Ice Cool Eurosonic

Arriving in Groningen, The Netherlands, a few days behind a foot of snow and in sub-zero temperatures made it an icy Eurosonic-Noorderslag, although the conference weekend wasn’t without its heart-warming moments.

Local newspaper Dagbladen Noorden proclaimed, “Eurosonic Wins In Atmosphere,” using up much of its front page with a picture of the main city square in what looked like Arctic conditions.

This year’s conference attracted 2,800 delegates, more than 250 acts and their crews, 183 media members, and reps and broadcast units from 24 European radio stations. It’s enough to fill up a lot of the university city’s hotels in the middle of January.

Groningen’s cab companies, restaurants, bars, coffee shops and everything else also get a financial boost from a huge slice of the European music business moving in for four days. It can’t be long before the Dutch government looks at what Smidt and his team have done for the profile of the country’s music industry – let alone what they’ve done for hundreds of emerging bands.

Promoter Herman Schueremans took three gongs at the inaugural Virtual Festivals European Awards the previous day. The applause greeting each announcement suggested the audience thought he thoroughly deserved them.

The Live Nation Belgium chief’s first visit to the stage was to collect the award for best line-up.

It wasn’t long before he was back to collect the “artists’ favourite festival” award, pausing to tell the audience he hoped the acts didn’t vote for him because he pays them too much.

By this time it would probably have been a bit of surprise if he wasn’t called back onstage to collect the award for best festival promoter.

It was a good night for Belgium. The country’s Openfields took the best new European festival award, Cactus won best small festival and Dour took the best medium-sized festival award.

Best European festival went to Poland’s Open’er, which is on an old Soviet military airfield site that’s so huge it also has the potential to be Europe’s largest festival.

In the four years Virtual have been presenting the best Euro festival award – initially as part of its UK Festival Awards – it’s the second time it has gone to a former Eastern Bloc country.

Serbia’s Exit Festival won the first one in 2007 and Ireland’s Oxegen Festival has won it the last two years.

The lifetime achievement award went to Jan Smeets from Holland’s Pinkpop Festival, which is in the Guinness Book of Records for being the world’s longest-running festival.

The Green ’N’ Clean Award, presented by Yourope, the European festivals’ organisation, went to Norway’s Oya Festival. The three artist awards went to The Prodigy (best headline act), White Lies (best new act) and Coldplay took festival anthem of the year for “Viva la Vida.”

Holding the awards in Groningen’s Grand Theatre on the eve of Eurosonic-Noorderslag proved to be a huge success, although earlier snow flurries in the UK left many of the British contingent stranded at London airports.

Two days later it was Eurosonic-Noorderslag festival director Peter Smidt collecting an award from local mayor Peter Rehwinkel. It was in recognition of what he’s done for the city of Groningen.

This year’s European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP) doesn’t appear to have thrown up such a strong early favourite as it did with White Lies in 2009, although it was noticeable for the number of seemingly strange combos it attracted from far-flung places.

FM Belfast is an Icelandic act with a song called “Underwear,” which apparently compares boredom with the freedom the writer feels when running down the street in his or her underwear. In Reykjavik it seems you have to make your own entertainment.

Magazines including Clash, NME, Q and Rolling Stone have reported it’s a live act worth seeing, while fellow Icelanders Seabear attracted a little more attention to the land of Bjork and Sigur Ros.

Irish rockabilly revivalist Imelda May delivered her set to a packed house, while Norway’s Kaizers Orchestra – which came out on top at ETEP 2003 – will likely get another handful of European festivals from the 2010 edition.

UK acts interesting the festival bookers included BBC Sounds Of 2010 poll winner Ellie Goulding, Everything Everything, The XX, Marina & The Diamonds and The Leisure Society. The last two clashed on the Jan. 14 schedule, but it was still possible to see both because the venues, like most of the 26 in use this year, are only a five-minute walk from each other.

They also clashed with the European Border Breakers Awards, which was hosted by BBC-TV personality Jools Holland and honoured by the appearance of Dutch royalty.

H.R.H. Princess Máxima saw Belgian pop phenomenon Milow win the online vote to pick the first ever “Public Choice EBBA.” The awards are a joint initiative between the European Commission and the European Broadcasting Union to reward debut acts who have successfully crossed national borders and reached audiences outside their home country.

This year’s EBBAs went to Charlie Winston (UK), Esmee Denters (The Netherlands), Sliimy (France), Jenny Wilson (Sweden), Giusy Ferreri (Italy), Soap&Skin (Austria), Peter Fox (Germany) Kerli (Estonia) and Buraka Som Sistema (Portugal).

European Commission culture director Vladimir Sucha and Dutch culture minister Ronald Plasterk were among the politicians who dropped in to add their voices to the three days of panels, interviews and presentations.

The subjects included the future of record labels, reducing trash at festivals, the changing role of agents and diversifying the European music market and making it more accessible.

There were several keynotes by top professionals such as Steve Knopper, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and author of “Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.”

Peter Kentie, marketing director for top Dutch soccer team PSV Eindhoven, talked about the similarities between marketing football and marketing music.