Talent Exchange Website

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation is best known for Jazz Fest, WWOZ 90.7 FM, and several other programs which provide cultural and educational value to the community.  But during this years Jazz Fest, the foundation launched a talent exchange website dubbed Sync Up to aid local artist in creating connections with music industry buyers.

The website is a search portal where event producers, film supervisors, or anyone looking for music for commercial use can purchase licenses from a database of Louisiana music.  Buyers can select from a variety of geners such as blues, zydeco, jazz, and rock while sampling tracks or adding them to a playlist.  They can also use the search bar to look up songs by mood, tempo, or artist.  You can also search artists upcoming performances by date, genre, and region.

Almost like an eBay for Louisiana musicians, artists can create an account which activates their own public page displaying pictures, videos, and songs.  Buyers also get an account to save music for later consideration or to buy and download it.  An internal messaging system even lets music buyers contact artists and their licensing/booking representative directly for more business.

The winner in all this is the artist.  Take Little Freddie King for example, whose juke joint blues style is classic New Orleans.  He has his own page listing his music, upcoming performances, website and bio.  Most of the musicians on the site are independent and don't have booking agents, whose jobs is to get their songs placed in films and TV shows.

Little Freddie King Profile Page

Scott Aiges, Director of Programs, Marketing & Communications for the foundation explains why this site is so important.  "Although many of our artists may have web sites or MySpace pages, it’s hard for them to get noticed in the sea of other sites that exist. So we are trying to use our leverage and visibility to aggregate – or bring together – all of the independent musicians to one site where professionals can easily search for music that meets their needs." says Aiges.