What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business

by Peter M Thall

  WHAT A PERSONAL MANAGER SHOULD (AND SHOULD NOT) BE EXPECTED TO DO

  Your manager is the primary contact person for all of your business affairs, and should be able to act in your place and on your behalf. In essence, your personal manager should operate as your chief of staff in reducing to their essentials all aspects of your legal, financial, and artistic career. Your manager should

  • in consultation with a licensed booking agent, arrange your live performance bookings, including the size and nature of venues and the manner in which the live performance will be presented;

  • work with your record company on everything from approvals of album artwork to coordinating the choice of producer, location of recording, establishment of recording budget, rental of equipment and lodging, travel, promotional appearances, press and publicity, and exploitation of your records;

  • assist your attorney in negotiating record, publishing, and merchandise agreements;

  • approve allocations of monies expended on your behalf for advertising;

  • provide informed advice and counsel on all decisions regarding your ultimate choices of producer, agent, accountant, booking agent, video director, and, possibly, attorney as well.

  Your manager should also work with you to establish the image that you wish to project and the manner best suited to project—and to protect—that image, and help you set goals and establish strategies to achieve them.

  A personal manager’s role is not to be underestimated, but it is not always what you think it is either. Unfortunately, management contracts do not usually cite the specific areas in which a manager provides services. For example, they do not usually include language about ensuring that your rent is paid on time, your rehearsal hall electricity bill is paid on time, or that, when you arrive in London to record your album, you are accompanied by a work permit authorizing you to do so. Without it, you’ll be on the next plane home—at your own expense. Inattention to these kinds of details can wreak havoc with your career, let alone with your management relationship, and if you do not articulate your expectations, preferably in writing, you are likely to be disappointed.

  Before going into details on the personal manager’s role in an artist’s life, a few words are in order about what a manager is not supposed to do. Accept the fact that it is not your personal manager’s job to assume your life responsibilities, or even all of your career responsibilities. Too many artists try to delegate to others all of their responsibilities and in the end regret it. Ultimately, we are all 100% responsible for all of the decisions affecting our lives and careers. But most of us do not have “managers” or others who tell us or, worse, allow us to believe, that they will look after us. It is all too easy for the young artist to defer to someone who wants to take charge, especially if that “someone” is experienced, mature, and successful at selling him- or herself and his or her abilities in a world that most have only read about. Yet artists who look to a manager to live their lives for them and managers who claim to be able to do so are both delusional. You and your manager must also separate out your own respective interests. It is the rare manager who has the objectivity to do this.

  When a manager and artist first meet, they are often on their best behavior, and their wish that their respective interests should dovetail can get in the way of objective thought processes. If they hit it off, and the prospective manager is adept at self-promotion, the artist may be so relieved, and so anxious to get the interviewing process over with, that both artist and manager rush ahead to the next step. Their “love affair” has begun. But the curse of many love-at-first-sight relationships comes along with it. I often think about how marvelously some young attorneys present themselves in interviews, only to disappoint after being asked to write their first contract. Similarly, managers, even those with the most magical appeal, may disappoint when they have to make their first practical decision. (Of course, sales talent is not such a bad attribute for an artist’s personal manager to have.)

  MANAGING THE FIVE STAGES OF AN ARTIST’S CAREER

  There are five distinct stages in the career of a very successful artist:

  1. The beginnings: Your career is just starting to develop.

  2. The marketing stage: You are the opening act (that is, your on-stage time is before 9 p.m.).

  3. Your career is established.

  4. You are a star.

  5. Your career is for all intents and purposes over, but your legacy comprises a catalogue of albums and, possibly, musical compositions—some, all, or none of which you may own or control.

  Of course, not all artists reach stages 3 and 4, but stage 5 is applicable to everyone who has had even the slightest degree of success.

  The roles of the personal manager differ in each of these time frames; the qualifications the artist looks for in a manager differ as well. Ideally, an artist would be able to hire five different managers, one for each stage. However, the financial consequences of attempting to replace a manager as the artist’s career shifts from level to level would likely be devastating, and so the trick is to find a manager who will grow in a manner consistent with the artist’s changing needs.

  The Beginnings

  During the first level of development, your personal manager needs to draw attention to you and build your team—and your chances of success. This is the period of rough demos; amateur-night performances at local clubs; battles of the bands sponsored by local radio; being featured in workshops sponsored by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, Inc. (SESAC), or the Songwriters Hall of Fame; postcard mailings; preliminary introductions to music business professionals such as A&R people; part-time jobs; and, above all, listening and learning—listening to everyone around you, learning the history and the lexicon of the music industry, reading the available books on the business of music, and attending educational forums sponsored by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, as well as the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP), whose principal offices are in New York and Los Angeles.

  From a musical point of view, this is the time you are sharpening your image, developing your craft, discarding almost as much as you write, replacing musicians, and replacing the replacements. It is also the time for concretizing your physical image so that you look the part of what you are trying to communicate. (For some, this is easy. I represented a band that merely wore jeans and T-shirts, which they would remove at some point during the show and throw into the audience. Other bands with fashion supervisors could never match the raw, natural energy and rebellious image that this band had.) This is the time you try to impress on others that you are something new and something special. Long hair, short hair, shaved heads—whatever floats your boat. But a statement must be made or you will be forgotten and melt into the fungible band category and disappear. “Nothing jumped out at me,” the professionals will say.

  Marketing

  This second level of development begins just before you are “discovered” and ends after you have signed a record deal and delivered several albums that have sold in sufficient quantities for the record company to justify expending more money on your career—and not just on a particular single or two. During this stage you are the opening act for a more significant or known performing artist. By this time, your professional team is more or less solid, and you and they have to consolidate—and reconcile—your musical and professional (read “financial”) goals. Do you begin to appear in public with other artists of the same level of success? Do you start writing songs with them? Guesting on their shows? Do you volunteer your time and services for charitable purposes and do you begin to identify those charities whose interests you feel you can advance by your involvement? Do you reconsider whether your band is ready for the big time or whether you need to replace or add one more musician?

  This is the time when your record could be moving up the charts (with a “bullet” in Billboard) but is jus
t as likely to fall off the charts (with an “anchor,” in music biz vernacular) more rapidly than it climbed them. This is the time when the spin on who you are, what you represent, and where you are going (really far) is most appropriately promoted. Many decisions made during this period are of a one-time marketing nature, but at the same time you will be facing issues requiring decisions that you will have to live with for the rest of your career. For example, should you expand or contract your music publishing relationships? Should you expand your reach beyond the United States into other territories of the world, even as the demand for your services is gradually building in your home country? Do you need to revisit your contractual relationship with your manager and try to determine, with your manager, whether his or her expertise, vision, contacts, staff, etc., can support the next phase in your career without help or whether it is time for your manager to consider partnering with another—perhaps other-coast—management firm? Is it worthwhile to move to a booking agency that can partner you with their other acts in a combination that will be synergistic both from a musical and demographic level? Is it appropriate or timely to engage a full-time publicity and public relations firm? A proper consideration of these issues requires time, money, and thought—not just thought on your part and your personal manager’s part, but on the part of your lawyer and business manager as well.

  The Established Career

  During the third level of development, your manager must juggle the various duties that are generated by the very nature of your status in the music industry. This is the time during which you are sought after around the world, and you have to make careful decisions about whether your musical style and material need to be modified or whether doing so might end up destroying a formula that works (from a business point of view). Naturally, your musical style and your songs will tend to evolve anyway, but many artists have messed up their careers at this point by making decisions that, on their face, sounded right but that resulted in their losing the very audiences that supported them in the first place. Ian Hunter left Mott the Hoople just when the band was breaking in a huge way worldwide. Neither he nor the band ever recovered. On the other hand, Phil Collins left Genesis and Rod Stewart left Faces to even greater stardom. The Beatles shifted gears, added cellos, then recorded Sergeant Pepper, creating a musical breakthrough whose effects are still being felt almost fifty years later.

  Stardom

  It is during the fourth level of development that a manager’s true capability is tested. During this period, the manager’s role must be to keep the artist on top by, among other things, sifting through the offers coming in for that artist’s services and by being the catalyst for other opportunities that may be more fitting and appropriate to that artist’s place in the world. The legendary Colonel Parker did not hesitate to maneuver EIvis Presley’s career into television and film, even as his recording and performing career was at its peak. When should an artist or group perform and when not? U-2, Green Day, and the Rolling Stones have gone years between tours, but one gets the impression that their finger is not far from the pulse of their audience. At the same time, through spreading their legendary status, they welcome new and younger audiences to their shows and as purchasers of their records. Managers can help you to understand the dynamics of your audience. Some use tried-and-true marketing techniques such as focus groups and private polls.

  Dealing with the Legacy

  By the fifth stage, the artist’s development is complete. However, there remains a residue of assets, image, and art that require of the personal manager a completely different set of responsibilities, talent, experience, and imagination. It is during this stage that the artist’s catalogue of albums and musical compositions need to be attended to and exploited in order to keep them vital. This stage also requires an understanding by your manager and other professionals charged with looking after your catalogue as to what level of exploitation you want—or will permit. Some artists’ catalogues are available on every compilation album imaginable—and a considerable amount of money is generated from these exploitations. Some artists’ catalogues are available nowhere except as originally released and more than twenty years later are still selling for $18.98 (for example, the Rolling Stones).

  The “old” artists cannot be too thrilled either. Some artists’ recordings are repackaged in deluxe editions, “truck-stop” editions, etc. Some are not. How the artist wants his or her catalogue dealt with after the active career is concluded can depend on the financial security of the artist or, if a group, that of the various members of the group. Uneven needs among members of the group can result in conflict. Post-breakup decision-making should be considered in any agreements among band members.

  REMAKES

  Some lucky artists have a chance to reinvent their recording careers; others try with disastrous results. What happens during the attempts to hit the comeback trail is sort of a hybrid between the fourth and third stages. In essence, these artists are going backward, forced to revisit many of the strategies and goals that they had successfully maneuvered years earlier. Barbra Streisand and the late David Bowie would remake themselves—successfully—each decade, reshaping a developing musical style in their own image. Rod Stewart’s recent interpretations of standards have had phenomenal success.

  Others have not been so fortunate. Blood Sweat & Tears went to Eastern Europe for the State Department in the 1970s, thereby offending the entire political right side of their audience. What did they do to remedy this? They went to Las Vegas to perform at a casino, hoping to recapture it, only to lose the entire left political side of their audience. Pat Benatar recorded a gorgeous jazz-oriented album and was unable to reinvent her Queen of Rock and Roll image. Michael Bolton recorded an album of his secret favorites—classical arias—and then set out upon a quest to kick-start his career with a new album and a new, for him, very hip record label. No one cared—not even those who had been his most devout followers. Ricky Nelson’s disastrous attempt at Madison Square Garden in the 1970s to modernize his image and win new fans led to his successful, if sarcastic, hit record “Garden Party.”

  Touring is another area in which a manager can have tremendous impact. Tim Collins believed in Aerosmith after their demise in the 1980s, and they returned bigger and better than ever—as a result, according to music business insiders, in large part to the vision and relentless effort of their manager. (Historical footnote: They subsequently fired Collins.) Bringing back Deep Purple after more than twenty years was a very successful move, but one requiring delicate management guidance as well. Pairing Mark Knopfler with Emmylou Harris in 2006 was inspired—and profitable. Most notably, in 2005, INXS auditioned a new lead singer on a TV reality show to replace the late and departed Michael Hutchens, thereby jump-starting a new career. And now: Holograms. (see chapter 10, this page).

  A final note: Your old, dusty, and yellowed contracts had better be available or you will not be able to establish ownership or royalty entitlements for such things as “previously unreleased outtakes” or “original demos.” Make sure your manager or attorney provides you with a copy of everything you sign. Don’t depend on them—in fact, don’t depend on anyone but yourself—to keep your contractual heritage alive.

  It is very difficult to maintain communication and democracy among band members during their prime; it is nearly impossible afterward. The musicians go their merry way; some prosper, others do not; some marry, others divorce; some die and their estates are ruled by their exes, their executors, or their children’s guardians. Their contracts are over, their high-powered personal managers and lawyers and business managers are long gone (remember a percentage of no earnings equals zero), and their catalogues—their legacies—are slowly but surely degrading. Yet an artist’s or band’s catalogue is most definitely an asset, one that needs coordinating—in a word, managing.

  KMMA: KEEP MY MUSIC AVAILABLE—AT ALL COSTS

  One immediate concern for managers of legacy artists is the passivity
of record companies who neglect the artists’ recordings when they are no longer in the foreground of consumers’ consciousness. These companies are usually willing to reissue their out-of-print–out-of-release recordings; they just do not care, do not respond to entreaties, or do not know what is in their catalogues in the first place. In the downsizing of record companies, those employees with corporate memory are the first to go. Perhaps income from these exploitations is not included in the calculation of their bonuses, or they simply do not have the time to deal with inquiries because they are vastly overworked and understaffed and they simply cannot be responsive.

  Whatever the reasons, the recordings remain, for all intents and purposes lost to the world (and their income potential lost as well). Many artists whose recordings have met this fate have recently joined what I call the KMMA crowd—those who want to “keep my music available” at all costs. These forces join with (1) those who want copyright to end, thereby expanding the public domain (see chapter 24); and (2) those who want copyright to continue, as long as the exclusive rights of the copyright owners are bent just enough to permit them to apply for a license to allow the release of their own recordings! The Internet, of course, is assisting those forces by making virtually every record in existence available to consumers.

  There is a lot of support for a pending congressional bill that would assist potential users of works which have been “orphaned” (again, see chapter 24) and the owners of which cannot be located for purposes of clearance. Such a significant modification to the exclusive rights of copyright owners would create a lot of problems for the record companies’ own legacy programs, which are traditionally several years in the planning stages. Perhaps the 24/7 all-downloads-all-the time technology introduced into the mix in recent years will resolve this problem in the cyberspace environment, if not so successfully in the bricks-and-mortar world.