Bruce Houghton wrote an excellent blog post about band managers and today’s music business. Managing a band differs from managing an electronic music act or DJ, but there are similarities. I’ve been now part of Misc. Management for about two years, a relatively short part of Misc’s nine year history, but definitely a very active one. So – if Bruce is asking “Where have all the good managers gone?”, I’m asking what is it that makes a good manager? And is exposing a new talent on manager’s responsibility? What is it that young artists should do in the world of smaller and longer careers? And finally, what if managing doesn’t make you rich?
Finding good talent is the hardest job in this business. Exposing it, breaking it through, is almost as difficult.
Bob Lefsetz: Saving the music business
In the field of electronic music being part of an agency is considered valuable for the artist’s career. It might be right, but the role of the agency is often overestimated, too. Young artists expect their career to get an instant boost from being in a respected artist roster and are ready to give the responsibility to the management: “Go on, make me famous.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about Misc. artists here. The artists I’m privileged to represent know their responsibility and part of the work. A couple of months ago we finished DJ Orkidea’s Metaverse album tour, which was a good example of what the artist must these days do for successful results.
If all the Web2.0 consultants are telling the companies to be present in the web, write blogs and discuss in order to get loyal customers, why shouldn’t artists do the same?
The management can’t represent artist on social networks and web communities. It’s the artist himself who needs to be personally present, write, ask, answer, listen, meet, share and interact in places where the people are.
But all this 2.0. thing needs to be innovative – if you were thinking about artist writing forum posts or MySpace blogs here, your way of thinking is old-fashioned. And most importantly – it’s the artist who should come up with these ideas and the management’s task is to support it.
We are approaching the times when digital music can’t be marketed, it can only be found. The times when the management is promoting the artists in order to get more gigs sold is over and something much more exciting is ahead. And it means we have hell of an amount of work to do.
So, let’s talk about work.
[…]the new music business is creating a new musical middle class. Rather than a few flash in pan stars, we’re seeing more smaller but longer careers.
Bruce Houghton: Where have all the good managers gone?
I couldn’t agree more here. Longer careers mean bigger amount of work and patience. I’ve seen several DJs hoping to break through but unable to understand that the more influence you will get in the music scene the more work you must do. Also – breakthrough rarely happens overnight, but that’s what people seem to hope. I’m sure doing 10 years of work for the breakthrough, finally making it and then slowly fading out is much more rewarding than working hard half a year, breaking through and then fading out.
Artists should be happy and appreciate of where they stand now. Grass is always greener on the other side, but you can’t know if you’d be talented enough of keep it that green if you were there.
“[…] Managers will be more willing to manage if there’s money, but for there to be money, they need to do a good job managing! This seems to be why a lot of people give managing a shot, and then realize its not worth the headache!”
Above is a part of Gavroche’s comment to Bruce’s post. Artist management is often seen as a wealthy business which it definitely is if you’re the manager of Madonna. Most of times it’s not. But still it has a huge cultural value and big importance to the artists. I haven’t gotten rich while working at Misc, but I’ve met incredible amount of new people, made great friends, travelled a lot, explored new music and been part of influencing Finnish electronic music culture. If I would count my hourly salary, I’d definitely make more money at McDonald’s. I do not regret any of the moments I’ve worked for free for the purpose of making our artists more famous and electronic music more visible.
To sum this all up, I hope you have time to see Tony Robbins’ short speech of Why We Do What We Do. And after it, no matter if you’re an artist or manager or DJ – or anything – ask yourself what is it that you want to do and why and then do it.
But don’t forget to be happy of what you’ve achived already.
There’s a huge difference between manager and an agent. Many of the electronic music artist’ representives, called as agencys, are playing the manager role, but are actually a bunch of crap (not talking about Misc. in any way, as Misc’s philosophy is totally different than ordinary agency or management). Easy money if you have some hot names, if not, too bad – then you try to recruit some upcoming honcho and hope he’ll brake through and you get the booking fees. The relation is thin and easy to break up.
There is no way you could be a manager of all the artists, when you have a roster of 15 dj’s. This is the difficulty many of the good dj’s confront.
They get promised more than the agent can provide. A manager keeps YOU up, he doesn’t suggest the next artist when the budget doesn’t meet the fee or for some other reason why the performance seems to be a no go.
If you compare the situation to some basic rock or pop bands (not the “big stars”), they have almost always the booking agent AND a manager, already because of the record labels and all the legal issues, etc. But they work their ass off for the band to get it up.
To be a good manager, it requires alot. And you truly need to love your job to be a good one.