At the top of August, the 30th anniversary of the legendary metal festival Wacken Open Air took place in Schleswig-Holstein, a village within Wacken, Germany. Wacken is one of the most established metal festivals worldwide with around 85,000 guests, and over 170 bands across eight stages. The festival is already sold out for 2020, just 21 hours after tickets went on sale.
Get a small sample of the annual metal event below:
The company behind Wacken is ICS Festival Service GmbH, which organizes a number of other events skewing towards the metal and rock genres including Full Metal Cruise, Hamburg Metal Dayz, Metal Monday, Zum Wackinger, Metal Church, StrongmanRun and many more.
The Orchard was proud to see many acts from our distributed labels:
Primordial (Metal Blade Records)
Uriah Heep (Frontiers Music s.r.l)
Axxis (Phonotraxx Publishing)
Dragony (Limb Music)
Hamferð (Metal Blade Records)
The Crown (Metal Blade Records)
Prong (SPV, Steamhammer)
Fiddler´s Green (Deaf Shepherd Recordings)
Downfall of Gaia (Metal Blade Records)
For I Am King (Redfield Records)
Mono Inc.(SPV, NoCut)
SKYND (SKYND)
Michale Graves (Hydraulic Entertainment)
Crematory (SPV, Steamhammer)
Septicflesh (Season of Mist)
& more
Dennis Rose (our resident metal expert and Senior Label Manager) and Christian Frahm (Senior Marketing Manager) attended this year’s Wacken Festival and took part in beneficial meetings throughout the days.
Discussions called upon professionals in the metal scene whom are very well connected and have thorough knowledge of the genre. A key takeaway pertained to the idea that while press agencies still offer their basic setup, trends show that the metal genre is leaning more and more in the direction of influencer marketing. Although print in this genre is still unusually strong across the German market, the actors search more and more for options to target their fanbase directly through online influencers, digital advertisements and fan communication. Authentic campaigns and word of mouth are still the main factors in becoming established in the metal industry.
We enjoyed our time and are eager to return next year… tickets pending.
