I was writing about how the showcase festivals must shape up. I was mainly talking about the speakers. This time the lights go on the lineup. It’s called a showcase since you are showing something new. If you just book old artists who are already semi-famous, you are a festival, not a showcase festival. It has been a problem for many of the music conferences that people are using the name showcase about everything. I just saw a songwriting camp calling themself a showcase since they also had throw in three panels and a live band in the evening.

What is a showcase festival what is a music conference? Like I wrote it’s about showing something new. Like one of the bigger ones just had The Hives in their lineup. Sorry to have to say that the band started 1993 and the members are close to 50 years old and they are an international name. Why are we having The Hives on the showcase? They don’t need it and certainly not have any benefit from it and I guess they need full payment. Sure, you want to sell tickets to people and that is easier with a famous name than a new artist that is up and coming. Still then be a festival, not a showcase. This trend seems to get bigger and bigger. Looked at another festival where they had a band that has been around for fifteen years and another artist that I had on my showcase fifteen years ago and nowadays sings in Swedish. Both really don’t have a career and will not go anywhere, so why put them in the lineup? To get a gig? To sell tickets because people are so lazy that they need a teddy bear in the form of a famous name?

You can take in an older artist if they are new or it makes sense, it has nothing to do with age. Showcase something new. Taking in an artist that has been around for a decade is just stupid and lazy.

A real showcase festival must go around and see a lot of shows to discover new interesting artists. You can’t just ask your local record label or even worse your local booking agency to put in bands just because you want to have something that the teddy bear audience (that is not mature enough to see new things) would recognize. Most of the festivals are actually not doing that needed curation and now we are starting to see a big downfall of the quality.

I guess we can get some guidelines for keeping the quality in the name showcase festival. A list of what is real and what is just another reason from some local heroes to get free bands to their festival that they lineup with some names that is from the past. Right now it’s too little curation and that will lead to bad quality.

By Peter Åstedt