This year’s conference programme takes up the festival’s focus on the Danube region and understands it not as a pandemic-related restriction, but as an overdue in-depth examination of the macro-region of the countries along the Danube.

Experts from the Danube countries Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine will present their music markets and discuss cross-border issues.

The commitment to this region serves economic and cultural interests. On the one hand, regional cooperation aims to overcome the prevailing differences in economic performance and thus play an important role as a strong region within a Europe-wide music export strategy that also addresses non-European music markets. Furthermore, there are long historical cultural relations in the Danube region that still lead to exciting music projects today.

International festivals and conferences usually focus on the big players, the most successful festivals, labels and agencies of the world’s biggest music markets. The thematic concentration on one region allows a closer look at the different scenes and the contributors on several levels.

For the conference delegates and for the acts that can be seen live at the festival, this should lead to realistic and promising opportunities to find future contact and cooperation partners in the various networking formats within the framework of the conference.

For example, the Slovakian club scene outside Bratislava will be examined in separate panels, as will German festivals away from the mega-events. The electronic music scene of Kiev and its significance in urban development and a different international perception of a conflict-ridden country promise to be just as exciting a topic for discussion as the current developments in the Hungarian media landscape and the accompanying situation of the Hungarian music scenes or the state of the Croatian independent festivals, venues and promoters and their assessment of the effects of the long-standing presence of many large international festivals.

The music scenes and music markets of the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Serbia, which are still rather unknown in this country, will be presented in presentation panels with representatives from the live, recorded music, publishing & sync and media sectors.

This year there will also be numerous cooperation partners hosting specific panels, presentations and workshops, such as the Austrian Independent Label Association VTMÖ and Yamaha on the topic of (live) streaming, the Vienna Club Commission on the situation of club organisers and the women’s mentoring project MEWEM Europe.

Waves Festival Conference presented by