Mind the gap.
blog musicindustryWhen you work with mainly new artists, artists that are very new to the industry the interesting reflection is how professional they are if you compare them to the people who work in the industry but are middlemen. Then you have the jump to the professional where everything works well. You just want to not deal with the gap.
In this unprofessional segment, you find people who never deal with the other parts of the industry. Just spent an hour explaining how the live side works for a guy in the publishing department. Sure, he knows publishing but when it comes to everything else in the business like I don’t give a shit about a Spotify link I need live videos, selling points, and last ticket sales. And I could shovel his disco link up where the sun doesn’t shine, ok!
Then you have the manager that never really been a manager. There you have two versions. The one that doesn’t give a shit and shoots everything over to the artist that never answers. I don’t understand why this artist has a manager if they just push the work over to them? Then you have the micromanagement when the manager becomes a pain in the ass with stupid questions like what kind of socket we have in Sweden, relevant question, but you can google that! Also, the micromanager tries to make a pub gig into an arena gig with stupid demands that don’t fit in. If you have such a demanding artist, I just suggest taking on other artists because your reputation will go down the drain in the business. This year several managers certainly didn’t get an invitation after last year’s failure.
Sure, you need to do everything for the first time to be good at it. Still, try to get the info not just send an email with the next question. Instead of thinking that you know everything, tell me that you don’t understand, and I will explain.
The interesting though is that the newcomers are much better than the mid-level, they are close to the top where you get your things going. I guess a big problem is that the mid-level people think they are professional but have not been around enough to understand the whole picture.
Let me tell you when you worked in the business in several departments for over ten years you are something. Just got out of school and done a couple of years in one company and you are still a blueberry.
