Eurosonic Noorderslag has toasted another successful year of the European Talent Exchange.
The programme was recently rebranded but has deep roots in the cross-continental collaboration that exists in the live music sector. Widely seen as the starting point of the music year, Eurosonic Noorderslag’s positioning in January allows it to act as a potent platform for new music – something that is then amplified.
European Talent Exchange is a means for more than 20 festivals to swap ideas, with its aim of supporting emerging talent, education, enhancing live music sustainability, fostering diversity, and driving innovation.
A new report underlines the importance of the programme. Analysing the subsequent bookings of artists from Eurosonic’s 2024 line-up, it illustrates how beneficial the European Talent Exchange can be.
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Up top, Fat Dog played a blinding show in Groningen back in January, before going on to be booked for 17 festivals across the continent. In second place, Mercury winners English Teacher scored nine bookings, while Ireland’s YARD notched up eight.
The stats move from genre to genre, showing the depth of the programme. Irish indie-folk types Kingfishr won seven bookings, while CLASH favourite yune pinku was rewarded with six.
The full breakdown can be found online.
CLASH actually caught Fat Dog live in action at Eurosonic Noorderslag 2024, writing:
Not many bands could pull off a seven-minute song about slugs over rave beats and Middle Eastern synths, but boy, do these beautifully batshit boys do it with aplomb.
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The feedback from both fans and artists on the event was overwhelmingly positive, with Eurosonic Noorderslag reinforcing its reputation as one of Europe’s pre-eminent spots for new music. International in scope, it also does an exceptional job of linking up emerging from the Netherlands, with Dutch artist Yin Yin commenting…
“It’s a great opportunity for Dutch bands and I think the exchange programme makes it easier for them to make the step to playing abroad on festivals…”
The track record of the ESNS Exchange is evident from the outset, with a plethora of artists across the continent testifying to its impact. Belgian group The Haunted Youth owe their early velocity to the acceleration provided by the programme, commenting:
“It catapulted us into a new league and we got a lot of cool shows coming off Eurosonic and you could just feel it in the air, the label was excited, the bookers were excited, the band is excited so it really did great things for us…”
The Exchange has been in operation since 2003, and in that time it’s helped 2292 artists from 36 countries play a grand total of 5675 shows, tied to 197 partner festivals in 44 countries. It’s a cross-industry platform, a joint force that aligns festivals, media, and music export offices.
Watch a mini-documentary on ESNS Exchange below.
Eurosonic Noorderslag 2025 runs between January 15th – 18th.
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