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Iceland Airwaves in the spotlight: music boosts tourism, tourism boosts music
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 11 February 2015
The latest edition of the CMU Trends Report puts the spotlight on Iceland Airwaves, the annual festival that takes place in Reykjavík each autumn.
Born out of a marketing initiative by Icelandair to extend the Icelandic capital’s tourist season, it’s an interesting festival for many reasons. Not least because an event that capitalised on Iceland’s music scene to boost tourism is now returning the favour, by acting as a showcase festival for new musical talent in the country.
And the Iceland Music Export office, which helped Iceland Airwaves survive the country’s economic meltdown in 2009, is now seeking to help artists in the country better utilise that showcase platform.
The boss of IMX, Sigtryggur Baldursson (a prolific musician himself, and a founder member of The Sugarcubes) explained to CMU, after a panel on Airwaves at last month’s Eurosonic conference: “The Icelandic music community knew Airwaves had become this big showcase. And that’s why it was a good place to play. Though many weren’t really capitalising on the opportunity. They’d play their set and just hope that the right people would be in the room. Which is totally understandable, I’ve been there myself. Most musicians are crappy at promoting themselves”.
But, he went on: “In recent years we’ve been trying to make Airwaves a much better opportunity for Icelandic artists. Both by ironing out any issues and listening to the community, and also by explaining how artists can and should interact, with each other, and with the media and the industry who are at the event. We’ve put networking meetings into the festival and we provide a little more education, so that more artists now properly embrace the event, and use it for shameless self-promotion, as they totally should!”
You can read the full article looking at the origins of Iceland Airwaves, the event’s relationship with Icelandair, how the festival survived Iceland’s financial crash, and why international media partnerships are so important, in the latest CMU Trends Report. You can buy the report for £9.99 in the CMU Shop, or sign up for CMU Premium today and get a copy straight away. Multi-user subscriptions are also available for music companies here.
Iceland Airwaves 2015 takes place from 4-8 Nov. More information at icelandairwaves.is
