heute:pop:blog.  

I had a few days now to recover from Popkomm (and more importantly the weekend that followed the conference). I’ve been asked a lot “so how was Popkomm?” and probably never gave the same answer twice. In summary this is probably what I was trying to say:

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.

So what’s going on? A recession? A real one or just one that gets newspapers excited? I’m too cynical to get get concerned about these issues until they really effect me or I can see other people affected.

Then I looked at my schedule for the upcoming Popkomm conference in Berlin and noticed it is still strangely open. Either I am becoming less popular or the companies I normally catch up with at this conference are not attending this year. The latter seems to be the case: lots of emails from people saying that they will not make it this time. Those are often Americans and it looks like they want to safe a few dollars by not making it over to Berlin. Will be interesting to see if the American companies that brought over 30+ people and took out huge stands the last few years will do the same next week.

When I the also read about IODA laying off people maybe it’s time not to take all this seriously. It feels like the time for investment in digital music is slowly over and people are looking for the R in ROI. 

(I actually hope it’s just me getting less popular.)