Maybe it’s a sudden wave of nostalgia, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my senior year of high school. At the time, I was taking piano lessons and thinking about film school. So I picked a college where…
Category
Music Management
How to get out of a bad music management contract
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…
What Rebecca Black can teach you about music contracts.
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…
Is it tough to make a living as a music manager? Ask Quincy Jones.
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…
No more “Dadager” for Beyonce
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…
Why you want your manager, your business manager, and your booking agent to work for different agencies.
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…
Creating a positive culture for your music management agency.
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…
Paramore Breakup: How Managers Influence Artists
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…
Music Management Skills: Get Others Involved
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…
Giving yourself the space to shine.
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…
Music Management Skills: Act as if you’ve already got the power to make your artist a star.
“Fake it until you make it.” That’s frequent advice in the music industry. Just look at Lady Gaga. Folks that know her well can tell you about the tipping point when she went from another New York singer/songwriter to a…
Music Management Skills: Network in person, not just online.
For most of the past few weeks, I’ve been offline more than online. And those moments I’ve been online, I’ve been working exclusively on client projects instead of mixing in networking and promotion. I’m not intentionally becoming a social media…