Choosing a Music Manager
Several Characteristics of a Great Manager
Find out what you should be looking for in a music manager for your career.
A manager is the main part of your support team. Choosing this person is very important. Choosing the right person can lead you to new levels of success in your music career, however choosing the wrong person can be fatal to your growing career. Here are several things to look for when hiring a manager.
The person should be a very organized person. You as a musician should know already how many tasks there are for you to accomplish and keep up with and how hard it can be. So make sure that the person you are dealing with is too. Organization is one of the most important characteristics that a manager must have. With out organization you will open the door for your own career to become a mess.
A manager must be responsible. Managers oversee not only everything you are doing, but also everything that your support team (lawyer, publicist, booking agent, etc) does so it important that they are responsible. They also act and speak up for you in your dealings with record label so this characteristic is much needed in a manager.
Your potential manager should also be a multi-tasker. It to some degree is a managers job purely to keep you happy and ease up life and career stress off of you so you can do what you do best. This results in many tasks that this person will have to juggle at once. It is not an easy thing to do so you make sure that this person can do this by checking for references if possible or a trial run.
A manager must be a leader. Even though technically they are your employee a manager must be a leader in a sense even over you. If your manager is a weak leader your career is going to be headed for disaster. Managers are deal makers and need this quality to do well in negotiations. And again, managers usually oversee your support team.
Being a well-connected person if possible would be great. While many times none connected individuals have been able to lead careers to superstardom, often times it just isn’t so. Having a well connected manager can put your music career in high speed in endless ways.
Finding the proper person for the job of being your manager is a huge task. Good manager s can take you far while bad management can lead your career into the ground. So give it great thought and consider all of these thoughts the next time you’re looking for a manager.
