Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
CM: I’m an artist that is inspired by several genres of rock and metal music and loves to put these influences in his own song writing. Sometimes it‘s more metal, sometimes more rock but always with lots of melodies and with some melancholia and darkness in it.
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
CM: I’m from Magdeburg, Germany. Music was always a big part of my life. A passion.
Since childhood I’ve played several instruments like keyboard, drums and later guitar and bass. I was in a choir in school too for some years. A life without music in general and creating music I can’t imagine.
PD: Who and what inspires you to make music, both in terms of musical and other influences? What do you like to write about in your songs?
CM: Life is my biggest inspiration. I mostly write about things of my life. Things that happened to me like a painful break up, hard times in general or that I care or think about a lot. I also like themes like death, purpose of life etc.
My musical influences are lots of bands of several genres. Like Muse or Trivium but also classical music. Bach for example.
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
CM: Reaching more listeners with my music and of course the hope that they like what they are listening too. Taking them on a journey of melancholy and darkness, a journey of darker and harder times in life they can relate too and maybe giving them strength too to manage these times.
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
CM: My EP „Tales“, that was released November 2021. It got really great attention and I also was on some „Release of the Year 2021“ lists with it. Was a great feeling.
PD: Promoting one’s music is such a challenge these days, especially with so many new artists emerging from bedrooms
in the day of the home studio. How is that going?
CM: Sadly it‘s often depending on money. Your promo budget for Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads etc. … Building up your social media profiles and reaching people organically takes time. Especially when you‘re beginning to make music. Doing paid promo can help you reaching more people. But the budget for a song production and promotion is limited. So it‘s always a good thing to try new platforms (TikTok for example) that got some good organic algorithms at the moment.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
CM: No live shows planned at the moment. Maybe starting to rewrite and rearrange some songs to get on stage…me and my acoustic guitar. 😀 Finding session musicians for live shows isn’t so easy, especially when you want to stay a solo artist and don’t wanna start a band in general.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
CM: Maybe some may hate me for this opinion but I guess streaming services kinda saved the music industry.
When you think back some years ago lots of people downloaded music illegally. Purchases of physical releases dropped every year. Artists and bands got less and less. Then streaming platforms came. People started to stream the music there because it was really easy your desired music and the price for a subscription was kinda fair. So artists and bands got at least some streaming income. But yeah, that‘s definitely a point to criticize …the height of income for a single stream. I guess it would be fair to raise it up to at least 1cent per stream. But for us artists and bands the best thing would be that these platforms implement the user-centric royalty system.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
CM: November Rain by Guns n Roses. So beautiful. The piano, the orchestral part in the end. The epicness and its overall melancholy. One of my all time favorite songs.
PD: Is there anything you don’t like about the music industry, which you would change if you could?
CM: Like mentioned above the royalty-system of streaming platforms. Changing it to an user-Centric system would be 
fair. So the user‘s monthly payment goes (minus the amount for the platform itself) only to the artists the user has listened too and not to big labels or big artists that the user would never ever take a look at.
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
CM: Currently I‘m working on my biggest release so far, an Album called „Gatherer of Souls“. The title is kinda self-referring too. I do lots of features/collars on this one with some female vocalists for example and another band of a buddy of mine. But the release won‘t be before September/October 2023.
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
CM: You can visit my homepage maragoth.info … there you can find all links to my social media pages, to my merch shops, ko-if (if you like to support what I‘m doing) and of course to my latest release and the streaming platforms.
Chris Maragoth links:
Band/Artist location – Magdeburg Germany
Website – Facebook – You Tube – Soundcloud – Bandcamp – Merch –
Instagram – Apple – Spotify – Amazon – Deezer – Last Fm
Check our page for Chris Maragoth
