A visit to the Netherlands is a reminder that we have a long way to go in other parts of the world. The Dutch are great at building infrastructure, organising and planning their society so it works. Whether it's the close proximity of train station stops to the airport arrivals at Schipol, the regular punctual trains, or the airport security with low lighting and parallel-tray facilities to expedite the process, the Dutch have a keen eye for planning.
Now in its 30th year of operation, Eurosonic Noorderslag is another fine example of Dutch enterprise and ambition. The new music festival was first held in 1986 as Noorderslag in the student town of Groningen two hours north of Amsterdam, with only Dutch bands playing to local audiences. Over the years, however, it has developed into a European-focused festival with an emphasis on spreading live music throughout the continent. It's become a place for festival bookers to find bands for their bills in the relative quiet of early January.
Eurosonic for emerging talent
For that reason, Eurosonic is the festival that emerging bands and industry should be thinking about attending and playing. Ian Wilson, a producer for RTÉ Radio who has long been involved in Eurosonic, explains why he thinks the festival is more useful for bands than the behemoth of a showcase festival South By South West (SXSW) that takes place in March in Austin, Texas, every year.
“There you'll get lost in a sea of bands,” Wilson says. “You can come here and there's a reasonable chance of bookers actually seeing you because the event is structured well enough, the geographical area is small enough and the schedule works in such a way that is beneficial to be able to see many bands.”
“Bands like SXSW as it's much sexier than going to north of the Netherlands. It's of very little use to most bands but it's sexier. Don't go to SXSW unless you've a lot of time and a lot of backing or support because you'll just get lost. It’s hard enough for a band to shift to London and not get lost. Here there's a far more realistic prospect of Irish artists getting bookings across Europe than breaking the States.”
Wilson's involvement in Eurosonic began when he helped set up a youth and popular music department for radio in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which was then invited by the organisers of Noorderslag to partner with them to create a more European event.
“It was called Euroslag up til then”, Wilson laughs. “We pointed out this had a slight problem and we came up with the name Eurosonic.”
European public radio stations like BBC Radio 1 in the UK, Rai in Italy and WDR Eins in Germany participate in the festival, co-operating to suggest 30 bands a year to play at the event. These bands are then supported throughout the network of stations via radio play, live gig broadcasts and online features. This year, 27 organisations helped pick 31 bands to play the festival, alongside the regular festival selections.
“It's taken about 15 years to get it to this stage,” explains Wilson who, in consultation with 2FM presenter Dan Hegarty, suggests to the Eurosonic bookers which bands might be suitable. They chose The Academic for this year's festival. Previous Irish artists include The Riptide Movement, The Strypes, JJ72, The Frames, Heathers, James Vincent McMorrow and The Chalets.
Other acts who applied and played the festival this year included The Hot Sprockets, Colm Mac Ion Iomaire, Rusangano Family, Craig Gallagher, Pleasure Beach, Marc O'Reilly, The Young Folk, Ciaran Lavery and Otherkin.
‘It's for bands that have their shit together.’
“There's no point in coming to an event like this if you don't have a structure in place,” expands Wilson. “This is not for a very young band. It's for bands that have their shit together in their own home territory and are ready to go to a wider audience.”
There's another Eurosonic initiative that further encourages festivals to book the bands in Groningen. The European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP) has 90 festival bookers signed up to it who pay a certain amount a year. That amount is matched and doubled by the European Commission.
The idea is that if any of these festivals book a band at Eurosonic from outside their own country, they receive money back from that booking to cover its cost, further incentivising and spreading European music around Europe. In 2015, that programme resulted in 396 shows from 132 European artists at 95 European festivals. Body & Soul Festival is the sole Irish member of ETEP. Bookers from MCD, Aiken and Indiependence were also in attendance at Eurosonic though not a part of the ETEP programme.
“Eurosonic is quite Dutch in that it thinks on a European level, yet it's good for their business. The festival became a meeting point for radio stations, festivals, bookers and independent agents so it became a focus for the live music,” says Wilson. “Arising out of that, the Dutch people went to the European Commission and pointed out they had all of the right people here already and Eurosonic was a good place to start in encouraging the spread of European music in Europe.”
Border Breakers
Last year, Derry artist Soak received 12 festival bookings as a result of ETEP, which is why she was being presented with an award by Jools Holland last week at Groningen's stunning opera house StadSschouwburg in a ceremony that will be aired RTÉ soon.
That award, a European Border Breakers Award (EBBA) was presented to Soak and nine other European artists including Norway's Aurora, France's Christine & The Queens, Sweden's Seinabo Sey and Spain's Alvaro Soler.
“EBBA is there try to get those artists who have done well here to break onto the European stage further,” Wilson says. “Soak and Aurora appeared here as new acts and are genuinely breaking through. It gives a TV platform for the emerging artists, and is a logical follow-on for the festival.”
The award is based on live bookings, the sales of a debut release outside the artist's home country on the continent, and radio play. At the show, the organisers also debuted on the EBBA Chart, a European weekly chart to further encourage the breaking of music through borders in Europe. Currently, there are three Irish songs on the chart: two from Hozier and one from Soak. Norway and Sweden have has seven each.
“It shows how popular and how well-played European artists are across Europe,” Wilson suggests of the chart. “A lot of it is quite dance music and EDM-based. Ireland does well with singer-songwriters.”
The Irish music business is lacking
Over 30 years, through long term planning and a broad focus, Eurosonic has become an integral part of the European music industry calendar, and that the delegate presence here is something Wilson says that the Irish music industry could learn from.
“I was involved in getting bands here for eight or nine years before anyone Irish started to think about it,” rants Wilson. “You can look around here and look at the publicly funded music export office from every country in Europe except Ireland.
"We don't have a music export office - we have Music From Ireland with a bit of funding from Culture Ireland but there's no centralised structure to it. They do quite a good job but they have to cover a whole range of things. We need a proper music export operation, that's government-funded and industry-funded.
"We hide behind this idea 'we have the most amazing pool of talent in Ireland - we have the most fantastic musicians' and then do little else.”
Wilson cites Sweden as an example. It's the third biggest exporter of music in the world and he claims, the Swedish music export business is worth more than Volvo and Ikea combined.
“The Irish music export business is a twentieth of that. Giving the talent base we have and the traditions, we should be doing a lot better. We don't do long term planning on anything in Ireland.”
