Make Believe Mailer #167: M3 Spring 2026
Somehow My First Time Going To This!
In nearly two decades living in Japan, I’ve been to far-flung corners of the nation’s music scene. I’ve been to electronic nights held at abandoned host clubs, I’ve watched DJs in cramp clubs set up a bridge of folding chairs to create a bridge which they’ve exited the venue from, I’ve ridden an EDM train. I don’t pretend to have the most interesting life, but I’ve done a lot of offbeat things during my career.
Yet I had somehow never attended M3, a large independent music-focused market held twice a year in Tokyo that seems like the sort of gathering I’d try to be at regularly.
An older look at M3 (which I definitely wasn’t at)
There’s no specific reason I’ve never made it out to Ryutsu Center alongside Tokyo Bay to go to this music market. Multiple times I’ve eyed it and even put it in my calendar before something popped up to dash those plans. The two-day gathering tends to be held near holidays which…tend to be busier.
The spring 2026 edition happened slightly earlier than usual, though, and happened to see a bunch of friends also heading out to take it in. The final hurdle to get over proved easy — my wife and daughter signed up for a special “kids financial education” class the morning of M3, totally freeing up. While my family learned about the value of saving, I’d be blowing the savings account on CDs and cassette tapes.
Very old promo video from M3 offering a crash course in what it’s all about and how to behave
M3 sprung out of Comiket, the biggest gathering in Japan devoted to independent works and doujinshi creations. That’s another one I’ve never attended, but my image of it is that it centers primarily around manga and other printed materials, with music existing in a corner of this larger event.
In spring 1998, people involved with the sonic community taking up residence at Comiket held a music-only gathering. Thus M3 — itself an abbreviation for “Music Media-Mix Market” — was born, becoming a space for creators dabbling in original sounds, bootleg remixes of assorted anime songs and so much more to share their physical wares. Over the years it also became a space for creators dabbling in Vocaloid, Touhou Project and other specific creative spaces started popping up, even though those worlds also have their own speciality convetions1.
Talking with friends who have been to many incarnations of M3 over the year, it sounds like the event as it exists in 2026 is much more organized and downright professional than in prior years. They noted how it used to be much more copyright skirting — think CD-Rs with homemade art sporting, I don’t know, Macross characters for a set of Lynn Minmay house remixes — and has gradually featured less of that (though still popping up…said pal loaded up on 80’s anime remix comps proudly featuring a slightly askew Lum from Urusei Yatsura).
For my initial brush with M3, my expectations flipped almost immediately after exiting the Tokyo Monorail and spotting the huge line waiting to get in. I didn’t expect it to be so big.
M3 Spring 2026 played out over three big halls, with what seemingly felt like thousands of desks featuring musicians offering a wide variety of items. My friends instantly picked up on how smitten / overwhelmed I was by this scene, and for the next five-ish hours I largely felt like I was in a trance, one pushing my wallet towards empty.
Let’s just get into the obvious beauty of M3 immediately — it’s wonderful having a physical gathering devoted to everything music, whether they be fiddle covers of anime songs or Kasane-Teto-helmed pop mutations. CDs, cassette tapes, flash drives, stickers, t-shirts, plushies, you name it they had everything that could be tied to music in its many forms of fandom. Despite the geeky trappings of its promotion material, every genre is seemingly represented within the halls of this place. There’s plenty of idols human or virtual (including special signings inspiring massive lines) but there was also hardcore bands and classic rock booths and trance circles within a minute of them.
The goofy music journalist part of my brain kept thinking about the recent kerfluffle centered around the hyped-up rock band Geese (though really applying to a lot of acclaimed acts), who hired a company basically creating inorganic fandom around the New York outfit. That story gained traction because of the unease digital realities in the 2020s has inspired, and how nobody can trust anything found online. Despite all the scrutiny around it, I think most feel it’s only going to get weirder moving forward, as social media and the web at large changes into something all the more bewildering.
M3 is basically the opposite of this, and despite my fears of being a boring old-timer type, I do appreciate it for being so. While most of the artists set up here operate heavily online, they also come to events like M3 to actually interact with clearly human fans wanting to connect directly. I met one person described as a “reformed hikikomori” who came out from Mie Prefecture to meet people IRL for the first time. That’s beautiful There’s no PR trickery or inflated stats or music industry mumbo jumbo. I see what you got, I give you like ¥1500 and I get physical media with your art on it.
To underline that, every few inches I ran into someone I knew. I went to booths operated by MBMelodies faves punipunidenki and Yoshino Yoshikawa and Haretokidoki and many many more. I finally met Bubble-B in person, buying his latest single (above) AND one of his chain-restaurant guides.
I probably would have met even more people…but I made a rookie mistake. Cash remained the dominant payment method at M3, and I very quickly burned through the bills in my wallet within the first two hours. Despite being warned, I wanted more so…I went to an ATM. Only problem is that the only cash corner on the premise was found inside a Lawson…and I was not alone in needing money.
I stood in line for the ATM for an hour, eating into my overall time and costing me precious browsing (though I could nab a few more items as a result). A rite of passage, I suppose.
An assortment of what I bought at my first M3. Will also note lots of stuff appears online…especially Bandcamp…after the event, including this great AFRICAN SUMMER TIME album.
As fun as soaking in ~ the power of music ~ and seeing people I knew, the best element of M3 is also what might be the rarest in the modern entertainment ecosystem. There’s something very ephemeral about this event, and something very private about it that goes against the “flood the zone” strategy employed by modern music industry types around the globe.
Whenever I go to any independent music market, I just start buying things randomly. Sometimes it seems like it comes from an interesting place, or sometimes the artwork is just so eye-catching that I’m drawn in (see the janky Hatsune Miku Communication cassette tape above, purchased purely based off weird vibes). Sure, I could dig through the pamphlet and look up every seller who was at M3 Spring, but the thrill is in encountering something you wouldn’t have known about before, and possibly only have a chance to encounter here.
That led to my favorite chance development at M3, one actually gaining a bit of attention on X beforehand but present only in a physical space. New pop project newfn appeared like a week before M3, gaining attention from a lot of established artists and other folks in the music space.
I won’t act like this might be a case of Geese-like promo in action, but newfn seemed to have a real buzz to them2, at least for the M3-attending types like me. Helping make that feel even stronger was the only way to hear their first EP was by…going to M3 and buying it. Before it sold out, I plunked down my yen to get a super mini CD, stickers and more.
And the EP is a delight! Internet-grazed pop with a sunny side to it. Since getting it, I’ve enjoyed this brief look into newfn’s sonic world…and have also felt charmed by the fact the only way to do so at all right now was to be there, make the effort to buy the music and listen to it on my own. That’s the magic making me clear out my weekend this fall for the next M3.
NOTE SINCE PUBLICATION: This EP is now on streaming! I’ll probably write more about it for the round-up. But now you can experience it too…and, to be clear, it now being available doesn’t mean the experience at M3 is diminished at all.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2026 Spotify Playlist here!
I have been to THE VOC@LOID M@STER, the Vocaloid-only market, like a dozen times though, which makes me missing M3 even odder.
What hooked me in after friends introduced them to me right before M3 was them describing their sound as “Sakura-kei.” I love a good made-up genre, and one leaning into this especially caught my attention. Though it is slightly less juicy once I realized it was a reference to where the group operated out of…Sakuradai in my old stomping grounds of Nerima Ward.