There we discussed the future of music reviews anf journalism. In this very lively discussion I took the role of someone who doesn’t believe that we need ‘professionals’ that recommend music to us and who decide what is good and what isn’t. My point was that we have enough tools that allow us to find more music in a democratic way such as Last.fm.

Almost ironic to hear that from someone who is producing a radio show every week for over four years. I guess have fully excepted the fact that it’s very old fashioned and that the ‘relevance’ of my show can only go down from now on.

It was yet again less busy than the years before. If you’ve followed my tweets you would have seen that I kept complaining about it. After thinking about it a bit more the fact that there were less people attending probably wasn’t a bad thing: it is totally fine that those events become smaller and in a way they might even improve if they are more intimate. Nevertheless it was very unusual to be at the British stand (which was put on by AIM only this year and not the BPI any more) on Thursday afternoon at 4.30pm and seeing only 40 people standing there. At that time you would normally have about 300 people there drinking their (hopefully) well deserved beer.

As I posted here before many of my UK and US contacts didn’t even make it to Popkomm this year. One common explanation for that was: Midem is happening in three months so one might as well go there only and meet everyone. When you have to travel over from the States this makes a lot of sense.

It was only when I went to the Soundcloud launch party at Picknick last Friday night that someone pointed out to me that there were hardly any labels at Popkomm. I realized that I only had a few conversations about music at the conference – it was mainly about the business around it. Again, this is not a bad thing but it makes me feel less party of a creative industry. When I unpacked my bag on Sunday I had two CDs in my hand – when I first went to Popkomm in 2003 (this was still in Cologne) I came back with bags full of CDs and records. Were those the better days? I’m not into nostalgia so I’m going to say no: those times were just different.

There are some great gigs happening at the time of Popkomm but when you look at the events that are happening at the Kulturbrauerei you start thinking that some of those seem a bit ‘forced’. In regards to the line up of many of those gigs you can imagine that the promoters are sitting there thinking they have to fill all those venues because it is Popkomm time and therefore some gigs are a bit random. In addition to the official Popkomm events there are of course other great parties happening all over the city but I suppose that’s Berlin…

So how was Popkomm? I enjoyed it. The conference will have to find their place in the market as they are competing with other events more than ever but if they are clever they will be able to stay relevant in the future. They maybe weren’t this year.