Mariusz Herma, founder of the global music platform beehype, which brings artists from all over the world, speaks exclusively to us.

It’s one of the most exciting platforms in the world, bringing together bands and musicians from virtually every country—and beyond. Beehype,  the brainchild of a music enthusiast from Warsaw, has correspondents and collaborators from dozens of countries in its 11 years of operation, showcasing thousands of notable artists and albums. Many of these artists might never have reached a broader audience if you relied solely on the familiar music networks of the West. The following interview is not only captivating but also captures the essence of music today, broadening the horizons of our small world.

What inspired you to create beehype, and how did you go about connecting with your first correspondents from around the world?

Beehype was a response to a double crisis I was going through after many years of writing about music. I started to be bored with most of what I was hearing at that time, and second, I began to realize that I write about artists that everyone writes about, mostly from the US and UK. It didn’t really matter if I review this new album by Kendrick Lamar or Radiohead because hundreds of other critics will.

As a listener, I wanted my passion back. And as a music writer, I wanted to do something useful again. So I asked myself two questions: what fascinates me most in music and what is missing in music criticism. The answer for both of these questions was the same: I’m extremely happy when I discover a great band from Japan, Portugal, Kenya, Turkey – or Greece. And I feel useful when I can share such discoveries with my readers.

But looking for such music myself has its limits, you get tons of bad local mainstream pop before you find something interesting. I knew I needed local music experts to ask them about interesting artists, so I started to go through hundreds and thousands of local music websites, blogs, Facebook profiles, I looked into local radio DJs and festival selectors. I was telling them I want to start a website where we would present the best local music to the global audience.

Out of 10 emails I sent I received maybe one answer – you know, I was some weird guy from Poland with this crazy idea, plus I didn’t offer any money. But after about a year we launched beehype with almost 50 contributors, and it kept growing from that point. Over the last decade, I think as many as 300-400 music experts from around the world were somehow involved in beehype, sometimes for a few features, sometimes over all this time – including our Greek correspondent and a great friend Ares Buras.

Beehype has been online for over a decade now. How do you feel about this long journey, and did you ever imagine it would grow like this when you first started?

When we were starting, I was often asked what we were going to write about since we want to ignore the US and UK music, and that’s what most people focus on. But we wanted to give our space to other… 200 countries. But even I thought we would be able to introduce no more than 1-2 artists a week. Meanwhile, we ended up writing even about 2-3 artists a day. To date, we’ve presented about 5000 artists from almost 150 countries.

I also expected that in a few years there will be dozens of websites like beehype, because it seemed so obvious: there’s amazing music in almost every place on the Earth, but we still limit our attention to several countries. But while we did see one or two copies of beehype trying to do the same thing, they closed quickly. So we’re still quite alone doing our mission, but that also means we’ve got to keep going.

The music platform has grown almost entirely organically, without relying on advertising. What have been your main channels and digital tools in building and maintaining that growth?

Initially, the best publicity came from our contributors. Everyone of us had some following in our countries, and actually some of our experts are among the best known and most respected local critics. So when beehype launched, they shared the news on their channels and even wrote articles about it. All those streams summed up and we had to buy bigger servers quickly.

In a similar fashion, every band we wrote about shared it on their social media, and for many of them it was the very first time an international outlet noticed them, so they were really excited – as were their fans. I remember one Taiwanese musician who shared our article on Facebook, so I looked into comments using automatic translations. And there was a post by some woman that went like: “My son, I always believed in you!!!”.

So getting noticed by someone from outside like beehype, who might be less inclined to praise you because we know each other or are from the same city, helps bands believe in themselves and believe that they attract foreign audiences.

What do you value most from the global dialogue and collaboration with music lovers and journalists around the world?

The last decade was the most fascinating time for me as a music journalist, getting a constant flow of new and diverse music from all around the world. There wasn’t even one day I wouldn’t hear something interesting. Having conversations with our correspondents about it adds context that makes this experience deeper, and from talking about music we often go to discuss other things, like local politics, sports, but also personal things.

Thanks to beehype I’ve got friends all around the world, and I managed to meet many of them in person, including from as far away as Japan, China or Argentina. And eventually this is what I value most from this whole project. I have a dream to tour the world and meet all those people I haven’t had a chance to meet yet.

Have any countries or continents surprised you by producing some of the most exciting music you’ve encountered?

Even before beehype started I knew there’s plenty of amazing music in Brazil, Japan, France or Sweden, and Africa of course. But it turned out that less covered countries like Turkey, China, Chile, the Netherlands, Mexico or South Korea – and I don’t mean k-pop – are equally fascinating. And the biggest surprise came from small scenes like Estonia, which has the population of 1,3 million but is one of the most interesting scenes in Europe.

Another observation is that some of the most interesting music is created in countries under many different influences, in touch with different cultures, and Greece is a great example, as is Tunisia, India or Portugal.

I also realized that we don’t listen to our direct neighbours as much as we should. I’ve spent a large part of my life living close to the border of Slovakia, but I had no idea they have such a great music scene – and the same is true about Czechia or Ukraine. And it would be so much cheaper for Polish festivals to invite bands from there rather than from the US.

I look with envy at regions where such interest between neighbours exists, with the best examples in the Middle East and Latin America. Of course it’s easier for them, having a common language – from Morocco to Iraq, and from Chile to Mexico – though I know that the public in some Latin countries finds Spanish dialects from other regions funny, which can make listening to their music a bit of a challenge.

Is there a specific lyric, song, or album that, when you listen to it, accompanies the existence and evolution of beehype?

There is one song that our correspondent in Peru sent me soon after beehype started and for me, it became an unofficial hymn of beehype. It’s called “Si te mueres mañana” (If You Die Tomorrow) and released by a band called Kanaku Y El Tigre. The song is beautiful by itself, but there’s also a charming video showing kids skating like crazy down steep streets of Lima, and grabbing cars’ backs on their way up.

https://beehy.pe/peru-kanaku-y-el-tigre-si-te-mueres-manana 

When I present beehype’s selection of great music videos from around the world at music conferences and other events, I always play it and it’s always among the public’s favourites. Once I had such a presentation in my favourite pub in Warsaw. Years later, the owners still have this track in their playlist.

And there’s one special thing about this video: the kids have a sticker “Alto Peru” on their helmets. It is a social project working for the development of kids from “vulnerable neighborhoods” of Lima, offering them activities such as skating or surfing. The video was filmed almost a decade ago, so I sometimes wonder where those boys and girls are today and what they do. I hope they’re doing well and are still as full of hope as in the video.

How do you perceive the global music scene nowadays, and how do you anticipate it will evolve in the recording industry?

While I could talk for hours about TikTok, Spotify and auto-tune, let me mention another important but less covered trend that I find promising and also consistent with beehype mission.

Let me ask you: which countries are currently the biggest music hit exporters? I guess you’d mention the US and UK, possibly Sweden. Well, while the US is indeed at the top, afterwards we get Colombia and Puerto Rico – thanks to the reggaeton phenomenon. Then comes the UK, but then South Korea, Nigeria, Argentina and Mexico. And only afterwards we get more Western countries like Canada, France, Germany and Sweden.

Why is that so interesting? Beside clear decentralisation, most of these new stars from Latin American countries, South Korea and Nigeria stick to their language. If you remember Ricky Martin, Shakira or Enrique Iglesias they quickly switched to English to have a better chance of conquering the US and going global. Current “local” stars don’t feel this need. Contrary, Bad Bunny made Drake sing in Spanish, and Luis Fonsi did the same thing with Justin Bieber.

As a result, more and more international hits are sung in Spanish, Korean or a mix of some African languages with English with a very local accent. It’s happening for the first time in the history of popular music and it doesn’t seem temporary. It is also accompanied by a similar trend in TV shows. Some of the biggest streaming blockbusters of the last decade were filmed in languages other than English, let’s just mention “Narcos” and “Money Heist” in Spanish, “Squid Game” in Korean, or “Dark” in German.

The global audience gets more and more used to local languages, and I hope we’ll be hearing them more and more in global pop culture.

What are your hopes and expectations for beehype in the future? Where do you see the platform —and yourself— ten years from now?

Music criticism is going through its most difficult time yet, and even the most influential outlets like Pitchfork struggle to keep their audience and survive. The reasons are obvious: new music trends are born on TikTok and YouTube these days, and people can simply try music themselves in streaming services instead of reading reviews.

Luckily for beehype, it was born out of passion as a non-profit – or actually non-revenue – project that is a hobby for everyone involved. So while I do wonder what beehype should be in the next 10 years, we don’t feel any pressure and can take our time to find out. 


Meanwhile, we are developing our Spotify playlists and newsletter, and have some substantial following in both of these channels. And we stick to our most important feature that always brings a massive audience – the list of the Best Albums of the Year, country by country.

It’s a special occasion where all of our contributors meet in one big feature, and I know listeners who check out everything we include in these recommendations – and that’s almost 500 albums! And I hope the music never stops coming.

photo: Tallinn Music Week

PS: Don’t miss beehype’s 2025 Best Of marathon — tune in and enjoy!