Daily Pulse

By:Larm Looks For Capital Growth

In a story that appears to have a vague parallel with Mohammed and the mountain, Norway’s By:Larm music conference has dropped its objections to being staged in Oslo.

Although Bureau Storm, which runs the annual event, is based in the Norwegian capital, what is easily Scandinavia’s biggest music biz gathering has always been held in Tromsø, Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand or Trondheim.

Oslo was originally excluded as a host city because almost all of the country’s live music business is based there. Bureau Storm chief Erlend Mogård-Larsen and his co-organisers wanted to get "the movers and shakers" out to experience the music in other parts of Norway.

Mogård-Larsen told Pollstar times have changed since By:Larm started with 381 delegates and 22 bands in 1998. He expects next year’s February 21-23 meeting will attract nearly that number of visitors from outside the Nordic region.

A third of the 200 bands that’ll play across three dozen of the city’s clubs will come from either Denmark, Sweden or Finland (or maybe Greenland, Iceland or the Faroe Islands), so there’s a greater need to be close to the country’s major international airport.

"Things have changed, and we now feel that the time has come to visit the Norwegian capital," read a note on the By:Larm Web site, adding that "it feels wrong to keep one of Scandinavia’s most active music scenes out of the game."

Bureau Storm will also avoid the bother of having to set up a temporary conference and festival HQ in one of the country’s other major cities, having recently moved its own offices to Oslo city centre near venues including the Rockefeller and Sentrum Scene.

The panelists and the subject matter for By:Larm 2008, which will be at the Royal Christiania Hotel, will be announced around the middle of December.

FREE Daily Pulse Subscribe