Liveurope presented its results after one year: Over 300 artists supported across 13 music venues

Liveurope is proud to have presented the first official yearly results at the 10th annual Reeperbahn Festival Conference in Hamburg on September 25th, 2015. The platform was launched in October of 2014 and is coordinated by Ancienne Belgique in Brussels and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and is the first collaboration of venues with the purpose of increasing circulation of up-and-coming European musicians.

“Becoming a part of Liveurope not only gave us a greater opportunity to include more European artists in our programming, but has also given us a direct chance to collaborate with top European venues and learn from them”, said Dirk de Clippeleir, Managing Director of Ancienne Belgique. 

The results of the 2015 season of the Liveurope platform have positively exceeded expectations, with a grand total of 559 up-and-coming European acts hosted and 380 acts supported.  Comparable to the previous season, the data also shows a 23% increase of emerging European acts included in programming. What is interesting and important to note is the increase of nationalities represented in the acts booked. 

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On average, the venues showcased 12 nationalities (with a total of 32 countries represented), which is on average three more nationalities than the previous season. This shows the venues' increased interest in diversity in their programming, thus enriching the diversity of cultures their audiences are exposed to. 

“We’re consciously booking bands from countries we haven’t booked before to increase the diversity of bands represented in the programming.” said Pedro Azevedo from Musicbox. “Having an exchange of communication between the venues is also a great advantage of this initiative”. 

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Liveurope aims to give acts of all nationalities an even playing field, thus including a threshold of five emerging acts per nationality which can be eligible for Liveurope support. Observing the total number of acts booked per nationality, it is interesting to see that the United Kingdom represents just below 30% of the total booked acts in all the venues, while artists from the rest of Europe represented the majority of acts booked with 70%. Within these 70%, acts most booked after the UK hailed from Germany with 10%, France with 8%, Belgium with 7%, Denmark with 7%, and Sweden with 4% respectively.  

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The results of Liveurope in the first year of the platform directly show the potential that music venues can have with the right type of encouragement. Thanks to a continued support from the European Union and with increased experience in the coming years, the platform’s ambition is to program more and more concerts to give artists from every corner of Europe a chance to gain exposure on tours across the continent. 

Cover photo: YouTube: Liveurope - The Music Platform for Emerging Talent