Timeline m4music

20th Festival Edition

Founding Years, 1998 – 2000

1997 Music managers Philipp Schnyder von Wartensee and Vin Gadher come up with a concept for a festival after attending international music festivals. At the heart of their scheme is the idea of creating a meet-ing point for the Swiss music scene. Englishman Gadher contributes the name of the project – “M for Music”, inspired by the classic film Dial M for Murder by Alfred Hitchcock. Schnyder presents the concept at Migros Culture Percentage, where he works two days a week as an assistant. The idea is well received.

1998 M for Music is organised for the first time. However, only part of the concept – the club festival – is put into practice. With one ticket, audience members can get into five Zurich clubs (a pretty novel idea at the time!) and check out almost 50 acts from Switzerland and abroad. The clubs that take part are Rote Fabrik, X-tra, Luv, Rohstofflager and Dynamo. The first festival director is Reto Wüthrich (now at Migros Aare), and the driving forces are Gadher and Schnyder.

1999 The programme is extended to the afternoons. The Confer-ence and the Demotape Clinic (DTC) are held for the first time. The organisers are overwhelmed by the number of people who want to have their demo heard by the DTC jury. Rather than the expected 30, some 300 bands turn up. In the Conference programme, a question is asked which causes established music managers to shake their heads: “Is the In-ternet the music distribution channel of the future?” In the same year, the music sharing platform Napster goes online, a symbol of the digital revolution. The club programme includes bands that remain famous to this day: Patrice (D), Züri West (CH) and Deus (B). The festival centre is located in X-tra, and Abart becomes the sixth club to join the fold.

2000 Parts of the Zurich underground scene brand m4music with the slogan “M für d’Füchs” (which translates roughly as “M for the birds”) because a Migros Zurich squat is cleared three weeks before the start of the festival. Fewer bands perform, but the programme features the leg-endary “Chopfnicker-Nacht”: for the first time ever, Swiss hip hop bands (Wurzel 5, Tafs, GleisZwei, Bligg’n’Lexx and Double Pact with Stress) per-form their own headline show in an electric atmosphere at a packed X-tra. (There are video recordings of this). Schnyder now works full-time for Migros Culture Percentage and takes over as festival director.

1998

1999

2000

Visuals 1998 – 2016

Years of Discovery, 2001 – 2006

2001 The name M for Music is shortened to m4music, but the festival is expanded considerably. Twelve venues and over 100 artists are involved, some 70 of them from Switzerland. At the Conference, bold thoughts are expressed about the digitisation of music in a discussion on the topic of “Beats, Bytes, and Copyrights”, but a large portion of the music business remains incredulous: “It will never be possible to earn money from music with MP3s! Our business is in CDs.”

2002 “Swiss Made – How to Export Music” – this year, the focus is on the topic of exporting music. One year later, the organisation Swiss Music Export is officially founded. The m4music festival director and Migros Culture Percentage are among the driving forces. The festival geography is changed again for resource-related reasons, with venues now including Volkshaus (the festival centre), Kaufleuten, Restkultur on the Toni-Areal complex and Supermarket.

2003 “Is Pop Not Dead?” asks m4music against the backdrop of a major crisis in the recording industry. The festival is struggling too, so a decision is taken to concentrate its energies. The venue this year is the Volkshaus, with all stages located under one roof.

2004 m4music moves to the industrial zone. The festival centre is on the Toni-Areal complex in the clubs Rohstofflager and Toni-Molkerei. New features such as the Expo with its 25 or so exhibitors and the VIVA Comet Award night will not be long-lived. Former Grateful Dead lyricist and Internet visionary Jim Griffin and the founder of CD Baby, Derek Sivers, are among the speakers at the Conference.

2005 Hedy Graber becomes Head of the Directorate of Culture and Social Affairs at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives, whose remit includes m4music. The festival subsequently receives stronger internal support and becomes more firmly established in the following years.

2006 m4music moves to the Schiffbau site, which continues to host the festival to this day. The club Moods joins the fold. Swiss cult band The Young Gods set music to the Woodstock film and future Berlin secretary of culture Tim Renner gets to know m4music and subsequently becomes a jury member on the Migros Culture Percentage funding programme for indie labels. In 2012, he goes on to moderate the entertaining discussion panel “Rotwein mit Renner” (Red Wine with Renner).

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2001

2002

2003

2004

The Upswing, 2007 – 2010

2007 m4music celebrates its 10-year anniversary. The festival opens with unplugged concerts by Sophie Hunger, Seven, Kutti MC, Polar, Fauve and DJ Hanspeter “Düsi” Künzler. The conversations of the music professionals at Moods almost drown out the concert by visibly irritated newcomer Sophie Hunger. She, however, is invited by a London club owner in attendance to perform a concert in the musical metropolis, which in turn becomes the subject of a major report in the much-read Tagi-Magi publication (magazine of the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper). Meanwhile, people are listening to music on a device called an iPod.

2008 The Demotape Clinic celebrates its 10th anniversary. This time round, more than 600 songs from throughout Switzerland are sub-mitted. Fondation SUISA awards prize money for the best demos.

2009 The concert by Franz Ferdinand pushes m4music to the limits of its capacity and enables it to take a step forwards, becoming the most important meeting point for the Swiss indie music scene. At the same time, the festival is enriched by the presence of British musician and con-ceptual artist Bill Drummond (formerly of KLF and famous for burning one million pounds sterling) with his project The 17. Steffe la Cheffe and Valeska Steiner (of the band Boy) win prizes at the Demotape Clinic.

2010 m4music opens in Lausanne, the first time it has done so in French-speaking Switzerland. The debate entitled “The general state of music in Switzerland” attracts considerable interest even from out-side the music scene. The Demotape Clinic receives 851 demos, 338 of them from French and Italian-speaking Switzerland – a festival record.

Festival, Conference & Demotape Clinic

22. & 23. April 2005, Toni-Areal Zürich

www.m4music.ch

Jimi Tenor, Mouse on Mars, filewil Luciano, Miss Kittin, LuLúxpo

Mirweis Sangin, Sonja Moonear Jimi Tenor, Mouse on Mars, filewil

2005

2006

2007

2008

Established Meeting Point, 2011 – 2017

2011 Part of the music scene feels under attack because Peter Sunde holds a keynote speech at the m4music Conference. Sunde is co-founder and spokesman for The Pirate Bay and serves a prison sentence for copy-right infringement in Sweden in 2014. The club Exil is part of the festival for the first time, with James Gruntz playing the m4music concert at Exil.

2012 An m4music Facebook post is censored because a naked breast appears on the festival poster. The popular free newspaper 20 Minuten reports on this. The Conference focuses on the topic of stream-ing, while performances by the band Boy and Mark Lanegan lead to long queues outside the clubs. m4music attracts a total of 6,500 visitors, in-cluding 800 professionals (specialist visitors).

2013 The video competition BEST SWISS VIDEO CLIP is held for the first time in collaboration with the Solothurn Film Festival and Fondation SUISA. In the following years, director Haris Dubica wins the audience award three times in a row.

2014 m4music places the spotlight on the cultural metropolis of Berlin in order to promote exchange with the city, and in the summer it exports itself by running its own stage at the Berlin Music Week at Post-bahnhof. Back home, an open-air stage, the Showcase Stage, is set up outside the Schiffbau building for the first time to give more Swiss bands an opportunity to perform. At the opening of the festival in Lausanne, m4music and radio stations Couleur 3 and Virus give selected bands the opportunity to play a showcase concert in the RTS radio studio that is broadcast live.

2015 The m4music website is now responsive. Visitors access it on their smartphones while Ray Cokes brings historical footage from MTV back to life in his keynote talk. Highlights of the concert programme in-clude Bilderbuch, MØ, Jungle, Sohn and Lo & Leduc.

DANGER

EBONYBONES FRIENDLY FIRESUKUK

THE STREETSUK

HEIDI HAPPYCH

STEFF LA CHEFFECH

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THE BIANCA STORY

GOOSEBE

TINCHY STRYDERUK

DARKSTARUK

EVERYTHINGEVERYTHING

THE RAMBLING WHEELS

DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH?

FRITTENBUDE

www.m4music.ch

UK

CH

DE

UK

CH

and many more…

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Partner

2009

2010

2011

2012

2016 The English punk musician and author Viv Albertine and the Californian singer Everlast recount stories from their memoirs. The concert programme boasts dozens of Swiss bands and solo artists with promising futures such as FlexFab, Len Sander, Klaus Johann Grobe, The Chikitas and Verena von Horsten.

2017 The Migros Culture Percentage pop music festival m4music and the highly trained festival team will be celebrating the festival’s 20th anniversary in the company of musicians, partners and guests. Rather than pomp and circumstance, however, the event will be more about spirit and soul (and muscles, to a certain extent). As always, the ultimate focus will be on the original goal – promoting the Swiss pop music scene.

The programmes from past editions of m4music are available here: www.m4music.ch/en/archiv

The supplementary article “Treffpunkt m4music” (“m4music as a meeting point”) by festival director Philipp Schnyder von Wartensee can be read here: www.timeisnow.ch

Contact m4music Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund Direktion Kultur und Soziales m4music Postfach CH - 8031 Zürich info@m4music.ch www.m4music.ch

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2016

2015

2014

2013

The Migros Culture Percentage is a voluntary initiative by Migros, incorporated in its articles of association that demonstrates the company’s responsibility towards society. Migros is committed to providing a wide access to culture and education for the general public, allowing the company to interact with society and empowering people to partici-pate in social, economic and cultural changes. Key elements of this commitment are culture, society, education, leisure and economy. www.migros-culture-percentage.ch