Popkomm Convention Calls It Quits After 23 Years
Popkomm, the annual music convention held in Germany for 23 years, will not be making a return. First held in Düsseldorf in 1989, the first Popkomm focused on indie artists but the following year, when the event moved to Cologne, and then Berlin in 2004, the convention garnered an international cachet as a leading industry confab.
However, as the music industry underwent retrenchment in the face of technology, Popkomm had trouble maintaining revenue. The event went on hiatus in 2009 and despite a brief return in 2010 has been replaced by Berlin Music Week.
"Popkomm was already dead before it moved from Cologne to Berlin in 2004 because by then the music business was already having structural problems,” music publisher Prof. Dr. Rolf Buddle told Billboard.
"The concept of Popkomm was too broad and superficial to overcome. As a platform you have to be more specific," Edel Records general manager Bernd Hocke added. – via CelebrityAccess
“because by then the music business was already having structural problems”
Sorry Herr Professor, their demise was not due to the industry having structural problems but to their inability to adapt.
PopKomm could only exist as a subsidized confab. When Cologne turned off the spigot (or was outbid by Berlin), it entered a death spiral.
First of all, PopKomm never rivaled MIDEM, not even close.
But it was an excellent chance at meeting “small fry” Germans who could not be arsed to go to MIDEM or who resented having to work off MIDEM, schwarz.
The Cologne edition made sense in a perverse way, hosting it in the middle of the summer holidays but in conjunction with the ongoing Musik am Ring festival.
Berlin moved it on the calendar, ever closer to MIDEM’s timing. The Messegelaende were just horrible for a music trade fair and commuting rather than walking distance from the hotels, which are always the focal point(s) of a successful tradeshow.
@Clyde, the industry did adapt. They stopped going.
I was trying to say that Popkomm didn’t adapt to industry changes. I didn’t know the backstory so obviously I don’t know the details.
But I do know that if you serve a sector and the sector changes, if you don’t adapt to those changes then you don’t survive.
That’s what I was addressing. Of course it could have been something else entirely. For example, if it was bad management or too much cocaine or too much ego, which often go together, then it doesn’t matter what else is going on.
I was just responding to Herr Professor’s comments. Thanks for adding to the narrative.