Could you introduce yourself?
I’m Kez, a music nerd from England who recently moved over to study in Maastricht, the Netherlands. I live for the Riff and the teachings of Black Sabbath inform every aspect of my life. Currently, my time is being occupied by organising the M3 Event with four of my fellow students.
Could you tell us what exactly is the M3 Event?
M3 Event is a conference due to take place in Maastricht on May 31st, focusing on the broad question “how is technology affecting music?” There are obviously a huge number of different ways you could approach that question, but we’ve tried to examine it in three different ways. So, M3 is going to consist of three in-depth panel discussions, each based on one of these themes –
1.How has the music industry been affected?
Or in other words, how is music going to be distributed in the future? The traditional industry has been distinctly undermined by new technology, and there are quite a few new ideas and funding methods emerging, like fan-funding, sliding scale downloads, (somewhat dubiously) corporate sponsorship or even just giving your music away for free. Each of these methods comes with their own set of pros and cons though, so here we want to look at what each of these methods entail. Of course, a genuine, honest artist will create music for reasons that run much deeper than money and are not doing it to get rich, but surely this doesn’t mean that they are not entitled to be paid for their work at all… does it?
2.How have people’s perception of music been affected?
Some of the new methods in the previous topic kind of assume that digital is the future, but how does this actually affect the way we interact with and relate to the music we’re hearing? For me personally, listening to MP3s or WAVs or whatever is a very different experience to listening to a CD or tape, and I’m horrified by the idea that online playlists or streaming websites could ever completely replace a tangible object like a record. There are loads of people out there who share this view, but also people who actually prefer both the aesthetic and convenience of digital music, so how do these individual preferences and choices influence our perception of music? We’ll also be talking about the questions regarding copyright and ownership that the widespread availability of digital files raises.
3.How has Maastricht been affected?
Or more broadly, how does access to a global network affect local music scenes? We’re using Maastricht as a case study here, and as such we’ll also be discussing some problems that are specific to the city itself, like the recent proposals to close down Maastricht’s premier music venue, the Muziekgieterij.
More information regarding the actual speakers for each panel will be released within the next week on our website (http://www.m3event.com), so keep your eyes peeled for those… However, I can exclusively reveal that Nijmegen’s jazzgrind behemoths Dead Neanderthals will be taking to the stage to air their views in the second panel! If you’d like to hear what they have to say about their music, their new label Norwegianism Records, and their own listening experiences, then get involved and follow this link to register for the event - http://m3event.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6adef690cbb88751d03b3727c&id=3dadaec80f
Registration is free, because frankly, the idea of charging someone to take part in a discussion is absurd. Lunch will set you back a couple of euros, but that’s only because nobody has figured out a way to download food yet…
What was the inspiration for such an event?
Well, we’re all huge music fans, albeit from wildly different musical backgrounds! There is of course a common ground, we all share a fondness for certain styles of spaced out electronica, and everyone loves Hendrix, right? But, for example, none of the others have much tolerance for grindcore or noise at all, and I’m actually allergic to that standard 4/4 house beat – I can’t help but feel faintly nauseous whenever I hear it. But I think that’s cool though, we all have quite specialised musical knowledge in totally different fields, so we’re able to cover quite a wide selection of musicians, which will hopefully give us a bit more insight into how all these different people operate.
We all kind of gravitated towards each other whilst studying here at Maastricht University, and we’d often find our conversations falling back into these questions concerning what the internet is doing to music as an art form. All the questions we’re asking people on the M3 blog are topics we’ve ended up debating over a glass of whiskey at 3AM at some point or another!
So many of these topics seem to be reaching boiling point at the moment too, I think the whole SOPA debacle is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many grey areas that new technologies are revealing to us, which are changing how we think about and interact with music. The internet seems to have caused our biggest shift in perspective in a long time. I suppose one of the first major examples of this would have been the invention of recording technology itself, and just as it seems we’ve begun to get our heads around that, along comes the net and challenges everyone’s ideas about how these recordings should be heard and distributed.
Music is hugely important to billions of people across the globe, and the role it plays in our societies seems to be in a state of flux at the moment. I don’t think it’s wise to simply sit back and let the course of technology dictate what this role should be, we need to figure it out for ourselves. Everyone from the SOPA supporters to the file-sharing brigade have their own opinions on this, and both have been prone to some fairly monumental knee-jerk reactions as of late. This is perfectly understandable of course, it’s very hard to avoid. I’m as guilty of this as anyone else – there have been times when discussing our current download culture that my knee has started to jerk so rapidly that I’ve begun to resemble a particularly angry member of the cast of Riverdance. I think the fact that we are so emotionally affected by these issues speaks volumes as to how vital music is to our lives.
So, ultimately, that’s where I’d say M3 comes in. It’s an invitation to come along, set aside your pretences, discuss what music means to you, and explore ways we can use our current technology with maximum respect for this ancient art form that has enriched our cultures for centuries.
You have a treasure trove of interesting interviews, including ones with the elusive Jon Chang, and media scholar Henry Jenkins, however which is your favourite?
This is a tough one, because I’ve had such an insanely good response on the interview front, and there have been so many emails I’ve received from some of my musical heroes that it’s hard to pick a single favourite! Obviously the Jon Chang and Henry Jenkins interviews were both highlights, it was really interesting to see what bands like Weekend Nachos, Flipper, Unkind and Anaal Nathrakh had to say on the matter as well, and finding out more about how Ipecac Recordings works was awesome, they definitely seem to have the right idea. The Oxbow one is a personal favourite too, and I’m still amazed that Venetian Snares responded to me, that one is awesome and has been our most popular interview by far. I think Chris Ruen makes some very compelling points in his interview, but if I really had to pick one, it would probably be Rich Hoak from Brutal Truth and Total Fucking Destruction. That was really cool, and I could go more in-depth than our standard format interviews. There will be more of these to come, time permitting!
So yeah, basically I’ve been like a kid in a sweet shop (or should I say fan-boy in a record store) with all these interviews!
Any more interesting interviews we should keep an eye on?
Of course! There’s a lot of cool stuff coming up, we’ve got some very exciting additions to our “A Conversation With…” series in the pipeline, including a particularly prominent ambient artist... I’m getting loads of interviews back on a daily basis too, I just received one from Blake from drone/doom duo Wolvserpent, who are one of my favourite musical discoveries of last year. He pretty eloquently sums up a lot of my feelings toward our current technology hungry culture, so I’m pretty pleased with that one! Any hip hop fans reading this will have a treat or two in store too, and if you dig d-beat/crust punk stuff as much I do then you’ll be spoiled for choice with next week’s interview selection…
And, as always, if you’re reading this and want the world to hear your views on all this, just send me an email at kez@m3event.com There are no boundaries here, whether you’re a powerviolence two-piece from middle America, a traditional folk band from the heart of Mongolia, a classically trained cellist from the Swiss Alps or a jungle DJ from Norfolk, I’d be thrilled to hear from you.
What do you expect to get out of the M3 Event?
I’m fascinated to see what our speakers have to say about these subjects. Personally, I hope to get a clearer idea of how we can use the internet to its full potential in a way that maximises its positive aspects and satisfies musicians and music lovers the world over. I’m not entirely sure if such a conclusion is even possible however, but I guess that’s all part of the ride…
Will it be a one off occurrence, or something you intend to do regularly?
In all honesty, I don’t know! We had only intended M3 to be a one-off event, but if it all goes well then who knows? I suppose only time will tell, but if the conference is successful, ideally it will have such a positive effect on the way music is distributed that there will be no need for future debate, ha! But given the complexity of this issue, I have a feeling that this is a discussion that we have not heard the end of just yet.
Given the closeness of the time to the event, would you say that the M3 Event in its anticipated and current form has evolved from its original intentions?
The event has certainly gone through many different stages since its inception, not only in terms of its structure but also the actual content of each panel discussion. Deciding on each speaker, and then figuring out the logistics of getting them together at the same time and organising them into three separate groups has certainly been a challenge, and we’ve had to refine each topic quite a lot too. Originally we planned to have an entire discussion examining the SOPA/ACTA proposals, but as time went on it became clear that this was just one (slightly misshapen) piece of a larger puzzle, concerning questions about copyright and ownership. I suppose the core idea of the event remains the same, but the actual realisation process has been an unpredictable one for sure.
Random Question: If you had to be a famous German from History who would you be?
I’m gonna have to say Werner Herzog, I’d love to see how that man’s mind works. Plus, I’d never get tired of that voice, I could provide a running commentary for my daily tasks and it would somehow sound consistently thrilling and profound.
Failing that, I’d go for Holger Czukay from Can, just so I could have been a part of those glorious, glorious jams…
Clearly a Nazi Sympathiser, any decent man would said of Hitler to get the chance to shoot themselves and save the world, that being said Hitler was Austrian not German. However if you feel like bullying Kez about his choice of German or care to learn more about the music industry and how technology will affect it, then join myself and others at the M3 Event!
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