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 I thought I could get formal music training while I learned how to make movies […]
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 this.” Before long, you’re “on a roster,” but it seems that all your manager ever […]
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 of dollars in royalties from YouTube views and iTunes ringtone sales. Except, according to news […]
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 things that might make you think twice the next time you want to complain about […]
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 as long as that between Beyonce and Mathew Knowles. Our gossip-crazed culture really wants to […]
