GEO FOCUS PORTUGAL
Facing Uncertainty T
he history of the people of the Iberian Peninsula has been one of expansion
and global infl uence. Even now, the legacy of Portugal’s reign as a colonial superpower can be seen in the 250 million Portuguese speakers found around the world today (making it the sixth most spoken fi rst language). While it may have lost its starred global status as of late, the pro-audio industry in Portugal continues to expand within the country’s borders with industry professionals saying the market for studios continues to grow. T e live sector has also experienced exponential growth with the number of music festivals rising each
year including the internationally renowned Optimus Alive, Primavera Sound Porto, and Rock in Rio Lisboa, among others.
Yet while the live and recording industries have seen a boom in the past decade, the Portuguese fi lm industry has struggled due to a lack of subsidies and government support. A new fi lm act passed, but not yet enforced, in Portugal allowed for state fi nancing body Institute for Cinema and Audiovisual (ICA) to obtain funding through payments from fi ve pay TV operators. Yet the operators have fl at-out refused to pay the required €3.5 per subscriber, calling the required payments unconstitutional and demanding
Festival Culture
The people behind Talkfest, the only forum in Portugal dedicated exclusively to music festivals, run us through the recent changes to the Portuguese music festival scene.
How has the market for live music and festivals in Portugal changed in the past fi ve years? What could potentially be attributed to that change?
T e music festival industry has had many changes during the last few years with the main change being the increased number of festivals. For a small country like Portugal, having around 120 festivals in 2013 can obviously be good for one side (a lot of events to choose and to go to) and a diffi culty for the industry that has to fi ght for the audience. Another change that is getting dangerous when you have a lot of music festivals on off er is the [economic] crisis. T e crisis aff ects many aspects of the industry from the audience that doesn’t have the money to go to festivals to the sponsors that can’t aff ord to
18 June 2014
sponsor the events. Government fi nancial support for the promoters has also decreased and music festival management are struggling to make their events happen.
Overall, I would say that the industry in Portugal is, at the moment, at its maturity and for the next few years there will be a natural selection of events and only the ones that off er a good headliner or have a special and diff erent concept will survive.
Do music festivals in Portugal support local artists as well as larger international acts?
Music festivals in Portugal are starting to promote local artists, not just because they have a smaller budget to organise the event but also because music in Portugal is developing and it is getting really
strong. Usually there are always Portuguese artists even if most of the time they open the festival programmes.
Actually, in the last few years a number of promoters started to organise specifi c festivals for Portuguese music and they are having interesting results. International acts are the main
reason for festivalgoers to choose to go to one or another festival. At the Talkfest 2013 survey about the Portuguese festivalgoers profi le, 48% of the audience declared that they decided to go to a festival having in mind the acts of the event and the headliners.
Lastly, how important is sound quality for both the audience and the bands/promoters?
In general sound is very important for both the audience and the bands. At the moment in Portugal most people go to festivals because of the music and to have that experience in the best conditions. In the Talkfest 2013 survey 31% of those enquired pointed out sound quality and other logistics as relevant at their favourite festival.
www.talkfest.eu www.audiomedia.com
a say in what projects are being fi nanced with their funds. “In 2013 Portuguese cinema lives in an impasse situation with the constant postponement of funding and a lack of compliance with the legislative framework by various parties,” commented Mario Micaelo of the Agência da Curta Metragem and Curtas Vila do Conde Film Festival in a speech titled Portuguese Cinema: One Year After Zero given during the opening of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival last November.
Earlier this year, the Portuguese government approved an amendment to the current fi lm law that reduced the €3.5 to €1.75 per subscription.
POPULATION: 10.5 MILLION
While the eurozone crisis has damaged most of the media industries in Portugal, the market for recording studios and live music continues to grow – but for how long?
Pandora da Cunha Telles, president of the Association of Film and Audiovisual Producers (APCA), has declared to the LUSA news agency that the amendments are “a short-term compromise” and that “in moral terms, it represents a backspace. It solves a treasury issue but, morally, for the country, it is not a good omen: changing a law because you can’t enforce it!”
A major fall in attendance hasn’t helped the situation either. According to the European Audiovisual Observatory average movie theatre attendance in Portugal dropped 12.3% last year with the decrease attributed to the recession and a lack of local products.
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