Understanding Artist-Manager Relationships
Scooter Braun discovered global pop star Justin Bieber when he was only 13 years old. Since then, Justin Bieber has sold over 150 million records worldwide and has signed multimillion-dollar brand deals. While synergy is vital in artist-manager relationships, a certain level of commitment is required from both entities.
To understand how this relationship works, let’s first break down the roles.
An artist is like a company. There are various departments in a company like music and video releases, social media marketing, publishing, touring, and promotion etc. These departments make up everyone on the artist’s team. Be it a social media manager, or a booking agent or a publisher.
The manager is the CEO of said company. Their goal is to develop career strategies for and with the artist and to handle all the coordination of the plans. This includes publicity, marketing, show booking, music and video releases, funding, product releases and merchandising. Until the artist and the manager get to a point in their careers where they can have multiple members on their team, it is not only the manager’s job but the artist’s responsibility as well to help with the above-mentioned roles. This requires a strong work ethic, ambition and the commitment to do what it takes on the artist’s end.
As an artist, you are the brand. Bringing a manager on board helps you define your goals and create strategies. The manager helps you, the artist, with creating opportunities for you to achieve these goals to build your brand. A good manager will guide an artist through the music industry and help an artist know their rights and royalties.
The manager is a mediator between you (the artist) and the industry (publishing deals, record label deals, producers, co-writers, etc). Some of the responsibilities of a manager are to
Develop and negotiate contracts on behalf of the artist.
Be able to draft business plans, marketing plans, and product plans.
Manage budgets and cash flows as well as writing grant and sponsorship proposals.
Develop and coordinate marketing, advertising and promotional materials.
Create plans to build a fan base and analyse data and set goals and track and measure results.
Pursue deals like record deals, agency deals, publishing deals, book shows, tours
...and much more. The manager does a lot of administrative work. They create an itinerary for the artists and manage the artist’s calendar. The artist-manager relationship is much like a marriage. While the artist tends to be the creative director and the manager the business director, each artist-manager relationship looks different. A manager helps develop or support the artist's creative decisions. Sometimes, an artist is also interested in the music business and chimes in with the decision making. Other times, a manager might give an artist some lyrics that might fit better for a song. Together they make a team.