We founded the Powerline Agency in Berlin at the beginning of the 90s. At that time the music industry still had to look up the term "crisis" in the dictionary as an obscure word, and there was a pervading sense of incredible astonishment that a band like Nirvana had catapulted itself directly from small clubs to major festival stages. Punk rock had also not yet fully arrived in the mainstream. We named our agency after a Hüsker-Dü song and situated ourselves somewhere in the expanse between D.I.Y. and the wretched world of small business. We organized tours for American underground bands like Samian and Green Day, and at the same time developed a special fondness for bands that were later canonized as belonging to the "Hamburg School": Die Sterne, Blumfeld, Tocotronic, and somehow even Die Goldenen Zitronen. An independent and independent-minded music scene had emerged in the province of Upper Bavaria, leading the British magazine The Wire to ask with some surprise: "Is Weilheim the new Seattle?" The Notwist, Console, and the Tied + Tickled Trio were plowing very different musical fields, from post-hardcore to electro to modal dub-jazz. We booked the first tours for all three acts and in the meantime we’ve been working with all of them for more than 15 years now. The cosmopolitan duo Stereo Total has always had a special place in Berlin. Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring have been touring around the world since the mid of the 90s, and we are proud to have had the privilege of managing the two artists’ careers since that time. At the end of the 90s, an extremely lively and internationally relevant music scene revolving around the galerie berlintokyo was developing here in Berlin with its host, Jeans Team, taking the lead. Peaches and Gonzales improvised their first shows in a rear courtyard basement that was constantly filled to overflowing; over the next several years, we booked all of the international tours for the two of them. Since that time, Berlin has attracted international artists like a magnet, and we are the agency for many acts such as The Whitest Boy Alive, which today are associated around the world with Berlin. More and more frequently we have been departing from purely musical terrain. We represent authors such as Christiane Rösinger, Heinz Strunk, and Oliver Polak, and go on stage at the theater and other venues with Stermann & Grissemann and Studio Braun. We also expanded our small, company portfolio in the mid-90s by adding Flirt99 Music Publishing. This is where we can bring our extensive experience in the music business to the table. At Flirt99, the concept known in business jargon as "artist development" is something that is also not seldom the result of longstanding friendships. By contrast, the big, publicly-traded music firms are nearly in a panic these days trying to keep artists with them, often using dubious strategies. It’s pretty clear that no one is going to get out of a largely homemade crisis with those kinds of tactics. Meanwhile, we prefer to continue to work enthusiastically with shrewd young bands over the long haul. Bands like Ja, Panik. Because even though it’s been suggested often, a crisis in the music industry doesn’t mean that there’s a music crisis – not by a long shot.