2024: You were a year! Festivals, anniversaries, conferences, kick-offs, countless releases and memorable concerts at home and abroad. How can one sufficiently summarize a whole year of work and play in this beautiful sphere called music? Let’s be real, the task is too great; so the compromise is this: A selection of highlights to give at least a partial picture of Austrian music and its Export happenings in 2024. What came, what went, and what carries on into 2025, and beyond…
Music Export Projects and Initiatives
Austrian Music Fund(ing)
In 2024, the Impulse funding program (Impulsprogramm) made its debut. In addition, new funding programs of the Austrian Music Fund with an export component were implemented with the expansion of international tour support and OMF+ funding program. The majority of the funding awarded under OMF+ was granted to projects that included international activities.
The musicians, acts and ensembles of the BMEIA’s New Austrian Sound of Music (NASOM) program for 2025/26 were selected by expert juries following a public call for proposals and 5 were presented at a NASOM concert at Porgy & Bess in Vienna to a full house, honoring the new generation of artists.
BUILDING BRIDGES
As part of the Building Bridges project, a trade delegation consisting of 15 professionals from all over Austria traveled to Berlin for workshops, networking formats and a visit to Spotify All Music Friday, where the mentors and mentees of the Building Bridges Mentoring Program (established in 2023), got to know each other professionally and personally. This year, a Songwriting and Producer Camp was also organized in 5 Viennese studios in the run-up to the Waves Vienna festival. The first results were presented at a Listening Session at the Waves conference, where the participants received feedback from experts. Another Building Bridges Delegation Trip with local professionals to the Eurosonic Festival in Groningen, the Netherlands (January 2025) was announced in the fall.
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS
As always, the festival year kicked off with Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) in Groningen where 6 Austrian acts – ARAI, BEX, Kimyan Law, Oskar Haag, Sharktank and Viji – performed live at ESNS, and a focused networking event was organized for the local companies that work with the performing acts. A camera team from ORF accompanied the work of Austrian Music Export on location for a detailed report on “Kulturmontag” (“Culture Monday”) and filmed concerts by the local acts.
February brought BEX, Elis Noa and oh alien to play live at the MENT Festival in Ljubljana. On top of that, a delegation consisting of 10 Austrian music professionals was invited to the festival as part of our festival-export office cooperation and was able to take part in a special “speed networking” meeting with selected international industry representatives.
Next up we celebrated Elevate Festival’s 20th anniversary in Graz, with a joint networking event organized by the festival and AME, where the local artists and attending companies got a chance to meet international media and festival representatives.
As the weather started warming up end of April, so did the energy in Cologne, with c/o pop hitting the city with live performances by BEX, Bibiza, Eli Preiss, Endless Wellness, Filly and NESS, who were supported by an Austrian Heartbeats Reception to facilitate attention and potential future opportunities for the artists internationally.
In 2024, offstage: AME took over the organization and supervision of the exhibition stand at jazzahead! in Bremen – the only trade fair for jazz music in Europe – for the first time. The result was extremely positive: numerous musicians used the stand to meet representatives of various agencies, labels, and promoters, and some were able to arrange concrete engagements with international partners. On stage: Austrian bands, Sinfonia de Carnaval, Sheroes and ELMO NERO (Gina Schwarz) gave stellar performances to international crowds.
In May, The Great Escape Festival welcomed Bon Jour, ERNST, oh alien, Oskar Haag and Sharktank to their Brighton stages for additional concerts alongside the AME showcase.
The same month, the Chaos String Quartet showcased their program “Free the Franz” – a re-imagining of Franz Schubert’s music featuring free-improv saxophonist István Grencsó – in Berlin at the 11th edition of Classical:NEXT, the world’s biggest international classical music industry event.
The summer was sealed with the usual late-August slam-dunk: the Saalfelden International Jazz Festival, a fixture in contemporary jazz for 43 years. This year Austrian Music Export invited multipliers from 9 countries (Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Poland, Spain, UK, Finland and Slovenia) to experience the internationally renowned, ever-expanding festival, including the numerous concerts from Austrian players and taste-makers. This year, Mona Matbou Riahi boldly took the Carte Blanche invitation and opened the main stage, together with Manu Mayr, Dorian Concept and Lou Zon, while this year’s artist in residence was Austrian guitarist, Chris Janka.
Fall had a proper kick off with Waves Vienna, which attracted almost 14,000 visitors this year, including over 800 delegates from 31 countries. For the first time, Bzzzz– the Conference of the Austrian Music Industry – took place simultaneously, attracting a further 186 trade visitors. They were able to experience 28 Austrian live acts and exchange ideas and contacts with the Austrian and international industry at the conference under the umbrella of a variety of networking formats. The festival was capped off once again with the awarding of the coveted XA Export Award, going this year to Lucy Dreams.
Just one little week later, a whopping 16 Austrian acts hit the stages of the annual Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, arguably the most important German platform for Austrian artists and companies in the pop, rock, hip hop and electronic fields. In addition to a(n over-)packed Austrian Heartbeats reception, selected Austrian and international industry representatives from the fields of recorded and live music were brought together in an exclusive setting with signature cocktails to further heighten the festival buzz.
WOMEX, the Worldwide Music Expo, the most international and culturally diverse music meeting in the world and the biggest conference of the global music scene celebrated its 30th anniversary in October in Manchester. Austrian Music Export and Aussenwirtschaft/Creative Industries held the Austrian booth which allowed the Austrian music scene to showcase its dynamism and diversity as a center of global music, and offered artists and businesses a home base and platform to present their work and widen their network of contacts.
Also in October, the fruitful collaboration with the Nuremberg Pop Festival was expanded further this year with 8 acts from Austria, plus a networking brunch, organized together with the Bavarian Association for Pop Culture.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… That is: Kick Jazz time! The 9th edition of the festival took place at the beginning of December at Porgy & Bess over the course of 2 packed evenings. More than 30 international festival organizers and journalists invited by AME presented six Austrian live acts, as well as 1 Slovenian trio, plus artists from Spain and Sweden as part of a new crossover European project entitled I AM ABROAD.
Communication highlights
In 2024, the longstanding collaboration with the Hamburg PR agency Factory 92 continued, kicking off with the promotion of the Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) Festival with international media coverage (ByteFM, CLASH, MDR Kultur, etc.). Additionally, ORF covered Austrian artists at the most important industry trade fair in Europe with extensive coverage, including a spot on “Kulturmontag” and “Spielräume”.
As part of the 15th Popfest Vienna, editors from MDR and the ARD network were invited to get an idea of the local pop scene in preparation for the Reeperbahn Festival. Media representatives from neighboring countries were also invited to the Waves Vienna Festival & Conference.
Moreover, Saalfelden International Jazz Festival received international media praise and acknowledgment by major publications, including Citizen Jazz (FR) and Downbeat Magazine (USA).
Highlights
Happy 30th birthday mica – music austria! On June 20, 1994, the building blocks for the history of the Austrian Music Information Center were laid and since then, have grown exponentially. Today, service centers in Vienna, Salzburg and, since May 2024, Tyrol are available to musicians and music professionals from and in Austria. Along with celebrations, radio spots (Ö1) and interviews given by the mica team and friends, Austrian Music Export co-published an interview series entitled “30 over 30”, highlighting Austrian musicians with hard-earned knowledge and their views on the music world and business, and how it has changed (or not) over the course of their artistic careers.
In September, Austrian Music Export hosted a European Music Exporters Exchange (EMEE) Networking Mission to Vienna. 18 representatives of the 33-member organization took part, joining multiple networking, concert and export office exchange events.
Every year, the International Association of Music Information Centers (IAMIC) meets to discuss current affairs. This November, mica – music austria invited representatives to Vienna to discuss the topic of sustainability together with the international representatives, focusing in particular on issues and possible solutions in the field of psychosocial sustainability. Gordana Crnko reported on the low-threshold and powerfully diverse work of Brunnenpasssage, Christina Riedler and Martina Gollner (FullAccess) showed how events can be made accessible for people with disabilities and Daniel Courtney spoke about the importance of mental health in the music sector. A discussion with Judith Fliedl (violinist), Bernhard Günther (Artistic Director, Wien Modern) and Irena Müller-Brosovic (Bruckner University Linz) explored what it takes for artists and organizers to be willing to take artistic risks and try something new. Moreover, the cooperation with Brunnenpassage, Wien Modern and the Wiener Konzerthaus, including networking with the local new music scene, provided a rich framework for the conference overall.
What’s next?
As always, the festival season begins with the Eurosonic Festival (ESNS) in Groningen, the Netherlands, this year featuring 6 Austrian acts on its renowned stages. Moreover, our Building Bridges project will bring numerous professionals to ESNS as well, to make the festival bang that much bangier.
Big news! For the first time, AME is cooperating with a festival in Asia! As a result of years of development work, an industry delegation from Austria will travel to the India International Music Week, where two local acts will also be performing live in Goa.
In 2025, Kick Jazz turns 10! To celebrate the double-digit-milestone, the already- banging jazz showcase festival will get churned up even another notch. ‘How is this possible? It’s almost too much,’ you say? Our response: nah, never!
Austrian Music Export aims to support composers by commissioning new works in collaboration with international festivals and ensembles to help them gain public visibility outside Austria. To this end, a collaboration with festivals such as Frequenz Kiel and Sonic Matter in Zurich as well as international ensembles has been set up by selecting Austrian composers via a call for scores. The resulting works are to be commissioned in 2025 and will be performed several times in 2026 at the festivals and in the ensembles’ concert series.
And finally, Austrian Music Export will be 15 years old next year! The teenager in us is excited to let loose and go a lil’ crazy in 2025. Join us?
And with that, from all of us at Austrian Music Export to you and yours, we wish you warm, safe and sonically-pleasing holidays and can’t wait to see you in the new year! Guten Rutsch!