Despite having a huge music scene, Japan isn't known for conferences such as North America's South by Southwest or Europe's Amsterdam Dance Event. That's where the Tokyo Dance Music Event (TDME) comes in.
Noticing the lack of networking events for electronic music artists in particular, Chicago native Lauren Rose Kocher and her colleagues from Sony Music Japan did what many in the scene have dreamed of doing and forged ahead with the event.
"It sounds a little crazy, but it's not that crazy," Kocher says, though "daunting" may have been the word she was looking for considering the amount of work that goes into an event like this. But the reasons to attempt the conference were just too many: "Japan has the second-largest music market in the world," she adds. "Japan has a lot of clubs, Japan has a lot of music media, Japan has a lot of DJs."