Features
Reeperbahn Shrugs Economic Gloom
Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival seems to have shrugged off the economic gloom and ended as a success on all fronts.
The delegate numbers were more than 20 percent up on last year, the live highlights are set for various TV and radio broadcasts and the event itself was the subject of an hour-long review to be aired by national station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Sept. 30.
“In 2011 we pushed forward into a new dimension with the Reeperbahn Festival,” said festival managing director Alexander Schulz.
Detlef Schwarte, Schulz’s colleague at Hamburg-based Inferno Events, described Reeperbahn as an event of “European rank” that’s become “the relevant gateway into the German market.”
In Germany, where the cultural budget is a federal matter, the city of Hamburg – which once dropped euro 1 million on the German leg of Live Earth – has stuck to its guns by giving full support to the event.
The 1,900 delegates who showed, 350 up on the 1,550 that turned up last year, were largely from Germany, but there was still a fair smattering of visitors from Switzerland, England, The Netherlands, Denmark and Canada, which was one of nine countries to organise showcases via their music export organisations.
The organisers were also pleased to report that one or two delegates or fans had come from places as far away as the U.S., New Zealand, South Africa and Brazil.
About 17,500 fans – roughly 3 percent up on last year – paid to see the various festival showcases dotted around the St Pauli area’s most well-known street, which was once known as “the sinful mile,” harking back to the days when the Reeperbahn was one of the world’s most famous red-light districts.
Schwarte refers to the area as “Germany’s most creative quarter.”
The 210 acts that played across 54 venues in the St Pauli district Sept. 22-24 included some with rapidly rising profiles such as
A selection of some of the best recordings will be sold as a live album via the iTunes store.
Inferno chooses the talent with help from the offices of such well-known Hamburg-based national promoters as Karsten Jahnke and Folkert Koopmans.
The daytime meetings, collectively known as Reeperbahn Campus, included a discussion on how unpredictable weather can impact festivals.
Since the tragedies in the U.S. and at Belgium’s Pukkelpop Festival. the subject has appeared on a lot of conference schedules. In Hamburg, Jens Michow from the BDV promoters’ organisation, Piet Frohnhoff from SET Security, Inferno Events production manager Stefan Mohnen and Green Events organiser Holger Jan Schmidt were among those voicing their opinions.
The other dozen or so daily panels and networking sessions covered how bands eager to maximise live revenues must avoid overplaying, and had contributions from Rockpalast promoter Ernst-Ludwig Hartz and Jan Smeets, head of Holland’s Pinkpop Festival.
There was the inevitable talk of how the digital age is impacting record sales, a study of self-made entrepreneurs and a Ticketmaster-sponsored session on the changes facing the German ticketing business.
Next year’s Reeperbahn Festival is Sept. 20-22.