Mixing music and business
Conference takes a look at nighttime economies
For Nova Scotia Music Week, it’s all about the business of making music.
The annual event, which began back in 1997, opened Thursday in Truro with around 1,100 musicians from across Nova Scotia showcasing and hoping to learn from the music professionals taking part.
“We just opened a couple of hours ago and the conference is happening right now as we speak,” said Scott Long, executive director of Music Nova Scotia, which runs the event.
“We have 70 music professionals here that are a combination of agents, festival buyers, publishers, people from movies and television, record labels, and they have a chance to meet with all these people and showcase in front of them.
“Hopefully if things go well we can do some business.”
Over the weekend, the annual conference will touch on topics important to working musicians. On Saturday, the conference will hold a one-day summit on the nighttime economy in this province and how it can be improved for those people like musicians who tend to be employed during the evenings.
“It’s an entire day of education and training sessions around how we can leverage our nighttime economy but do so in a safe responsible way,” said Long. “We have people coming from around the world and it is their jobs to create a healthy nighttime economy where the music industry and entertainment industry can thrive and audiences can be safe and enjoy the benefits of the economic spinoffs that come with the entertainment sector in the nighttime economy.”
Long says the nighttime economy involves what happens in a community after 5 p.m. when other businesses tend to close.
“It does make sense for any community to look at and examine it in a closer way,” said Long. “We’ve been coming to Truro I think for our fourth time to do music week here and we see growth in this community in the nighttime economy and more venues are booking entertainment that before we came here to do the event.
“A very small rural community may not have that but there are lots of communities in Nova Scotia where they can leverage opportunities around business that happens after five o’clock at night.”
While the conference is expected to return to Truro again next year, Music Nova Scotia will be soliciting bids for communities to host music week between 2020 and 2022.
“So there’s an opportunity for Sydney to host again,” said Long. “It’s all about developing new talent and that’s what is exciting about it for us is that we can showcase new and up and coming acts each year and we encourage the public to come out and discover their new favourite Nova Scotia artists.”