Video Interview: Karsten Jahnke & Ben Mitha, MDs Of Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion 

In Pollstar‘s latest video interview, we sit down with legendary German promoter Karsten Jahnke, founder of the Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, and his grandson Ben Mitha, who joined  Jahnke as MD in 2014.

– Ben Mitha (left) and Karsten Jahnke
Pollstar met both men at ILMC in London

Both shared their remarkable expertise in concert promotion – the one helped build up the live entertainment industry in Germany from scratch, the other is taking over one of the last truly independent promotion businesses in a time of massive worldwide market consolidation.

But Pollstar didn’t just meet Mitha and Jahnke at this year’s ILMC in London to talk about business, but also the personal. So besides tackling the current market conditions and the company’s success in it, they also opened up about their favorite venues, and, of course, their love for music.

“From the beginning on I liked Jazz, and I still like Jazz, and it’s not only positive. Business wise, we have lost a lot of money,” Jahnke remembers, smiling.

Mitha first joined his grandfather at concerts as a young boy, taking great joy in playing security. “I always blocked certain parts with tape, and controlled passes, that was my passion back then,” he recalls.

Today, he’s running Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion: an independent business that is able to compete in times of unprecedented market consolidation. He opens up about the way he approaches the challenge, and proves there are many advantages of working with a company that doesn’t have to answer to any shareholders, but only to the artist.

– Stadtpark Hamburg
Ben Mitha’s favorite venue

Pollstar also wanted to know about the value of loyalty in today’s business, and how important it is to both men to remain independent.

“As it stands right now, I like our position as an indie, to be your own boss, and decide where you offer your money into, which shows you promote and what you pass on, and don’t have to satisfy any shareholders or bosses, who may sit in the U.S. and tell you stuff that might work perfectly in the U.S. but not for the Germany market,” Mitha explained.

He admitted, however, that “you still have a social responsibility to all your employees, and if certain aspects in our business model, or certain aspects in the market change, there might be a point where we have to consider other offers, or consider joining other corporates. We don’t know how the business might change, I think it’s just insane how much the business has changed within the last 10 years.”

To which Jahnke nodded wisely. The man himself isn’t a fan of today’s market concentration, but understands that the times have changed.

Mitha remains optimistic: “Even in the U.S., where you have even stronger concentration, you still have successful and high-quality independents, so there must be a way to survive,” he said, before sharing some of the ways he makes it work.

Mitha revealed that he still does handshake deals, in particular with his domestic roster, and talked about his battle plan for the coming years.

It becomes clear that Karsten Jahnke is the passionate music romantic, while Ben Mitha is the one having to make the tough business decisions. “Ben can calculate,” his grandfather puts it. Still, Mitha, like Jahnke, takes great pleasure in dedicating years and years to building artists’ careers on an international and domestic level.

“One of my biggest domestic acts blowing right now, Johannes Oerding, we started nine years ago playing bars like this. One barstool, his guitar, and maybe five drunk people in front of him. Now we’re selling out Barclaycard Arena, 11,000 people in Hamburg. He never had this big radio hit, so it didn’t burst at a certain point. It was constant growth, step after step,” Mitha said.

He added: “It takes some stamina to believe in the artist, stay on board and invest. But, after a while, we are 100 percent sure that a good artist will always make a career in the end. That’s definitely one of our core philosophies.”