Last week I wrote about the differences
in promotions, marketing and branding. That blog was heavily appreciated
and helped enlighten many within the music industry. Based on the
feedback and questions received I decided to write about titles that
confuse artists within the industry. Many artists do not know what the
roles are to various titles and therefore are confused with what they
will be getting by hiring someone to join their camp. The four titles we
are going to discuss in this blog are booking agent, marketing manager,
publicist, and manager.
Here I have broken down the titles and their main duties:
Booking Agent:
An Artist Booker, or Booking Agent, works in the music industry to book
performers for concerts, gigs and other live music performances. They
often schedule performances and negotiate with the artists directly or
with booking representatives or producers to arrange terms of contract,
dates, and fees. They may also audition new talent. Artist Bookers or
Booking Agents may either be employed in-house or work independently.
Marketing Manager:
A Marketing Manager is responsible for coming up with marketing
concepts, working with the creative department on images and
advertisements, develop marketing strategies and plans, and present
findings to company executives. It is a management position, so this
person will likely have a college degree in Marketing and/or several
years of experience in Marketing.
Publicist:
The main
responsibility of a publicist is to get positive press coverage for his
client. To do this, the publicist needs to create and maintain good
relationships with journalists by sending them original, insightful,
timely story ideas that involve the client in some way.
Artist Manager:
An artist manager counsels and advises artists (or songwriters,
producers, engineers, instrumentalists/musicians, etc.) on all matters
related to their musical careers.
The trouble with this is there
are many “non-professionals” in this business and the reason I put that
in quotations is because these people themselves do not have an idea
what role they are to play. The artists are so excited to have a team,
but many times due to lack of budget they expect these people to do
everything for them and tend to get frustrated when a person cannot do
it or refuses to.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are
many people whom try to play all these roles to the artist because they
believe in them so much. My intention with this blog is to explain to
those in these positions that it is ok to stick to your position/role
and for artists to understand what to expect from your team. Also, there
are many artists who simply are not even in the position to need a
team, for instance, why get a booking agent when NOBODY is trying to
book you or even knows your name? Why get a manager, when you have no
business to manage? Hope you learned a little more about, not only the
music industry itself, but business as a whole.
Breezy
