European Union: A conversation with IMPALA’s Helen Smith

By Ben Home

For IMPALA CEO Helen Smith, Eurosonic is a totem of the music industry calendar: an annual celebration of the best of the independent sector across Europe. In its essence, the festival’s mission goes hand in hand with that of IMPALA, which formed in 2000 as the Independent Music Companies Association. IMPALA has more than 6,000 members spanning independent companies and trade associations in 33 different countries in Greater Europe.

“I think Eurosonic has two roles,” begins Smith, who is giving the Keynote address at the festival’s 40th edition. “One is the artist side, the showcase is really important and is relied upon by programmers for a lot of different festivals. The other is the industry side: professionals from across the industry attending the conference, in the fields of recording, publishing, and live. Eurosonic has carved out a great niche, and it is quite an achievement to have maintained a real key position in the calendar for all this time.”

This year, many of those gathered in Groningen might want to pay close attention to what Smith has to say because, as she reflects on her 2025 to-do list, it becomes abundantly clear that IMPALA is playing a direct and crucial role in just about every debate being contested across the music business at the moment.

“The fact that independence has a distinct voice has been so crucial on all sorts of different fronts,” she says, before reeling through a list of topics including AI, collective licensing, sustainability, inclusion, consolidation, streaming and copyright, all of which have occupied her in-tray at one point or another during 2025.

Smith points to IMPALA’s own equity, diversity and inclusion charter and its carbon calculator to hammer home the commitment the organisation has to helping its members maximise their impact. “It’s about being able to explain in simple terms why culture is important in all these different decisions that have to be taken,” she opines. “And everybody working together is such an important part of that.”

“The big message for the sector now is to look at where the next big players in music are coming from and to make sure that our members can grow,” she says, highlighting the importance of preserving the presence of independent distributors. “It’s also about making sure there’s a focus on the idea that it’s not ‘one size fits all’ and showing how the sector is evolving so people can operate at different levels while having a level playing field.”

That, Smith contends, is the most important aspect of independence, “to recognise the ultimate challenge and goal of working together”. “It shouldn't matter whether you are a big or small independent,” she says. “Or even if you're a self-releasing artist,” she says.

Smith, as it becomes clear during our conversation, has absolute belief in the power of the sector she spends each day fighting for. In summing up what makes it so special, she brings up K7! founder Horst Weidenmüller, who passed away in February 2025.

“Horst used to talk about collective intelligence and the idea that, together we're more intelligent, because we are more diverse and inclusive,” Smith says. “I think that was one of the main reasons for creating IMPALA in the first place. Because you could see the great things were being done in one country and great things were being done in another. And then when it was formed, all of a sudden you had one plus one equals three or four, not two like it did in the old world.”

Smith believes that the sector has opportunities to “maximise the commercial value of what we do”, all while “being part of something which is new and independent in all the possible interpretations of that word”. “The independent sector is quite unique in how it works together,” she concludes. “We’re all competing fiercely, but we're also collaborating, because we know that we can achieve so much more together.”