Is The Live Business Dead?

The recession hasn’t hit Sweden’s concert industry as hard as that of many other countries, but a recent Nöjesguidens list of the 100 most powerful people in the Swedish music industry gives the impression that the live business is dead.

The list produced by Nöjesguidens, the biggest of the country’s free monthly mags aimed at the youth market, has three Radio P3 programmers at the top of the list, with most of the rest of the Top 20 being artists, senior record company execs, the head honcho of Spotify and a couple of journalists.

The highest-placed person from Sweden’s major management or promoting companies is Joel Borg, marketing manager at Luger, the “face” of the company’s major festivals such as Way Out West and Where The Action Is. He barely made the Top 20.

In 28th position, eight places below Borg, came Cecilia Ancker, an agent and senior talent manager at Live Nation and formerly a music director at MTV Europe.

Her boss is Thomas Johansson, who has a big say in running Live Nation in Sweden and the rest of Europe, but apparently that’s not enough to get him in Nöjesguidens’ Top 100.

In 44th position was Martin Forssman, a talent booker for the country’s well-regarded Sweden Rock.

The only promoting company chief on the list was German promoter Folkert Koopmans, who bought Hultsfred Festival out of receivership and has now started Bravalla Festival. He came in 51st, 12 places below the music editor of Swedish daily Aftonbladet.

United Stage chief exec Anders Larsson made No. 75. The Top 100 was completed by Leo Forssell, the booking manager of the open space near Stockholm’s Djurgården Bridge.

At press time it hadn’t been possible to discover how the Nöjesguidens list was compiled.