Manfred Zähringer

Director of Iceberg music group.

How long have you had Iceberg?

-I’ve been running the company for 30 years; it’s still paying the bills.

Where did you start the company?

-I started it here in Denmark, and have been living here for forty years.

What is it Iceberg does?

-Iceberg is a label, we started of as a label, and the learned that publishing is quite important, maybe the most important thing. So we wouldn’t produce without having the publishing side, publishing turned into a more vital part of Iceberg, because we pitch/plug songs with other artists around the world. We do a lot of synch business, where the publishing is very necessary, to be in a position of, at least to administrate. It helps to do fast clearing: when a possible client or movie production company or ad agency, takes a song from our database, and they have to clear the song with the publisher, they have to negotiate, agree on the terms, and then the same with the master. So as we own the publishing rights and master, the clearing is sometime given on the phone, as an example.

So you company is branching out, and you have an array of ways to do music placement.

-Yes and it’s quite logical that we do it in Denmark first, where we try to get them on the national radio, which for a rock band is quit necessary. The local radios don’t break a band. And with all the travel arrangements I have ca. 120 a year, I have travelled a lot the past 30 years. I’ve tried to find connections and networks, working with record companies or during the last ten years more and more music companies, and ad agencies for synch.

That’s where the money comes from today, record sales are non existent. If we don’t find the right label, in another country, like European countries, we put it out on our own label Iceberg, to buy the promotion which is necessary, radio promo, online promo, press promo; in every country it’s very expensive. And hope that something happens, that it get’s picked up.

Today as I said, record sales are very difficult, not just in Denmark, so our work helps the band get better paid shows in other countries and in Denmark.

What bands do you have on you repertoire at the moment?

-We sign one or max two bands a years, and two is a lot for us, as it takes a long time to establish a band. So the best running bands at the moment are The Blue Van and Duné, which we license to Sony outside of Scandinavia, to European countries. And just signed Kiss Me Scarlett that is playing today. All Danish bands.

The biggest success we ever had was not rock but a dance record made by an American named John Larkin, and we turned it around to Scatman John, and made an enormous amount of money, we spent within seven years investing in rock bands.

How long have you been coming to the SPOT Festival and the Music Export Denmark lunch?

-During the past, I guess seventeen years, since it started. The MXD is quite new, other festivals sure; it’s networking, conventional fairs. Well of course to promote the band and to meet people.

What do you see MXD contributing with also considering that it is government supported?

-If I can go from a scale from 1 to 10 MXD will get an 11. Because we couldn’t do, it’s not for every band, but if we didn’t get the support from the Danish government, MXD and ROSA of course, we could do what we do, and on the other hand if you are successful with the export, as I say the money comes back through the taxes, bands making merchandise, earnings, so I think it’s a fair business. Certainly we work our butt of, we have to, we should.

Are there any bands here in particular you want to see?

-Not directly, I go from band to band, and try to avoid too many panels, but sure certainly I am here for the music; I see most of the bands.

A little bit, ten minutes here fifteen there…

SPOT festival is a very important forum for us, first of all it’s just a homerun, and it’s getting more and more international, so it’s a perfect networking place for us.

Talking music and brands, with Jack Horner from FRUKT Communications.

As a part of the official SPOT program, the festival arranges talks and seminars during the weekend, focused on sharing experience and knowledge in the music business.

Hidden away behind the stages, where the main acts are busy playing and preparing their concerts, the festival delegates are mingling and talking business.

Jack Horner has been invited to talk about his company FRUKT, and how they are managing and developing brands and using their experience in music management, promoting new bands, finding new ways of marketing products.

The setting is a small cantina, which has been transformed into a Turkish coffee house, about 30 people have occupied the room, sipping tea, talking and waiting to hear what Jack has to say. It is a good mix of managers, festival officials, venue promoters, journalists and A&R people.

Frukt is a integrated communications agency /music agency that works with brands such as Nokia, Coca Cola and the British clothes company Topman, besides numeral other consumer brands and technology based companies.

Jack Horner
- FRUKT focuses on content and experience that consumers want to be happy, they want to be entertained, and the opportunity is for consumer brands to play a role in entertaining the people, and in doing that people will be more receptive to the messages that the brands want to communicate.

Jack elaborates about the different strategies and values, that FRUKT work with, one of the key words is longevity, establishing and developing a sustainable bond between the brand and the music.

Jack Horner
- Hanging banners with brand names at concerts is obsolete, the audience doesn’t mind brands, but if they have to be there, they should have a purpose, utility, have a role, which is at the core of music fans accepting a brand.

You have to think out of the box, not only to get the brand out to the consumers, but also to create a sustainable investment for the company’s. Jacks ideas are innovative and very different from the traditional approach to music and brand advertizing. One of their recent activities is the development of Topman CTRL that focuses on the young adult audiences in Britain. Topman CTRL gives the audience an opportunity to arrange concerts themselves, with bands they choose, whilst the brand connects with it current and future consumers through the events and concerts.

It’s bringing together different elements of the music business, creating opportunities for new and upcoming band, and at the same instant making it feasible for company’s to invest money in promoting and using music as advertizing.

The talk last for about 30 min, it’s short and concise, it’s followed by a Q&A, where it’s clear that many of the participants want to know more about, ‘how to do it’, ‘how do we get the companies to invest’, ‘what’s in it for the bands’, and so on.

The seminar is at the heart of the festival, sharing knowledge across boarders, bringing the business together, planting and developing new ideas, new ways of connecting music and corporations, music and technology.

Every year during the SPOT, Music Export Denmark starts of the festival with its annual pre-SPOT lunch.

Purpose:  to get the music business talking.

Since 2004 Music Export Denmark has been working to promote and export Danish music abroad. The organization is a unique institution, supported by the Danish government via the ministry of Culture.

MXD is backed by five organizations: ROSA (The Danish Rock Counsel), IFPI (Danish record company’s business organization), Koda (music right management) Denmark’s National Radio and Roskilde Festival.

While the SPOT festivals young audience, mainly come to experience the grand specter of new and upcoming bands. For people in the music business SPOT is a platform, for working together with new business associates and of course, picking up on new acts.

Thomas Rohde is the current director of MXD and has been developing and working in close confederation with the SPOT festival since 2008S, building and developing a number of new initiatives, to export and introduce Danish music abroad.

Thomas Rohde:

-MXD’s purpose is to support Danish music, we do this in three ways; first of all we financially support the business professionals who are promoting bands abroad.

Secondly we create projects such as the SPOT-festival and have developed the SPOT brand, further creating SPOT on Denmark, which mainly is the SPOT festival abroad (SPOT-Live).

How do you promote abroad?

-We do this by forming juries, and inviting business executives, journalist and other music affiliates from the countries where we are preparing to market Danish bands. The jury is then introduced to different Danish acts, and thereafter choose what bands would interesting to showcase, who they believe have the most potential. Its good in a way, that it creates a kind of co-ownership, the business itself get’s to choose, instead of us force feeding them with what we think ‘might’ be interesting, the market simply decides for itself, it fulfills it’s own demand.

Besides using the SPOT brand gives us a two sided effect, not only do we get to promote Danish bands, they promote SPOT, which strengthens the brand abroad and introduces new business associates to the festivals.

-The third aspect of MXD is how we build and expand knowledge and knowhow in and about the music business. We share this experience with the Danish and foreign associates, by holding seminars and courses throughout the year.

The MXD lunch is being held at a closed down brewery in the centre of Aarhus, this year’s theme seems to be angelic, young girls a bustling about in white gowns and fairy wings, greeting the participants with a scatter of rose petals handing out apples (the forbidden fruit I may guess). There is a steady stream of music officials and ambassadors turning up, many have been here before, while new faces look amazed and happy, a lot of chatting, while the free lunch is being ferociously consumed.

Jan Clausen is from Hamburg and the managing director of the PR Company Queen About Music. It’s his 6^th time at the festival, which he first came in contact with first by working with the Danish band Tiger Tunes. This year he is working for the SPOT festival, doing PR for the SPOT-Live concerts and bands performing at Reberbahn festival in Hamburg, Popkomm, and doing PR for SPOT Festival and Roskilde Festival in Germany.

How MXD is unique compared to the German music business?

-Heh, the Germans don’t have any export of music, so not a lot of bands go out of the country, only big bands exported by the big major labels. Of course there are some things electronic wise, like this, but it isn’t much. But if you look at MXD there are a lot of bands in Germany now, and 5 to 6 years ago there started a lot of indie bands, like Figurines and Tiger tunes, WhoMadeWho, Veto, that have played a lot in Germany, so know the Danish music scene is well connected to the German.  Talked to some people I heard them say Denmark is the new Sweden, so there is a lot of new and good acts coming out of Denmark, Sweden was always been popular so I think it’s excellent.

What do you use the MXD lunch for?

-Well for me it’s nice, because I get to see a lot of friends and colleagues. But I also have the opportunity to talk to journalists and connect them to the Danish music business.

Spot festival is perfect also in that way, it’s the right city, the right place, very well organized and the people really like it. A lot of journalist coming every year now, they just really like it, the way it’s hosted and stuff like this.

The lunch lasts for about an hour and a half, empty brown packages, cans of soda and downtrodden rose petals scatter the moments before white and clean landscape of the room. There are a lot of smiles, phones ringing, people talking, as they slowly vacate the building and travel towards the festival grounds. The first initial steps towards the days many concerts and meetings has started for the music business associates and officials. MXD is the vanguard, it has prepared them for the coming days, welcoming them in the most angelic of manners.