"The only person who can drive success for your career is YOU. What you need to be thinking about is 'How can I find the right partner for my career.' A manager is not a babysitter, not a booking agent and certainly is not the answer to all your problems."

I’m a firm believer that the longer an artist can manage themselves the better off they will be in the long run. I wrote a blog post last year titled “Build It and The Music Biz Will Come ” I encourage artists to read before rushing out to find a music management “team” early in their career. Once an artist has done all the hard work required to build a dedicated fan base they may want to consider hiring management to help grow and manage their business. Below is an overview of some of the traditional management roles in the music business.

 

Manager

 

Traditionally, managers have spent much of their time getting their clients signed to a record label deal then working with their client’s record labels to coordinate publicity, radio promotions and retail marketing budgets and programs. Today, the desirable skills for a manager in the music industry have changed fairly significantly. Managers need to be specialist in direct to fan relationships, social media, online marketing, licensing and sponsorships. They should be generally knowledgeable in ways artists can be successful with and without a record label.

 

Managers should handle all the artist’s personnel issues with the band and crew members and work with the rest of their management team including the attorney, booking agent, business manager and tour manager as needed.

Managers are typically paid 15% to 20% of the artist’s gross earnings. That means they get paid their percentage on all the artist’s earnings including, royalties, publishing, touring, merchandise, or sponsorships before the artist gets paid. Some managers have multi-year contracts (that can be quite complicated) with the artists they represent and some just work on a handshake.

Attorney

Given the uniqueness and complexities of recording contracts, management agreements, publishing deals, sponsorship or licensing agreements and the various other music business related agreements attorneys can play a critical role in protecting the interests of the artists they represent. The most important thing to look for in an attorney is experience in the music business. Just because someone has a law degree (even from a top school) does not qualify them to adequately represent artists in the music business.

A good attorney with experience in the music business can keep you from making contractual mistakes they have seen that have happen to other artists. Attorneys usually charge by the hour or by retainer (a set monthly fee) and in the music business it’s fairly common for them to charge well established artists a percentage of gross earnings, 5% is typical. 

Business Manager

A business manager is the person or firm that collects monies owned to the artist from royalties, publishing, touring and merchandise sales, pays the bills, band and crew, invests the profits and files the tax returns. They handle the artist’s general accounting related needs, royalty collection & auditing and tour budgeting & reporting. Many good business managers are either CPA’s or employ CPA’s on their staff due to the complexities of the music business accounting and the challenges of dealing with multiple state and international tax jurisdictions that come into play when an artist is on tour. They also handle all financial aspects of the artist’s personal life including insurance, loans, mortgages, investments and estate planning.

 

Business managers typically charge 5% of the artists gross earnings in the music business but some an hourly rate or flat monthly fee. 

 

Booking Agent

Booking Agents play an important role in the success of the artists they represent by planning and booking their tours with promoters and venues. They will make sure you are playing in venues that are known for your genre of music or booked as an opening act for bigger band. Booking agents negotiate the fee structure (guarantee,  % of the door, meals, etc.), determine ticket prices and ticket availability in the market. Thoughtful route planning is critical to the financial success of a tour and a good booking agent should make sure you are not playing in Atlanta one night, Chicago the following night and Jacksonville the next.  Route planning can be a challenge for even a seasoned booking agent due to the large number of competing tours and the limited availability of quality venues in highly desirable markets.

Booking agents typically collect a 50% deposit on the show guarantee from the promoter once the show is booked. They usually charge 10% of the money the band gets paid for the show for their services. For example if the booking agent negotiates a $2000 guarantee for a show, they would collect a $1000 deposit, keep $200 (10% of $2000) then send the band $800. The band or their manager / road manager would collect the balance ($1000 in this example) from the promoter or venue after the show. 

Tour Manager

The Tour Manager handles all the details of life on the road for the artist during a tour. They will arrange transportation, hotels and meals for each stop, make sure the equipment is accounted for and maintained plus manage the crew. The tour manager makes sure the venue has the stage, sound and lighting set up as requested and that the band is paid per the terms arranged with the booking agent. They manage and safeguard the cash collected while on the road. The Tour Manager will work with the tour publicist to make sure the artist shows up on time for scheduled interviews, appearances and promotions in each market. It’s the tour manager who puts out all the inevitable fires that come up at each stop during the tour.

The tour manager is also responsible for maintaining the tour plan and budget set up by the manager, business manager and booking agent. They are typically paid a salary, per diem or a set amount per tour.

Mathematics: Measuring Success
by Wendy Day of Rap Coalition

One of the many changing things in the urban music business is how we measure the success of an artist. Measuring rap, R&B, reggae, and even dance music sales has always been challenging, and even though companies like the Nielsen-owned SoundScan claim to be 100% effective, they are not.

SoundScan is a company that began measuring music sales in the early 90s by supplying willing music retailers with special scanners and software that counted and tallied up barcode (UPC) scans at the point of purchase (cash registers). Every Sunday night that tally would be automatically downloaded to SoundScan headquarters in White Plains, NY for publication the following Wednesday to subscribers with very deep pockets (the subscriptions are costly), meaning major record labels.

One of the problems with SoundScan is that it has never been able to measure EVERY sales outlet. Many of the independent retailers around the country, where the bulk of rap sales were happening in the 90s, were reluctant to have any counting system overseeing their business. Whether it was for tax reasons (did not want the IRS to know how much music they were really selling) or for business reasons (fear that a chain store would get their retail sales information and open a store directly across the street with lower prices thereby putting them out of business—which ironically happened anyway), many didn’t want to report their sales to anyone. It also didn’t count venue sales until somewhat recently—and they are self-reported, which means it depends upon the honesty of the person reporting.

To make up for this lack of accurate data, SoundScan weighted certain willing-to-report stores more heavily than others. This meant that when an independent store scanned one sales copy of a CD, it could count as four sold copies to make up for the area’s lack of actual SoundScan reporters. Additionally, many of the SoundScan stores realized early on that there was a business to be made of selling SoundScan scans to labels. Aside from being treated better by the labels because they were a SoundScan reporter (meaning promo dollars spent in their stores for key pricing and positioning campaigns), an economy of “seeding” sprung up around the country which caused labels to send extra boxes of CDs to SoundScan retailers for additional scans for a price. Some would scan the chosen CD at the register daily no matter what other title was sold, while others would receive boxes of free product to scan throughout the week. Smart labels controlled the scans and made it appear as natural as possible, sometimes to have a big first week (hitting #1 on the Billboard chart was a sure way to garner extra press and attention which led to additional sales). Some indie labels used this method to land a bigger deal with a major label.

Buying SoundScan in urban music (at least in the areas in which I travelled) became such a popular practice that when I was shopping deals at the major labels from 1995 to 2005, I used to separate out the SoundScan sales from the independent retailers. If it was more than 15% of overall sales by the artist, I knew (and the major labels knew) they were buying SoundScan. I would pass on shopping those deals because I knew the major labels would see the fraud and I didn’t want that fake shit to sully my otherwise stellar reputation for doing deals (I’m proud to say that I’ve done some of the best deals in urban music from 1995 to 2005 when there were good deals to be had). I was proud that my deals led to superstar sales levels (except two) and fake scans weren’t the way to achieve superstar status (at least not as an indie).

In the early years of the 21st century, however, I watched urban sales switch from a full-length CD marketplace to a downloaded singles market. I also watched Best Buy and WalMart—the biggest music retailers—become replaced by iTunes in importance and overall sales volume. I also noticed that the core rap fans were not really the active downloaders; the mainstream and pop fans were. So while 50 Cent and Kanye West were fighting illegal downloads, artists like Young Jeezy, Boosie and Webbie were still able to sell a large amounts of CDs, especially in the South. I watched an increase of bootlegged CDs pop up at carwashes and swap meets throughout the ‘hoods in the South though, as CDs sold 3 for $10 in most cases, as the RIAA resorted to suing college kids for illegal downloading instead of shutting down the shops with multiple burners to bootleg CDs. Music became “free” (or close to free) among an entire new generation of fans.

In a way, this shift benefits the indie artists who are out here selling their own CDs. Enterprising bootleggers don’t mass produce music until there is a mass market of sales, and the fans still seem to admire and support the grind of artists who sell their CDs hand-to-hand, or who travel from town to town promoting their music regionally. While artists and major labels all around me were complaining of bootlegging and lost revenue, I watched the TMI Boyz sell hundreds of thousands of CDs while on the road for almost 18 months straight. Very little of it was measurable by SoundScan.

But even with the inaccuracies in the SoundScan system, the urban music industry used to be able to measure the sales, the response to promotional and marketing efforts, and measure the buzz or hype an artist had. We knew where the fans where, where to do shows, and where to have merchandise and CDs to sell. It was a no-brainer. We didn’t have to wonder where anonymous downloads were occurring, they weren’t.

Today that measurement process is more challenging. I noticed it when Gucci Mane got out of prison in March of 2009. He had a good buzz on the streets from dropping back-to-back mixtapes and from OJ Tha Juiceman keeping Gucci’s name alive while he was locked down. But I don’t think anyone could have predicted the $30,000 to $50,000 per show booking price that he’d command almost instantly, with no album in the marketplace and no hot single at radio (this was months before “Wasted” hit radio). There was no way to measure his buzz prior to that. He was kept busy doing shows but still managed to record mixtapes and keep music in the marketplace. Most of it was downloaded for free (by his choice) from websites and blogs that had become the way to receive new music. Fans at his shows could sing along, word for word. They didn’t need radio singles.

While his MySpace hits increased and his popularity on Twitter was apparent, there was no legitimate measuring system in place to gauge his media mentions, count the downloads (too many sites had music posted), track the shows and price increases, or measure the increase in success he was experiencing. His increased popularity also led to an increase in popularity of the artists surrounding him: Nicky Minaj, OJ Tha Juiceman, and Wacka Flocka Flame.

In today’s music business economy we have no real accurate (or even semi-accurate) way of measuring success for artists. With SoundScan tracking mainstream sales, only the mainstream artists seem to be faring well (Lil Wayne, Kanye, Taylor Swift, Susan Boyle, etc). Meanwhile, I haven’t heard a decrease of music coming from or playing in the ‘hoods of America. Even without SoundScan sales, kids are singing along to every Gucci Mane and Yo Gotti song during their shows (music is from their mixed CDs). They are listening to a larger number of unknown, independent, and unsigned artists than ever, and they aren’t getting the music just from the internet.

As this change is occurring, I’m watching folks who thrive on research and numbers scramble to count MySpace hits, Twitter and Facebook friends, downloads from myriads of websites and blog sites (too many different ones to count), World Star views, etc. Yet none of it is accurate. Software programs can boost numbers on the web as easily as SoundScan swipes could be duplicated at indie retailers in the 90s. I guess we’re going to have to let the fans tell us. And this means we need an even closer one-on-one relationship with the fans, the streets, and the internet. What was as easy as picking up SoundScan reports on Wednesday mornings is no more. Oh how I long for those days…. //

via ozonemag.com

 

I don’t fuck with him… and you can print that.

This guy just seems to be full of interesting press bits. When VIBE asked him if he’d be reuniting with Lil Wayne on Carter 4, Bangladesh revealed that he had yet to be paid for his work on Carter 3:

“It’s [Wayne and Baby's] responsibility to pay [me] because all the money from album sales goes to Cash Money. I get checks from Sony for Beyoncé, checks from different labels for different artists, it just comes to you. You don’t have to call them, sue them and all that junk. This is what you’re owed.”

He continues, “I don’t really give a fuck about [Wayne]. I can’t give a fuck about somebody that don’t give a fuck about my situation, I have kids. In the hood, people get killed for ten dollars. I couldn’t imagine owing someone hundreds of thousands of dollars and just walking around in front of them. I’m so confident in myself, that I don’t need Lil Wayne. There’s gonna be so many opportunities. I can create a Lil Wayne.”

He went on to say what’s on everyone’s minds.

“This is why Mannie Fresh don’t fuck with [Cash Money] because he never got any royalty money. That’s why Baby can go around flaunting this cash, because that’s everyone else’s money… It’s not even Wayne’s fault. Wayne is not getting money. He is given money, he’s not getting money. If Baby gets a million dollars he’ll buy Wayne a Phantom, but that’s in Cash Money’s name. That 14-bedroom mansion isn’t Wayne shit,” he says. “That’s why he have his own company, because he was trying to leave Cash Money and the only thing that would keep him there was [if they] gave him his own thing. But Baby still controls that. All those Young Money artists don’t even know that they not getting royalty money.”

This isn’t the first time this month we’ve heard about producers seeking out their royalties for Carter 3:

And the beat goes on. According to the New York Post, fellow Carter III producer, Jim Jonsin—responsible for Wayne’s infectious lead single, “Lollipop”—filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Wayne on April 20 for missing royalty payments. In May 2009, Dallas production duo Play-n-Skillz also mentioned to a local radio station that they were yet to reap any monetary benefits from their work on Wayne’s third single featuring, T-Pain, “Got Money.”

So Jim Jonsin asked for 500K and Bangladesh wants another half a mil, and these two guys basically made Carter 3 what it was with “Lollipop” and “A Millie.” Baby doesn’t seem to be paying the people that helped him get all that money, yet he found the time to make corny internet videos like this and this over the weekend.