Making Impact At Reeperbahn

Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival & Campus was expected to come close to matching the 2,000 business professionals that attended the recent Berlin Music Festival’s “Word On Sound” forum.

By Sept. 18 the number of delegates who’d signed up to attend Reeperbahn Campus – which was to start a couple of days later – had reached 1,584, already 20 percent up on the 1,322 that attended in 2011.

 
Detlef Schwarte of Inferno Events, which organises the annual conference gathering, said he expected the final figure to be closer to 1,800, which would be a 35 percent increase on last year.
 
This year’s Reeperbahn keynote opening will come from Lyor Cohen, Warner Music Group USA’s chief exec for recorded music.
 
Former NME and Melody Marker journalist Mark Sutherland will be asking him about the changing face of A&R, the implications of the transition to digital and the seismic changes in the artist-fan relationship.
 
Other panels will look at intellectual property, whether raised standards in the event and outdoor businesses are doing any good, and – naturally – an explanation of why Germany is a musical wonderland.
 
The trade booths and sideshows will include offerings from other European music gatherings trying to make an impact at Reeperbahn, such as Eurosonic-Noorderslag, Tallinn Music Week and Icelands’s “You’re In Control.” 
 
The TMW party was scheduled to include sets from ETEP winners Ewert and The Two Dragons and Latvian rockers Prata Vetra, probably the two best-known acts from The Baltics.
 
The overall strength of the 200-plus acts playing showcases owes a lot to the way Hamburg-based agents and promoters support Reeperbahn. FKP Scorpio, one of Germany’s biggest promoters has put more than 30 acts on the bill, ASS Concerts has 11, and Karsten Jahnke – who has just completed a successful season in the city’s Stadtpark – is responsible for 13 of them.
 
It was the 38th time the city has hosted the season and it pulled more than 130,000 people to 38 shows, just failing to beat the record set when 150,000 people showed across 42 shows in 2007.
 
The acts on the various bills included Billy Idol, Bon Iver, Boy, Johannes Oerding, Sean Paul, Rainald Grebe, Feist, Hugh Laurie, Wiz Khalifa, Stefan Gwildis, Simple Minds, Dieter Thomas Kuhn, and Runrig.