Conference to put focus on music business

New Orleans CityBusiness, Apr 8, 2002 by Brett Clanton

Build a biotechnology sector. Lure Fortune 500 companies here. Add a runway at the airport. When city leaders talk about growing New Orleans' economy, many of the same ideas keep popping up. But organizers of a new conference at Loyola University this month are challenging city leaders to consider investing in an overlooked industry that they say has untold potential to bring money and jobs to New Orleans: the music business.

A list of national speakers at the Future of New Orleans Music Symposium, coming to Loyola on April 30, will help them make the point. Patterned after the widely attended Future of Music Coalition meeting held in Washington, D.C., earlier this year, the symposium will start off by addressing the problems with the current structure of the recording industry. Most significant: The "big five" record companies -- all debt-ridden from recent acquisitions -- now focus only on signing and marketing artists with platinum record potential. Forced to fend for themselves are many jazz, folk or other niche musicians who may not have the same mass appeal. The current system cannot continue, say conference organizers. Record companies are losing money. Consumers are weary of over-marketed clone bands. Artists are tired of a monopolistic system that has denied them access to distribution channels. That thesis is the launching point for the conference's main discussion: How New Orleans can capitalize on a new, emerging system that puts more power in the hands of independent artists, largely by using the Internet to connect directly with fans. "I think the over-arching purpose of this conference is as a wake-up call," says Reid Wick, a Loyola University staff member who is helping to organize the symposium. New Orleans has all of the raw materials to cash in on the next phase of the music industry and none of the incentives to maintain the current system, like a Nashville or Los Angeles has, he says. "All someone has to do is light the match," says Jerry Goolsby, co-chair of Loyola's Music Business Program. Conference sponsors include the Louisiana Music Commission, Loyola University's Music Business Program, the University of New Orleans' College of Business, the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences and OffBeat Magazine. The local sponsors are hoping New Orleans Mayor-elect Ray Nagin will be the one who finally recognizes the importance of treating music as a key economic development tool. Nagin has scored points with music industry leaders for promising to consider repealing the city's 2% amusement tax and backing other musician-friendly proposals. Conference organizers are hopeful the new mayor will help keep big name music talent here, offer tax incentives to music-related businesses and slash fees for live music venues, which have forced some places to quit hiring musicians. A Nagin spokesman says the incoming mayor is focused on assembling his staff right now and will soon unveil his specific policy agenda, including whatever plans he has for the music industry. Fifteen panelists have been invited to speak at the conference. Among the confirmed are Bob Emmer, former vice president of Warner Bros. Records and producer of such performers as Alice Cooper and Blondie; New York copyright attorney Whitney Broussard; Andy Gadiel, president of JamBase.com, a Web site dedicated to promoting improvisational bands; and Jenny Toomey and Walter McDonough, directors of Washington, D.C.-based Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit organization made up of musicians and experts in technology, public policy and intellectual property law. Loyola's Goolsby says he hopes to have either Nagin or Bill Hines, the chairman of local economic development group MetroVision, wrap up the conference with a capstone address. MetroVision, following the lead of the state Department of Economic Development, created an arts and entertainment cluster last year to study ways in which the business and music communities could grow the local music industry together.*