What started off as an electronic music festival has now become a much broader music experience.

After the music industry fair moved from Cologne to Berlin in 2003, things looked grim for concert promoters, record labels and music journalists. But what was thought to be a hard blow to the city of music led to a fresh start.

Given Cologne's reputation as a center for electronic music, a new festival with a business convention was established. Even though c/o pop was not as big as Popkomm in Berlin, it was soon considered a trendsetter for electronic music. And this year, genre-bending is on deck.

Pop meets high art

"Pop and high art are opening up towards each other to a great extent. A few years ago this would have been impossible," Norbert Oberhaus, c/o pop's executive director, told news agency dpa.

Owen Pallett for instance, a favorite of the independent scene, is a headliner for the festival. The 32-year-old Canadian is a classically trained violinist and successfully works the fine line between genres.

C/o pop distances itself from other major music festivals that take place on massive open-air fields and push through as many bands as possible in a short amount of time. Instead, they present concerts in rather exceptional places: the Cologne Philharmonic concert hall, the WDR broadcasting studios, the chamber music hall of broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, Museum Ludwig, and the Museum of Applied Art, to name a few.

"The claim was that the visitors of the festival should rediscover their city in a cultural way with the combination of exceptional places and exceptional music," said Tobias Thomas, c/o pop's program manager. "We are an urban festival and one of our top priorities is a cultural mission; we try to push Cologne as a location for music business."

But such a festival can't survive on ticket sales alone. Just like theaters and operas, it also receives public funding.

Presenting musicians before they get famous

C/o pop does not just present avant-garde or indie rock, it also features popular musicians and bands such as Philipp Poisel, Wir sind Helden, DJ Paul Kalkbrenner and the upcoming soul superstar Janell Monáe.

In recent years, c/o pop has earned a reputation of presenting artists before they get famous. This was true for bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Arcade Fire. Tobias Thomas, who also works as a music journalist and DJ, says it's not just simply a stroke of luck, but musical expertise. One expert involved was music magazine Spex, which partnered with the festival in its early years.

If there's an upcoming artist this year that will be seen as the new super-star discovery?Thomas says he doesn't know for sure, but he can think of a few possibilities. Among his favorites is the Band Sizarr from Landau in Germany, the British band Wu Lyf and the local heroes Beat!Beat!Beat! from Cologne.

Networking is everything

In addition to plenty of concerts, the festival also features a convention, the C'n'B' (Creativity and Business) where experts discuss questions ranging from copyright issues to international networking. Part of this congress is the network Europareise, an international platform aimed at festivals similar to c/o pop.

Until last year, c/o pop had been constantly growing. But too many events taking place at the same time caused the audience to scatter, and some concerts didn't draw enough of a crowd. As a result, this year's c/o pop features fewer concerts and events. The audience doesn't have to choose between 10 concerts at the same time, but between two. This approach could benefit bands that are not quite popular yet, as more interested visitors get the chance to discover them.

Author: Matthias Klaus / sst

Editor: Kate Bowen