‘Today, managers could probably do everything… but funding is really difficult’

Independence was one of the key threads at our Music Ally Connect conference last week, coming through strongly in sessions featuring music managers.

Eleven Management co-founder and MMF chair Niamh Byrne sat down for a keynote interview with broadcaster, Live chair and The Price of Music co-host Steve Lamacq on Friday to talk about what she’s learned from a career working with artists including Blur, Gorillaz, The Clash and Bastille, as well as key changes and disruptions.

“There’s two things that management requires. One is absolute trust: you need to know that your manager has your back. That if you’re going to go down a hole into the creative process of writing a record, you need to be able to come back out of your hole and know that somebody’s got you, that things are taken care of,” she said.

“And vision is the other thing. When somebody’s tunnelling and they’re going down into that kind of process, you need to basically have the vision of where it’s going to go. You need to know that destination so that when they’re ready, you can take them there. That’s the trick.”

Byrne talked about how music management has changed since she began in the 1990s, including a warning that “a lot of experience has maybe been drained from the industry” as the “amazing, amazing people” she worked with earlier in her career left.

“We used to go into a label years ago, and you would be the manager, do the dealmaking, and everybody else would basically facilitate the work. And there was an amazing level of service, but that’s kind-of been chipped away. The management role is now shouldering a hell of a lot more than it did before, and it’s now us that are doing the lion’s share of the work.“

Byrne stressed that there are still “amazing” labels to work with, but said that this is “just the reality” – which sparked Lamacq to ask why managers still sign their artists to labels in this climate.

“Funding is a huge issue for management. Today, managers could probably do everything. It’s even possible to supply your own entire supply-chain. But unfortunately, funding is really difficult, so certainly people are still reliant on traditional funding models,” said Byrne.

“If you’re not getting value from the people you are doing those deals with, you’re going to get frustrated because it’s not matching the level of work that you’re putting in. But unfortunately, at this moment in time, there’s very little of anything else [to choose].”

The next Gorillaz album is taking a different, self-released path, with Eleven Management’s team “doing everything from marketing campaigns to digital strategy to data management and fan management to production” for the global campaign.

Where labels are involved, Byrne suggested that it may often still be desirable for them to hand the marketing budget and strategy for a project over to the management company.

“Not because I think that there isn’t a role for labels. I just think that managers are best positioned to do that work well. We don’t have big, huge rosters to content with. We’ve got smaller rosters and we can make budgets go much longer,” she said.

“We’re much more efficient with the money that we get. There’s no wastage, and we have to succeed,” she said. “I feel very passionate about what value managers add, and I think that extends also to catalogue. It’s one thing to acquire catalogue, and it’s another thing to add value. I think managers add massive value to catalogue.”

“That’s my massive frustration: managers still get paid on the premise that they’re [just] dealmakers. That’s what they used to do…” Niamh Byrne

The MMF has published research on the economic value of managers to the UK’s music industry – £714m a year, with every £1 invested in managers generating £8 for the wider sector. It has also kickstarted a conversation about whether there are better ways for managers to be paid and rewarded than the traditional ‘20% of income’ agreements with artists.

“That’s my massive frustration: managers still get paid on the premise that they’re [just] dealmakers. That’s what they used to do: they made deals and they didn’t do anything else. Now managers do everything… but that isn’t seen or heard, and it certainly isn’t valued in the same way,” she said.

Another policy issue that the MMF has been speaking out on is AI music, and particularly the licensing deals being signed by labels with AI companies. Byrne warned that artists (and by extension managers) should be more involved in that process than they have been so far.

“We can’t stop AI. AI is going to happen, and there may well be in the future further remuneration models from AI: people are going to engage in music in a way that perhaps they don’t now, and we accept that,” he said.

“However, artists are always the ones that seem to fare badly out of these situations. If we’re going to do something which is really future-focused, and be laser-focused about how we shape our business going forward, we really do need to have artists at the table.”

“There are so many ways to release music these days. There are people self-releasing, doing distribution deals; indie labels; major labels… So it can’t just be one section of the industry that’s having a conversation on artists’ behalf… There’s great opportunity, but we’ve got to work together.“

The keynote ended on a positive note, with Byrne talking about where the moments of joy come in the relationship between a manager and an artist.

“The shared joy is being able to be in control of your music, and release your own music in the way that you want, without any kind of constraints. That’s an absolute joy,” she said, referring again to the upcoming Gorillaz record.

“It’s really very exciting for anybody who’s in the privileged situation where you can self-release. That’s where artists can potentially be much more experimental and much more crazy, and push boundaries. That’s a real positive story.”

It keeps managers on their toes too, she admitted. “You won’t survive, being a manager, unless you can adapt. We’re learning something new every six months,” said Byrne. “You don’t have the opportunity to rest on your laurels: you’re responsible for the careers and the livelihoods of all these people, and you need to succeed. So we can’t just sit back.”

Later in the day at Music Ally Connect, more managers had their say. A panel moderated by Jump Global CEO Nick Maiale included Martha Earls, owner/manager at Neon Coast, and Will Bloomfield, co-president and head of global artist management at Tap Music.

Earls continued the thread began by Byrne about how responsibilities have shifted within the industry over the last decade.

“A lot of the marketing strategy is now falling on the shoulders of the artist and thus, in turn, the manager,” she said. “I feel a much heightened pressure to create a marketing plan by myself, and that’s time-consuming and difficult.”

Bloomfield noted that the scale of this task has also grown in the last 10 years.

“Even five years ago, the channels were much more narrow in terms of promotion and in terms of how you rolled out marketing campaigns,” he said.

“What has definitely changed, and is challenging, is the amount of information that we have to absorb. We have a lot of tools at our disposal, but there’s a lot of information, and I’m always conscious that we want to make the right decisions.”

“We have to look at all the available metrics, all the available data that we have, and then be able to distill that in a way that is meaningful. I don’t need more dashboards! What I’d like is help and support to make the correct decisions… It can be very challenging when you have so many signals from many different areas.”

Earls talked about another challenge that managers need help with: “expanding our artists where we see interest in other markets internationally”.

“Some help and guidance from somebody within that territory to help expand them in a way that is actually meaningful and makes sense,” she explained. “I can presume I know what to do in south-east Asia, but it would be really helpful to have somebody in south-east Asia tell me what to do!”

Earls also talked about her love of testing out new tools and technologies – even if they’re so early stage that “every little bug hasn’t been fixed… I like people to come to us. Let us be your little guinea pig… because you never know what will work!”

Bloomfield returned to the challenge of international expansion, and particularly to how earlier-stage managers approach it.

“I would love to see more investment and have more help at the beginning of artist careers in international touring,” he said.

“With the rapid rising costs, the nature of the business, I don’t see how particularly younger or more inexperienced managers – who don’t have the same level of connections that we’re lucky to have or the levers that we can pull on – are able to get their artists out of their domestic territories.”

“Every other part of the industry has changed so much, yet we still get ‘yeah, but that’s the way it was done so that’s just how it is’” Will Bloomfield

The panel also touched on what success looks like for artists – “Making money is nice! But beyond that I would say longevity of career: when you can work with an artist and know you’re not building a moment, you’re building a career with longevity,” said Earls – and also on the emerging landcape of AI-music deals.

“As it pertains to an artist like [her client] Kane Brown, who’s globally known and has tremendous success, it comes down to permission,” said Earls.

“If he’s being used or derivative work is being made, he needs to be able to say yes or no to that. I think it’s a simple as that. Even when publishers pitch a song, if they put an AI Kane Brown vocal on it, it pisses me off! You don’t have permission to do this… it all comes down to permission.”

The panel finished by looking forward, with Earls and Bloomfield offering their wishlists for how the industry could look in five years’ time.

“I would love for artists deals to be modernised, and I would love for management companies who are providing services that traditionally maybe the labels provided to – not out of the artist side, but maybe out of the label side – have some of that participation,” said Earls.

Bloomfield also picked up on the deals-evolution angle, saying that he’d like to see more support for managers striking “non-traditional artist-management deals”.

“There’s nothing wrong, in some cases, with the traditional 20% / 10% of gross deal. But always the kickback is ‘that’s how it has always been done, therefore that’s the way it is done, and that’s the way it’s going to continue to be done’,” he said.

“But every other part of the industry has changed so much, yet we still get ‘yeah, but that’s the way it was done so that’s just how it is’. I’d like to see that put on the table and really interrogated, because we are artists’ partners, as managers.”

“I’m not saying that we should have rights in perpetuity. Of course not! But we should build businesses with artists, and we should be compensated in a way that is commensurate with that.”