Waves Festival Stages Successful Hybrid Edition In Vienna

The organizers of Waves Festival in Vienna, Austria, are happy with their first hybrid edition, which consisted of offline and online program points, Sept. 10-12. Pollstar reached out to festival director Thomas Heher to learn more. 

Over these past months, event organizers had to be very creative – even more creative than during normal times – in order to be allowed to host events. 

The team behind Austria’s festival for new talent, and music conferenced, Waves Vienna, had worked out and played through a multitude of possibilities and variations with the local authorities, but in the end, it was clear that the event would have to do without live concerts.

Still, the festival’s founder and director, Thomas Heher, praised the “very good support from the city of Vienna,” which supports the festival financially.

“We didn’t need any additional permits for the festival and the measures we had to take because of Covid-19 were very clear and had been planned for us very early on,” he told Pollstar.

As Heher explained, “most of the tickets were sold out, but in view of the increasing [Covid] numbers, some people did not come on short notice.”

A total of 533 visitors were present on site at WUK during the three days of the festival, an additional 17,456 unique viewers watched 261,383 minutes of streamed content online.

To make of for the lack of live concerts, pre-recorded live sets were shown on three online channels and at the public viewing at WUK.

These sets had been recorded by more than 70 national and international acts, who would have normally introduced themselves to the live professionals visiting Waves each year, particularly to spot new talent.

Featured artists included Porridge Radio, S1MBA, Fo Sho and TseSho from this year’s two focus countries UK and Ukraine.

Participation in the panels and workshops of Waves Conference was also possible online and offline. 97 participants took place in the discussions on site. The sessions, which covered various topics relevant to the music industry, was broadcast live online. The individual events are still available for download.

Pollstar wanted to know, if a conference and showcase festival can be organized in an economically viable way under the current restrictions. 

Heher’s response: “No, not really. Two thirds of our budget is made up of sponsorship and ticket income. We missed both this year, which is why we were not able to implement as many things in the streaming area as we would have liked.”

On of his personal takeaways: “The communication for an online event must also take place online in the first place. In the case of the streams, we launched a major online campaign on Friday, and this was immediately reflected in the viewer numbers.”

Waves Festival culminated with the presentation of the XA – Music Export Award on the final night.

A jury of seven international industry representatives chose singer-songwriter Maria Burger alias OSKA. The musician from Austria’s Waldviertel region, who now lives in the capital Vienna, was able to prevail over the seven other Austrian newcomer acts.

The XA – Music Export Award is a joint initiative of mica – music austria, Austrian Music Export, Austro Mechana/SKE Fonds, Radio FM4 and Waves Vienna. 

The aim is to support Austrian artists at an early stage of their career and, after building a national base, to help them make the step out of Austria onto the international stage.

OSKA will receive €3,500 ($4,100) and the promise of support from Austrian Music Export, FM4 and Waves Festival in the coming year, including slots at partner festivals and showcases.