Artist Management Income

You get what you pay for. The role of a personal manager can make or break an artist career. The most important aspects of a manager’s job are helping artists with major business decisions, helping the artist with the creative process, promoting the artist career by hyping them to everyone the manager meets, coordinating the artist concert tours by working with their agent to make the best deals promoters, pounding the artist record company to maximize the advertising, marketing campaigns for the artist record and generally being a buffer between them and the outside world. The income for personal managers is really arbitrary. The financial aspect depends on the deal negotiated with the artist he or she plans to represent. Commission for managers are typically from 15% to 20% of an artist earnings, with the majority getting 15%. These percentages are generally applied to the artist gross earnings, before deducting any expenses. For compensation managers that represent a new band or an unknown artist should aim and negotiate for 20%. The leverage in that negotiation or argument is that the risk is greater and it may be years-if-ever-before the manager gets paid. If the manager and artist cant come to an agreement on the 20%. It can be implemented in the deal that the manager gets 15% but it escalates to 20% when the artist earns a certain dollar amount. The term is another key element of a manager’s income. It simply means the management agreement and the period of time that a manager will work for an artist. Typically a management agreement is three to five years. It’s in the manager’s best interest to have the agreement as long as possible for job security reasons. If you are a manager your worst nightmare and the last thing you want to happen is work for an artist three years and get dropped because of the length of your term while the artist is about to finally see success.    

Source:

Passman, D., (2009). All you need to know about the music business. New York: Free Press.