The Management Shuffle...An Ugly Dance!

Management companies are a dime a dozen but some of them are better than others.  There are different levels of management, from personal management to business management, local to international.  Each of them have their respective levels of talent.  Most managers start out locally managing an artist in their home town booking gigs, printing flyers, setting interviews, managing the web pages, etc... This is a person of many hats in an artists life.  As managers grow they become tour managers and then national managers, finally partnering with another group to give the artist an international edge.  So goes the progression of management.

I watched an interesting transaction take place recently between two management groups and an artist and thought I would share some of the particulars of the situation as they are funny and fall right in line with our ethics topics.  For discussion's sake we will call the management companies A and B just to keep them straight.  Management company A had been working with an artist for 9 months, in that time A had quadrupled the artists fan base, actual fan base, had a fully functional website up and operational and had been shopping the artist to a national management companies and booking the artist with national level acts.

After several interested agencies passed on the artist, a company B came along which management team A introduced to the artist, that was well spoken and pushed all the pleasure spots for the artist.  Everything seemed to be moving well in the transition until B went directly to the artist and began planting a wedge between A and the artist directly.  Soon insinuations of untrustworthiness began making their way between them.  The he said she said dance is one of little benefit to anyone except the instigator.  In this case B told the artist they would not work with A so the artist complied.  Manager A was out in the cold and B dropped the artist within 2 weeks, in which time B's Publicist managed to get black listed from Live Nation Corporate due to unethical circumvention attempts.  Because the artist was unable to coordinate everything that A was doing the entire relationship fell apart.

If you are an artist make sure you really get to know the people that you are working with.  If you do not have faith in the manager you work with let them go.  You have to sign a contract with anyone otherwise you could inadvertently and unintentionally hurt those that have put the time and energy into your career.  These black balling management games are ugly and unwelcome in the music industry and I warn you all to be aware of the core driving force behind everyone you meet or choose the have business relations with.