ONE BIG FAMILY
Our lovely networking project Baltic Indie Group, funded by the Swedish Institute (SI), have been taking some grand steps towards unifying the indie music industry within the Baltic Sea region. Last week some more steps were taken in Riga, Latvia.
Since the initiation of the project in September last year we’ve been making some fine work in creating a solid ground for future work between our ten participating organizations, from eight different countries. With continuous monthly online sessions we’ve been sharing knowledge about our various music markets, all while forming new collaborations to further provide opportunities for indie artists from all corners of the Baltic Sea region.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of our project have been conduction networking trips to some of our participating countries, to really be given a very hands-on introduction to the specific market. In December last year we all met at the festival Viva Sounds in Gothenburg for some initial meetings, and back in March we got the full Warsaw-experience as our hosts from legendary venue Klub Stodoła showed us around the city and explained everything on how the Polish music market actually works.
As summer arrived we recently had the pleasure of visiting beautiful Latvian capital Riga, hosted by our participants from I Love You Records & Summer Sounds Festival. While there we got to visit several of the city’s many venues, from major outdoor arena Mežaparka estrāde to underground Klubs Depo. We were also given an interesting presentation from Latvian Music Expo about the local scene and visited a local vinyl pressing Semikols Vinyl Plant. Besides doing these excursions we also sat down to get into how we can take the next steps. We believe this project to be a vital initiative to provide new possibilities for the indie music industry within this gravely unexplored music market, as we share a whole lot of common ground all while we can learn much from each other. We will continue crossing borders to create a future that is simplified, unified and inspiring. Let’s go BIGGER!
Participants in Riga: I Love You Records - LV, Summer Sound Festival - LV, Howdy Partner Booking - DE, MP3 Agency - LT, Monday Morning Management - EE, Welfare Sounds & Records -SE, Westside Music Sweden - SE, Music Export Ukraine - UA.