Music industry pulls plug on Popkomm trade fair - Berlin

The German music industry has cancelled this year's Popkomm trade fair in Berlin due to a dramatic plunge in interest.

One of the most important annual events for Germany's music industry, the fair had been scheduled for September. But Popkomm director Katja Gross said on Friday that a "striking" collapse in the number of expected industry visitors forced organisers to pull the plug on the 2009 edition.

Going from current registrations, Popkomm was likely to draw only half of the 14,000 professional visitors seen last year. The number of exhibitors was also expected to drop from the 843 in 2008.

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HAHAHAHAHA. The music industry can't come up with a new business model so now it's gonna start looking for public handouts. Gorny maybe needs to switch to the German insurance industry. AOK always needs pencil pushers.

It seems that the easy way for their failure to come up with artist that have an interest for the public, is to automatically blame internet piracy. Makes no sense. It appears that the industry has left by the wayside those who in the earlier days made the music industry a money making machine and that is the over fifty crowd. Granted I will agree that some of it is internet piracy, but I am hard pressed to believe that it has that big of an impact. This mantra of theirs is beginning to sound more and more like the global warming scam. If one is a true fan of the music they will choose to buy rather than download it illegally.

Boring, uncreative music scene + alternative entertainment (computer games etc) - illegal downloading = death of the music industry as we know it.
You need a new business model guys, not just an increased marketing budget, some new starlet (same as the old starlet), and lawyers chasing teenage downloaders.

I'm very glad Popcon has cancelled itself out as it's about time the Music, 'industry', died here.

Well, since PopKomm was "stolen" from Cologne and moved to Berlin, I don't really have much sympathy.

The Popkom in Koln an number of years ago provided one of the biggest laughs of my short life. A record company hired a boat to promote a new teenage punk band. They were shit, looked good and thought they were the Sex Pistols for some reason.

The music was bland and pretty much your standard, ‘I think I’m Johnny Rotten when I piss out the window of the Hotel’, sort of stuff. The singer had considered this thought and decided to make his big splash with the public so dives into the crowd. It’s great they start acting like a human trampoline and throwing him in the air. At this point the singer thinks he has made it in life with joy of the fans swelling his soul. He looks up and sees there are more fans than he expected. In fact they are rather large fans... ventilation fans to be precise, hanging from the low roof in a boat not designed for Premadonna Punk or the likes.

Each crowd surfing wave that crashed through him brought him closer and closer to...

it was messy and no longer Punk...

Splatter Core was born.

Germans can't make pop music, they're good with electronic music, but suck at every other modern genre.

Disagree. For pop look at a band like Klee. At least that is if we make the distinction between the pop genre and "charts" music. Also Rammstein at the top of their respective industrial-metal tree. If you can't find the good in German music, you are not looking hard enough.

Don't tell me i'm not looking hard enough you wingnut. I actually know quite a lot about music, of all genres, from many different countries so if you want to have a train spotting music knowledge battle lets go. I'll kick your butt.
I didn't say I can't find any good in German music, read my post again if you have to.
German pop music is generally shit for two reasons: German sounds terrible when it is sung, and Germans singing English sounds generally BAD, (with the possible exception of Florian and Ralf in a few Kraftwerk songs). The other issue I have with contemporary German pop, is that they have taken the worst elements of American shite like Christina Aqualibra, Pink and Shakira and mechanically reformed it in to some hideous noise which is the aural equivalent of humous.
I'll let you get back to your Robbie Williams CD.

And as far as real Garage music goes (not that crappy 2 step/UK garage BS) Germany isn't even on that map. OK, so Sabrynaah Pope may have lived in Munich, but she was a New Yorker through and through...

god who cares...you guys sound so lame/or chocky, ole choc-full of himself....to combine the words music and industry gives the game away allready! an music being the universal language blows any national-based ideas out the water, other than subtext of cultural hegemony......poppkomm...popular kommerz...manufacturing culture......
everything plays a role the internet no less
the glut of bedroom based machine bleeps
drug washed out weekend tweaking
the glutton overload
the lack of silence
youth denied (an experience to enable) a voice of its own
corporate
all-devouring
death of capitalist based
economy
adrift
in pirate waters....

I beg to differ: they've got a good handle on the thrash / 80's HC / power violence thing. Which, in the overall scale of music history, is rather "modern".

Whether Germans can make music or not is irrelevant; Popkomm is a trade fair and, with a population of 85 million, Germany is the industry's largest market in Europe.

I think you will find UK consumers are the biggest music buyers in the world. Population has little to do with actual buying or music tastes. Apart from all of that Popkomm is dead because the Internet is the worldwide shop window not some vain tax break once a year.