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The Music Biz: Scott Aiges Pulls Back The Curtain

Guillaume Laurent
/
Flickr

Consider the musicians.

After the crowd goes home, after they pack their gear and instruments, when their van rolls through the night and the smell of smoke still lingers on their clothes, the bottom line remains. The business of music never sleeps.

Artist royalties, mechanical royalties, revenue streams and recording contracts occupy the minds and sleepless nights of managers and artists the country over as they head to their next gig.

You could fill a college course with everything an artist needs to know. Trust us, they have.

This is the bread-and-butter of Scott Aiges. He’s managed musicians (Astral Project, The Continental Drifters, and Royal Fingerbowl to name just three) and teaches the business of music at Tulane. For awhile he was a music critic at The Times-Picayune and he’s even worked in the halls of power, serving as the director of music business development for the City of New Orleans.

Today, Aiges is the director of Programming, Marketing and Communications for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation.

(The Foundation supports Music Inside Out through a competitive grant.)

And before you say “What’s this got to do with me?” allow us to suggest that there’s plenty for the casual music lover to understand about how the music business works these days. And Scott Aiges is the perfect person to guide us through the spreadsheets and contract language of the biz.

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Gwen Thompkins is a New Orleans native, NPR veteran and host of WWNO's Music Inside Out, where she brings to bear the knowledge and experience she amassed as senior editor of Weekend Edition, an East Africa correspondent, the holder of Nieman and Watson Fellowships, and as a longtime student of music from around the world.