BMW Safe Until 2014

The future of Berlin Music Week is guaranteed until at least 2014 after the local senate confirmed that it’s backing it to the tune of euro 500,000 ($625,000) per year for the next three years.

It will also plug whatever gap was left by the scrapping of this year’s Popkomm by starting its own Word On Sound conference.

Popkomm, which was also in Berlin, had been part of BMW for the last two years. However, attaching itself to what’s become the German capital’s main music business gathering has done little to bring in the large crowds of yesteryears.

A note on the Popkomm website said the 23-year-old conference is undergoing a “conceptual construction,” but many in the German live music industry reckon that – after missing a year in 2009 – it’s now gone for good.

The state funding will also help BMW start a new seminar in the spring, which will be a collaboration with the country’s Echo Awards.

This autumn’s gathering, which takes place in the city’s Kreuzberg district Sept. 5-9 and runs alongside Berlin Festival, has already attracted favourable comment from music business papers and national dailies including Musik Woche, Musikmarkt, Berliner Zeitung, and Taggespiel.

Berlin Festival, which is now 51 percent owned by the UK’s Festival Republic, is Sept. 8-9. The lineup includes The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Sigur Rós, Kate Nash, Orbital, Turboweekend, and Hercules & Love Affair Soundsystem.

Reeperbahn Festival and Campus, the country’s other major music biz gathering, is in Hamburg Sept. 20-22.