Pop Music in Germany

The huge bustle began with the surprising cancellation of the music fair Popkomm in June 2009. The competition saw its chance. The traditional form of the trade fair as it is known in other industries, with stands and Sunday speeches, was now regarded as a relict of the analogue age.

It was the hour of the future-strategists. In August the Cologne c/o pop banked on a diverse crossover festival and used the local theatre as a conference centre. Hamburg uped the ante and extended its Reeperbahn Festival to include a symposium. In Berlin itself, a quickly organised ‘bar camp’ called all2toghethernow replaced the BerlinMesse’s and German Federal Association of the Music Industry’s formerly leading branch trade fair, which had now become stiff and unsexy. Amidst the continuing crisis of the classical music industry, decentralised mice were now playing. The federalism of pop culture in the Federal Republic showed its many colours.

All those concerned have of course now drawn a positive balance. Apparently everywhere the combined costing of concert tickets, sponsoring and, not least, support money from the public purse worked. The organisers in Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin feel themselves at a par with each other in matters of pop expertise. Rivalry has been replaced by humorously formulated digs, especially as the once glitzy industry has become humble. No one any longer expects champagne orgies on the house. And only official location boosters employ the silly postulate of a “pop capital”. The stylistically fragmented scene can in any case live unperturbed with this polycentrism extending over the Rhine, Elbe and Spree. All the more so as proven organisers such as the Leipzig PopUp team are also briskly mixing in, and the Ruhr area, as host in 2010 of the European Capital of Culture, has likewise laid claims in this field.

Transition 2010

The situation therefore remains unclear, especially as the Federal Republic is not a solitary island in the round of festivals and conventions. Following the successful Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) at the end of October, the international music circus briefly went into winter quarters. The calendar already foreshadows the Noorderslag Festival in the northern Dutch city of Groningen and the reinvigorated MIDEM in Cannes.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the structure of 2010 has taken on only partial shape. The Great Unknown in this game for creative potential, city tourism and a little location glamour is, again somewhat surprisingly, the Popkomm. Buried more than once by industry insiders, its organisers want to venture a re-start with the backing of the European Export Bureau for Music. The Berlin Fair Association has appointed a new project director for the new Popkomm and Senator for Trade and Industry, Harald Wolf, never wearies of invoking the stimulating effects of the subculture on Berlin as business location. The Federal Music Association and the BerlinMesse argued for months over what alliances should be tied together under the vague umbrella of a ‘Berlin Music Week’. Communication took place through open letters and the chemistry seemed to be off. Finally, a truce was reached: between September 8 and 10, 2010, the overhauled fair is to be reanimated within the framework of a festival in the imposing halls of the former Tempelhof Airport. A real challenge for the emaciated music business, which was looked upon as ‘no longer capable of holding fairs’. The industry, it was thought, had become too small for large-scale, and so high-return, presentations. Now it is venturing a new start.

Against this backdrop, the colleagues from Cologne are taking quite different paths. In its seventh year, the c/o pop is planning a joint logistics with the medium forum NRW, which would mean pushing its date ahead to June 2010 (from June 23 to 26). Or the festival organisers are venturing a visionary industry crossover with the computer games fair Gamescom, which has been taking place with great hullabaloo since August 2009 in the halls of the KölnMesse. On the North Sea coast, Hamburg is taking it easy. “In 2010 the Reeperbahn Festival will take place, as always, in the last week of September – that is, from September 23 to 26”, announces the press office soberly.

The degree to which the concepts and themes of this nation-wide round of festivals overlap or even duplicate each other will depend upon the innovative power of the organisers. A core question is surely how far pop music and its marketing is alone capable of supporting half a dozen convention-festivals in Germany? While the unpretentious independent label meeting PopUp, taking place in Leipzig from May 6-9, 2010, will give the upbeat, the Popakademie Mannheim is already entering the debate marathon at the end of November 2009 with a ‘Future of Pop Convention’. Thus the once so non-government funded music scene seems to be going the same way as the film scene. In the latter, umpteen events have been established under the auspices of diverse subsidies, although many of the films shown there never find commercial distribution. For the time being, everybody seems to be coming down with “festivalitis”.