When the SPOT Festival kicks off tomorrow, Aarhus will be turned into a musical wonderland for everybody with a general interest in music and the latest developments within the music industry. There will be plenty of opportunities to expand both one’s network and horizon.
This year’s SPOT Festival will be hosting a broad spectrum of players from the music business – about 1,000 participants from all parts of the Danish music industry and +300 from the rest of the world. On top of that there are a massive seminar programme and several network meetings, which could make this a quite busy weekend – but with the possibility of getting updated on the latest trends and future aspects of the music industry.
Music Export Denmark and SPOT Festival have worked together to bring in a strong team of influential acts from the music industry, who will help facilitate the meet-up between the Danish and international participants. A key-meeting is MXD’s networking event on Saturday – the festival’s biggest of its kind (read more here).
Labels, publishing agencies – and top-producers
The festival will be joined by journalists and critics from leading magazines and music medias, labels, managements, agencies etc.:
As usual Germany boasts the biggest group of guests at SPOT. Two packed busses from Hamburg and Berlin bring German delegates to Aarhus, yet again making SPOT the biggest rendezvous outside their homeland – half of the international delegates are from the big country just south of Denmark: E.g. hfn Records, Cargo, Rough Trade, Trikont (record labels) Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, MCT, Schoneberg (agencies) and more.
Besides inviting some of the major companies from the UK and US like XL Recordings, Ninja Tune, Virgin EMI, and RCA, MXD and SPOT Festival also focus on introducing newer players with a multi-service structure, including Method Music (Sam Smith, Disclosure), Marathon Artists (Courtney Barnett, Jagwar Ma), I Am Sound (Charlie XCX, Florence & The Machine), and Plus One Music (The Heavy, The Kooks) – all enterprises that hold both management, publishing, label and events. In addition, several representatives from the live and publishing industry have announced their arrival, e.g. The Great Escape, Windish Agency, Kobalt, and Universal Publishing.
Media
Furthermore, the SPOT Festival will be visited by media from around the world. From America Rolling Stone Magazine, and from the UK both Clash Magazine and The Arts Desk are going to take the trip to Aarhus. Also a lot of influential German media are going to cover the festival, among these MusicWoche, MusikMarkt, Radio Eins, 1Live, SWR 2, plus several German college radios (read more here). From Spain there’s El Pais. Just to name a few…
There’s also the possibility to meet up with representatives from other European festivals, such as Hungarian Sziget, the French showcase MaMA, and Melt! Festival, Reeperbahn Festival, and c/o Pop from Germany. All in all SPOT Festival 2016 calls for a tight schedule with plenty of options.
SPOT+
Together with Danish star producers Cutfather and Remeé, three international top producers, Che Pope (The Fugees, Kanye West), Damon Sharpe (Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez) and Kendrick Dean (Chris Brown, Usher) will be there to coach the talented songwriters who have been handpicked for Denmark’s biggest songwriting camp Aarhus Calling. You can get a first-hand impression of the creative process of Aarhus Calling both in the audience part of SPOT Festival and in the conference part – SPOT+ at Radisson Blu. Read more here.
And speaking of SPOT+, RadissonBlu will be the venue of both the seminars and the networking events.
A few highlights from the extensive programme: Tess Taylor of the National Association of Record Industry Professionals will share her specific strategies and sources of knowledge. Simon Pursehouse, from Sentric Music from Liverpool, is going to offer his advice on how to land a sync deal while Mike Jansen from Greater Goods. Co and David Hayman from Supergroup Sonic Branding Co. will offer advice on how to maximize your band once you have actually landed the deal.
Read more here to get the full seminar programme.
