The 4 R’s of Successful Band and Artist Managers

Posted by dcole on April 11, 2014 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

by David Cole
©2014 Cole Ocean Records

Managers — the artists need you! But they don’t need your attitude, your selfishness, your Facebook opinion posts. Just your help, your support, and your picking up donuts for the band. So to renew our perspective, let’s zip through The 4 R’s of Successful Band and Artist Managers.

Number One is Respect. If you’re not constantly earning this, you need to move on to another career. Amazing young artists appear on the scene every day, whose primary needs are guidance and protection — protection from people who haven’t shown they’re worthy of respect.

We know respect is earned, but let’s also remember how it’s earned. It’s by your actions being observed indirectly. People aren’t just listening to your answers to questions about the next photo shoot or release party, they’re also listening to the non-music things you talk about. And more importantly, people aren’t only watching how you represent artists and negotiate with promoters, they’re watching the non-music things you do.

Do we need an example? Okay, here:

So you stayed late and finished that ugly report on digital downloads — or you thought up a fresh, catchy posting idea for Instagram. You’d think these earn respect but they don’t. What people file away in their memory, is the time you answered a teammate’s innocent question with a cold, thoughtless quip — or the time you skipped a chance to compliment a competitor for something they did really well.

Respect breeds respect. When your music industry Network sees you respecting everybody who you owe it to — which is pretty much everyone — they will respect you. Yes, I get it that one guy stiffed you out of some royalties last year and so you’re resolved never to respect him. I don’t mean to minimize his wrong, but what if he’s the same guy who’s going to refer the next Coldplay to you because of your experience licensing music in the European market? You simply don’t know unless you’re God, so keep short accounts. It doesn’t mean you have to love the guy, or trust him with your puppy while you’re on business in Nashville.

Number Two is Reputation. This is different than Respect, because it’s about the people who don’t know you personally. What have people heard about you? When they do finally meet you, what is their pre-conceived notion? So, #2 is a direct by-product of #1.

Forget about trying to prop up your reputation on the internet by managing negative posts. The posts will take care of themselves, if your life is about taking care of others. If that’s a foreign concept to you, then your attempts at “online reputation management” are like spray-painting a dead pig. It will just keep stinking worse, until the paint can’t mask it.

Number Three is Recreation. If there’s anything we easily forget, it’s this. Recreation, aka ‘fun’ — is the thing that makes you stay in on a Friday evening listening to scratch tracks over again, or watching that YouTube on how to copyright a collaborative album. For you, it’s an outlet — probably even your favorite outlet, hence the name “recreation”. Call it the love of music, call it passion… but don’t call it unimportant, and never let it slip away.

Last but by no means expendable, is Return. Without return — aka monetary compensation — most of us can’t afford to spend anywhere near this amount of time in music. So all ‘return’ does is justify the whole thing so we can pay the rent and still leave the office early now and then to stop and browse at Guitar Center.

Don’t give away ‘Return’ to appease a music industry contact, as a replacement for respect or reputation that aren’t already there. For example, let’s say you’re trying to talk a promoter into scheduling your act as an opener. This guy’s never heard of your band, so you lowball your terms to try and get the gig. Now you’re upside down because of all the surprise secondary costs that (always) come with a gig deal, and so the quality of your work suffers because you’re stretched too thin. Who is helped by this whole mess? Not you, not the band, not your reputation. If the music’s good, the gigs will come — don’t try and grow your artist too fast! Better to grow slow and pay the bills, than to hang your backside over the music industry fence where the pit bulls on the other side are the only ones “breaking even”.

If your life already operates from these four principles outside of your management career, you’re a true gem in the music business. If not, you should either get out or learn to fake it really well — but that would be like living with a dead pig.