English
中文
Türkçe
Français
Português
Español
Deutsch
For over 20 years, c/o pop has been bringing tomorrow's music stars to the city. In a changing industry, this is more difficult than ever. Learn how the festival's creators are still managing to maintain their niche.
The headquarters of Cologne's most important cultural event is located in a multi-storey building behind the Ehrenfeld S-Bahn station. On the side facing the street, there is only a sign pointing to the back entrance. Once you have passed through it and reached the first floor, you will find yourself in a state-of-the-art office loft. This is where the organisation team is working on the line-up and programme for the 22nd edition of c/o pop. It is both a music festival and an industry get-together.
"After the Reeperbahn Festival, we are the second largest festival of its kind in Germany," explains Ralph Christoph. He is c/o pop's Convention Director, in charge of the part of the event where industry representatives meet every year to discuss the latest developments. Christoph welcomes us together with Elke Kuhlen, who as Festival Director organises the other half, the concerts and events. Together with CEO Norbert Oberhaus, they form the management team.
c/o pop is a constant in the cultural landscape
Oberhaus and Christoph were also the ones who launched c/o pop more than 20 years ago. It was a kind of lifeline for Cologne as a music centre, Christoph recalls. Popkomm, Germany's biggest music fair at the time, had just moved to Berlin. "It was a general trend, everyone wanted to be in Berlin. We wanted to counter that," says Christoph.
And even though the first year was a financial failure, the organisers stuck with it and established a constant in Cologne's cultural scene. But how do you stay on top of things in such a fast-moving industry for over 20 years?
Learning from Lena
Elke Kuhlen is primarily responsible for this. She was on board until 2009, took a break and came back to c/o pop in 2018 as the main person responsible for the festival. In this position, she has already given a lot of thought to who the visitors actually are.
"The average c/o pop visitor is female, rather young, maybe in her early twenties, from Cologne or the surrounding area, a student and maybe occasionally even likes to wear a flower wreath," she says, summing up a few factors. This fictional visitor, affectionately called "Lena" by the festival team, expects two things above all: currently popular musicians and a certain regional connection.
In the past, the organisers have repeatedly succeeded in bringing artists to Cologne at an early stage who have gone on to achieve national and international success in the years since: Arcade Fire played their first German festival show in Cologne in 2005, Maximo Park (2005), Janelle Monae (2011) and Tom Odell (2015) came through before everyone knew them. And Cologne's own AnnenMayKantereit also played c/o pop in 2013, before their debut album helped them break through nationwide.
