fans.
2008
In 2008, JaME went through a name change. Prior to 2008, we had been using the names 'jmusiceuropa,' 'jmusicamerica' and 'jmusiceastasia,' but because there were a number of companies using the same 'jmusic-' in their name and we were falsely thought to be the same company, we decided to change our URL to 'JaME-world,' differentiating us from the other companies.
Production heightened even more in 2008. At the end of the year, I counted the number of articles we produced that year, and I came to an amazing total of over 100 interviews, over 100 live reports and close to 250 reviews. Undoubtedly, this isn't likely to be repeated by any other J-music site!
However, the large amount of interviews did cause some scheduling problems for us. Lots of interviews meant our highlights were often scheduled three months in advance! This was great for us and the readers, but it was tough scheduling them according to the bands' expectations as well.
In this year, it seemed that more and more artists tried to have actual world tours. Usually a "world tour" only included a few countries on only two continents, but, for example,
miyavi dared to make a proper world tour. With this tour, JaME's international power got shown to a great extent. First was the Brazilian team, who worked as a concert organizer and brought him over to South America. Plus, the coverage on the site showed how JaME is spread out like a spider web over the whole world. We had coverage of his performances in the US, Chile, Brazil, Germany, France, Netherlands and Japan.
We also had an explosive growth of US readers in this year. As our roots are in Europe, we've always had more visitors from Europe than the Americas, but from then on, the big difference between America and Europe quickly disappeared.
NOW
So here we are now, five years later. During these years, a lot of people have been helping out the English team, and I want to give a big 'thank you' to all of them for helping out! JaME is based solely on a team of volunteers, so we are very happy to have all these people devoting their free time to the site.
Next to that, we have worked with a huge amount of different artists, managements, tour agencies, concert promoters and so on. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of you: without you we wouldn’t have gotten this far!
And for the future... well, in my crystal ball I see many more articles and activities coming up!
TEAM MEMBER COMMENTS
Of course, the English team would be nowhere without its dedicated team members! The team currently consists of 15 team members from both the UK and US, but a few are also residing in Asia. We asked all of them to write a comment about their experiences with JaME.
Non-Non, Japan
Hello! I’m the Japanese representative of JaME: Non-Non.
I started working for JaME about five years ago, after meeting a French woman over the internet who worked for JaME. She and I were both
SIAM SHADE fans! I remember my first work for JaME: an interview with
DAITA (ex-
SIAM SHADE). It was just an unforgettable memory for me, as I had been longing to meet him for so long.
It was not easy to move forward at first in this line of work, as it took a lot of time to explain our website to Japanese labels and management offices. But gradually, JaME began to be recognized by Japanese offices, labels and artists/bands, and now I think we are very much involved in the Japanese music scene.
The interesting thing about my work is that as I meet and talk with bands and artists, I get to know what they think, how they create their music and what they want us to do, and I grow to like their music even more. The sad thing is when the bands/artists which I support stop their activities for reasons that we can't do anything about.
I think that I’m lucky to be able to introduce many Japanese band/artists and send their messages to Japanese music fans all over the world, and I feel a real connection through our common love for the same music. I hope that Japanese music and art will flow beyond borders and spread all over the globe, inspiring us and enriching our daily lives.
Sarah (formerly Kiri), Japan/United Kingdom
Congratulations to JaME on five years of hard work well done! My name is Sarah and I work as part of the English team from Japan.
I joined the team about two and a half years ago now. It seems like such an age ago... and watching both the site and the J-music scene around the world grow through working to promote the music has been fantastic. Back when I first discovered Japanese music the thought of any band coming from Japan was unimaginable whereas now bands like
MUCC and
Dir en grey regularly tour abroad and have official European releases. It's quite amazing having seen the scene explode.
My role in JaME has, since moving to Japan, been largely revolved around writing live reports and occasionally conducting interviews. It is fascinating to talk with the musicians, albeit briefly, after events, and to see their warm responses to their forays abroad. It's still hard at times, as our Japanese representative will agree, with many bands and managers getting a little confused over who we are. Gradually though, the efforts of various team members is increasing the awareness of JaME in Japan, through alliances with SHOXX magazine among others and we are becoming a force to be reckoned with.
5 years is only the beginning though, and we will continue to bring more and more reports from Japan and the world for the reading pleasure of the fans. JaME really is an incredible organisation to work for and I'm very proud to be a part of it.
anna, Taiwan/United States
It's so hard to believe that JaME has only been around for five years when it's become such a daily part of my life. I joined the team nearly two years ago, and it's been really interesting working with people all over the globe. (This comes in really handy when you want to travel, you'll always have someone to help you no matter what country you go to!) It's amazing to see how much Japanese music has grown in popularity since then, and it makes me really happy whenever I can contribute to it. I think people are shedding the idea that liking Japanese music makes you an anime nerd and beginning to accept the music for just that - music.
Since moving to Taiwan, most of my work with JaME has been behind the scenes, although I have been able to go to the odd concert or two. I also get a unique perspective on the part Japanese music plays to a different Asian culture, which sometimes influences what I think when introducing bands and artists to Western countries. I've definitely heard a lot more J-pop in Taiwan and found that it's not as bad as I used to think it was!
I hope JaME continues to go strong in the coming years. It's been a lot of hard work sometimes, but hopefully we'll become a more respected company in the industry, and I look forward to seeing what else we can accomplish.
Claire (formerly myv382), United Kingdom
I was introduced to JaME by a friend when I asked where he got information about J-rock concerts in the UK. Ever since then, it’s been an indispensable resource for me, both for information about my favourite artists and for discovering new bands to listen to.
I applied to join the JaME team after seeing an announcement for new members on the site a little over a year and a half ago. Writing and J-rock are my two main interests, and it made sense to combine them and contribute to the site which had been so useful to me. My main roles are translating French articles into English, proofreading articles, adding news and writing a few live reports, and I have been involved in a collaboration with visual kei magazine SHOXX, writing and collecting overseas live reviews for their mobile phone site in Japan.
The highlight so far of my time with JaME was definitely interviewing
MUCC, which is a band that I really admire, and I was truly honoured to get the chance to meet them. I was really nervous though, because it was my first interview (and the first time I had met anyone famous that I actually cared about) and I missed a couple of the questions! It was a wonderful experience though, and I am forever grateful to JaME for giving me such a fantastic opportunity.
I’m really proud of how much the site has grown over the years and how much everybody on the whole JaME team has achieved. Thanks should also go to all the regular visitors to the site, who give us all something to work towards. I look forward to celebrating the tenth anniversary with you all in the future!
Ruka, United States
When writing about Japanese music in college, I often used JaME as a site because I trusted them as an official source rather than a J-music fan site. Eventually I felt it'd be great if I could be a part of what they were doing, so I've been writing for JaME for about a year now.
I started out with the idea that I would just write reviews. From there Kay suggested other jobs and soon I was doing interviews too, something I never anticipated. From there I became more interested in the music scene, reading the interviews in the magazines, watching more of the videos, and expanding the music I listened to. I think this is the state of most J-music fans here; it seems the interest has really been escalating and demand for information is also growing. As more Japanese bands come to the U.S. and gain even more fans, I feel JaME's contributions are gaining a special appreciation, and I really look forward to the upcoming years because Japanese music definitely has a bright future in the US.
JR, United States
I found JaME one day when I was spending some time online and looking for information about musicians I liked. Things like reading interviews and the news kept me coming back to the site almost daily. When I found out my friend was a volunteer, I sometimes helped her with little things like ideas and questions, somewhat like a consumer and sales relationship. That relationship is also why I feel the public forum on JaME is really a great thing because it allows readers to and new comers to tell JaME what they are interested in knowing more about.
Soon after starting to help out my friend, I decided to volunteer myself to help out with JaME since it was such a good resource for old and up and coming music. I have not done much writing for JaME as of now, but I hope to be able to do more and more as I spend time with JaME and the other team members.
Meg, United States
JaME has come a long way in the past five years. I see JaME as an asset that has helped Japanese music move forward not in the United States but in other countries. Being translated into so many languages gives so many people the ability to get into this genre of music and that in itself is very special. I hope that eventually it becomes a fan's number one source for media exposure.
With readers around the world, it feels good to know that we help people by introducing them to new bands and interest them into aspects of the Japanese music scene they may have otherwise not have been exposed to. When you look back on CD reviews you've written and know people around the world value what you have to say and your review may have helped them decide whether or not to purchase that CD, you feel good about giving back to the community that you are a part of.
Andrea, United States
JaME has always been a place for me to go to when I needed news, artist data or information about what concerts were going to be in my area. I remember JaME was the first place I looked when I didn’t know too much about certain important J-rock figures and had to look it up. Not only has this site been a great resource for me, I send the site to any fan that has any questions about J-rock.
I’ve only been a member of JaME for about a month now. So far I haven’t done too much, just writing a few artist files and maybe a live report or two, but hopefully I can contribute more to this amazing site. It’s been quite a whole new learning experience so far. JaME has a whole five years worth of information to go through, information to keep updated and even adding the new information that keeps coming in. Just imagine what another five or even ten years can add on to JaME and even the J-music scene.
Kay, The Netherlands
For me, it's hard to believe it's already been five years. I guess that ever since I joined, I’ve seen JaME as a part of my life, seeing as I have devoted a lot of time to the site through all these years.
Not only has JaME grown, I've grown as a person, too. I suppose you can say I'm in pretty deep and deal with a lot of important aspects of JaME, which have given me a whole load of valuable experience that comes back in many aspects of my daily life and other work experiences. Also, my view on Japanese music has changed drastically. Because of JaME, I have been introduced to many artists that I wouldn't have found out about otherwise.
I believe that we have helped to shape the overseas J-music scene a lot, and am very proud of our achievements, as well as very thankful to everyone who helped us on our often bumpy road!
