FKP Preps Its Smorgasbord

The country has gone from being one of the few European countries that didn’t have such a gathering to being one of the few with two of them, following last summer’s debut of Way Out West Music Conference.

“Maybe we have [too many] in Europe, but we don’t have a showcase and conference festival in Sweden – and 80 percent of the acts are Swedish playing to international experts,” Scorpio chief Folkert Koopmans said.

Although Way Out West Conference – which is produced in Gothenburg by Live Nation-owned Luger – has already taken place, Koopmans is entitled to claim his event is the first. It was announced last April, whereas the Gothenburg bash was announced in June and scheduled to take place a couple of months later.

Norrköping’s been chosen to host the event as it’s where Scorpio holds its Bravalla Festival, which in its second year became Sweden’s biggest with an attendance near to 60,000 per day.

The conference takes place in Louis de Geer, which also has a concert hall, and the three days of music are in nine venues around Industrilandskapet, the part of the city centre that’s been fashioned from the paper mills it was once famous for. In order to help delegates choose between two acts paying at the same time, many of them have been allocated more than one slot in the three-day programme.

The line-up includes Hardcore Superstar, Tove Styrke, Andreas Moe, Baba Stiltz, Caotico, Colossus, Dimitri Vangelis & Wyman, Eternal Death, Factory Brains, Hurricane Love, Jonathan Johansson, Naomi Punk (US), Slow Magic (US), and Thundermother.

The speakers and panelists include Andreas Ahlenius (Universal Music), Anita Halmøy Wisløff (Atomic Soul), Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdóttir (Nordic Music Export), Joppe Pihlgren (Livemusik Sverige), Rob Challice (Coda Agency), Serge Grimaux (Intellitix) and Stephan Thanscheidt (FKP Scorpio).