In recent months, hard work has been done on the preparations for an intensive and sustainable collaboration between Independent Music Coalition Japan (IMCJ) and Dutch Music Export (DME) with the aim of promoting successful collaborations between Dutch and Japanese artists, music professionals and music companies, within the pop music sector. Japan is – after the US – the largest music market in the world, but also the Netherlands is in the top 10 of the world's largest recorded music markets. In order to create more opportunities for international market expansion between both territories, IMCJ and DME have decided to join forces through an extensive multi-year program of collaboration between Dutch and Japanese artists, music professionals and producers. Taro Kumabe, board member of IMCJ / Chairman of FMPJ Global Business Committee – IMCJ, as a trade association representing the Japanese independent music community and a member Worldwide Independent Network (WIN), is truly excited about this new initiative. With support from the Global Business Committee of the Federation of Music Producers Japan (FMPJ), we will establish an effective platform to facilitate more opportunities for international artists collaborations and co-productions by working together with Dutch artists, labels and managers. We know it’s not an easy journey moving forward but we believe we can gain valuable knowledge and experience throughout this project. This is a long-term project. We hope this will bring a lot of excitement to both Dutch and Japanese industries. Marcel Albers, Director Dutch Music Export - Internationalisation within the worldwide music industry is of great importance, especially for a relatively small country like the Netherlands. Together with the umbrella organisation for independent record companies in the Netherlands (STOMP) and the Music Managers Forum Netherlands (MMF NL), we are therefore very proud that through this sustainable collaboration we can assist our artists, management offices, record labels and music professionals in the coming years in doing business within the Japanese music industry and establishing many wonderful collaborations between the Japanese and Dutch artists, songwriters, and music professionals The kick-off of the collaboration took place on November 4th during the online TIMM conference in Tokyo (Japan) where the parties involved further explained the program of activities for the coming years. This will be followed by the participation of a Japanese delegation during the ESNS Conference in Groningen. (Netherlands) in January 2022.
