An artist’s manager is the person most responsible for managing their career. They are involved in virtually every aspect of the artist’s career including negotiating with record labels and publishing companies on your behalf, lining up the right studio, engineers and producers for a recording session. They will make sure your website is constantly updated and that your label and distributor have your material in retailers and the latest and greatest digital music outlets. A good manager will spend a great deal of their time promoting the artists they represent and work directly with the artist’s publicists to coordinate their publicity plan. They work with the marketing departments at the artist’s label and distributor on their marketing and advertising budgets and programs. 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 usually get 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 and merchandise sales 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.