It happens all the time. You’re having a great night on stage, and somebody slick tells you that they’d love to represent you. In a whirlwind, you sign a contract because they assure you that “it’s boilerplate” and “everybody signs this.” Before long, you’re “on a roster,” but it seems that all your manager ever [...]
It doesn’t take long for partners to become enemies when a record “pops” and royalty checks start rolling in. Rebecca Black’s bizarre path to the Billboard charts has generated buzz about what she’s going to do with tens of thousands of dollars in royalties from YouTube views and iTunes ringtone sales. Except, according to news [...]
At 78, you couldn’t possibly begrudge Quincy Jones the right to slow down a little. “Slowing down” for Q means working on just one album project at a time. This powerful career retrospective and interview from The National reveals some things that might make you think twice the next time you want to complain about [...]
The entertainment press buzzes this morning with news that Beyonce has dropped her dad as her manager. It’s not unusual for artists and managers to evolve in different directions, but it’s very rare for a successful family partnership to last as long as that between Beyonce and Mathew Knowles. Our gossip-crazed culture really wants to [...]
Young Buck’s not having a great year. In the wake of his recent arrest, we’re learning more of the details about his money troubles, and the feud with 50 Cent over an unpaid $300,000 loan. He owes the IRS even more than that, and his record label’s already filed a $10 million claim with his [...]
It’s easy for music management agencies to fall into a stereotype when it comes to corporate culture. Managers often get called cutthroat, rude, angry, or worse. That doesn’t have to be the case. Angela Haines from the Huffington Post chronicles the launch of Market Monkeys, an indie music management agency whose founder had the [...]
A post by Thursday Bram got me thinking about something I wrote years ago about the relationship between artist and manager. “Musicians get to be the CEOs of their own small companies. And CEOs get to hire staffs.” I want you to think about your music career as a business that needs to please both [...]
While revising the site’s “About” page, I realized that it’s been a while since I wrote about one of the most important skills for a music manager to develop: the ability to rally and display support. Bands often get stuck on bookings because talent buyers hate to coordinate shows directly with artists. It doesn’t help [...]
Pamela Slim writes that it’s easy for creative people to fool themselves into thinking that their strengths can overcompensate for environmental variables. Have you ever watched yourself spiral downward with something that’s usually a cinch? It happens to musicians and to artist managers all the time. It’s tempting to want to get into the music [...]
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