Meet The Danish Music Bizz: Jakob Sørensen – Managing Director and Partner, The Bank

SPOT is much more than concerts: Denmark has also got significant agents in various parts in the music business, and while we are counting down to the festival, we aim to present some of the people you can meet at SPOT in brief Q&As.

This time it is Jakob Sørensen, MD/Partner, The Bank (Management, publishing etc.)

What do you work with?

The Bank works with all of it. Management, Booking, Label and Publishing. We have a 360 service, but artists don’t need to plug into it all.

What is your business background?
I’ve been in the music business for around 20 years now. Before that I was a radio host on both commercial and public broadcasting radio channels. After that I started out as a radio plugger at EMI and then I became product manager.

What are the most important, exciting, well known, or interesting things in your portfolio?
Over the years, I have been working with acts like Alphabeat, Nephew, Nik & Jay, Lukas Graham. My new company is working with Hugo Helmig, Eloq, The Minds Of 99 and AV AV AV.

What is the most important thing to happen to Danish music in the last five years?
On the Danish scene, the biggest thing has been Lukas Graham and MØ showing the way into the international market. Showing that it can be done and that the quality of Danish artist is among the best in the world. Especially the team around Lukas Graham has been leading the way. Apart from that my own company of course:)

What are the most important questions or pressing issues in the music business right now?
The biggest change in the last 5 years has been the shift from sales to streams. Basically, this development has killed the album as a commercial drive in the business. But the interesting thing is that it’s still working as the artistic drive for both artists and audience. Financially and marketing-wise that’s a hard one to crack.

Which international business people and lines of business would you like to meet at SPOT this year?
I’m looking forward to meeting some of the guys we are working with internationally on Hugo Helmig. Then my team and I also hope to see more of the very influential sync people that SPOT has been so good at getting to the festival.

What are you going to do at SPOT/what are your goals for this year’s SPOT?
Like always, it’s to learn new things about the business, meet new people and enjoy fantastic new music.

Besides your own artists, which ones are you looking forward to seeing at SPOT this year?
I will go for a lot of the seminars this year, but apart from that I tend to follow the hype. I use people I bump in to at the festival to lead me to the great gigs. In that way, you see stuff you didn’t expect and you get to hang out with great people.