Representatives from the most well-known European festivals, journalists from leading international media, visitors from benchmarking record labels and global concert agencies, etc: From Thursday, May 20 and two days onward, the SPOT Festival grounds in downtown Aarhus will be transformed into a buzzing international hub for the Danish, Nordic and other foreign music scenes.

More than 1000 guests from the business are expected to participate in addition to the music-interested audience. While the list is still growing, it already looks like last year’s record of about 250 international visitors will be surpassed by far.

Festivals – live stage
Swiss Montreux Jazz Festival, Belgian Dour, Hungarian Sziget and French Eurockéennes are all major festivals – and they are in company with the largest European festivals for the music business Eurosonic (The Netherlands), Reeperbahn (Germany) and Les Trans Musicales (France), who are all in Aarhus to check out the quality of Danish and Nordic names.

Speaking of live music, the creator and leader of the American agency Windish Agency, Tom Windish, will also make an appearance. Windish has acts like Aphex Twin, Casio Kids and more on his roster, and will possibly network with one of the large European agencies, namely the German Scorpio.

Media
This year, the media is once again substantially involved in SPOT. Participating magazines count everything from the British Clash Magazine, The Fly, Mojo Magazine, Metal Hammer (attracted by SPOT’s special attention to metal), the American Rolling Stone Magazine, and music magazines from Greece, Ireland, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria and Belgium. The festival also boasts visits from leading European daily newspapers such as  Público (Portugal), Calle 20 (Spain) and De Morgen (Belgium), in addition to TV and radio stations like the Austrian radio channel FM4, the Austrian TV music channel GoTV, the German Radio Eins Live, etc.

Record labels
Record labels are also remarkably well-represented at this year’s SPOT Festival, where both large and established indie labels from the US and UK has accepted their invitation: From the US, amongst others, comes Frenchkiss Records (Passion Pit, Local Natives), Secretly Canadian (Antony & The Johnsons, Yeasayer), Jagjaguwar (Dinosaur Junior, Bon Iver) and Ghostly International (Gold Panda, Matthew Dear). From England, Fierce Panda (Taxi Taxi, The Raveonettes – in Europe – Art Brut, White Rabbit) and Full Time Hobby (Fujiya & Miyagi, Tunng), as well as Belgian PIAS and Dutch Excelsior Recordings are amongst the many foreign record labels that have representatives in Aarhus, not to mention Sony Music Japan.

Large delegation from Germany and the Benelux Countries
This year, there will be a noticeable increased focus on the German music business – for instance, SPOT will bring a bus filled with German music and media people to Aarhus. With 25 accredited guests this year, SPOT has the all-time largest number of visitors from our Southern neighbour. Also the Benelux countries are strongly represented - for instance, 11 hired SPOTCars are bringing Belgian and Dutch guests to their Northern destination. A SPOTCar is also driving from Hungary! Finally countries like Portugal and Greece are on the guest list for the first time.

Large program for the international guests
In cooperation with MXD – Music Export Denmark, SPOT will make sure that the international guests are taken care of during the festival. A barbeque is arranged on the festival’s opening day, May 20. The following day there will be an international business lunch for specially invited foreign as well as Danish guests. On Saturday, May 22nd, there will be a so-called speed meeting-session, where Danish and international professionals are placed together in short networking sessions. Finally, both SPOT and MXD staff will be of disposal to service the international guests during the three days of music.