It’s impossible to grow a business with only one person. Sure, you can start one solo, and perhaps even get it off the ground. Maybe you can make a steady income. But you can’t grow it.
🎤 OK, lets look at this from the artist’s perspective
As an artist, you will need to surround yourself with people who can help with all the different roles of your business.
To start with, there are the obvious things: your website, your socials, finding shows, the driving, etc. But pretty soon, it gets more complicated. You’ll need to:
- Record your music
- Distribute your music
- Produce merch
- Grapple with PR
- Sign up with PRS
…and so the list goes on!
Ultimately, you’ll need a manager to coordinate all of the above. However, more often than not, a manager will be a piece of the jigsaw that won’t come until you’ve already been successful with all the above.
You’ll also need an agent to book your shows and network your name. A label to release your music. A publisher to exploit your songs. And when you sign stuff… well, you’re gonna need a lawyer too!
It’s all pretty daunting.
No one person can do all that. And guess what, all the people mentioned above will, somehow or another, want paying. Some will invest in you now, knowing you can’t afford it.
But one thing is sure as night follows day: they’re not doing it out of blind altruism.
Add to that the fact that it almost never happens that you recruit people to your “Team” in a logical order…
Bringing together a solid team is not an easy thing to do, especially if you’ve never done it before.
Of course, at the beginning, you may be able to call in favours. If you are in a band, you may be able to share some responsibilities between band members (this rarely lasts long!). Perhaps you can get your mum to drive you to shows, but that’s not going to work long term…
🎟️ OK, let’s look at it from the Agent’s perspective
Booking agents book shows, then they get paid a percentage of the fee the band earns. This means that if they try to do other things, one of two things can happen:
- They don’t get paid for their time
- Or, if they charge for it, they have less time for booking
This is why booking agents need to stick to booking.
(Almost) all of their time should be spent improving their network and booking shows for their artists. This way, they become better booking agents and book better and more appropriate shows.
🤝 But we don’t exist in isolation
However, and it’s a big however, none of us exist in isolation.
It’s very often the case that the agent is the most experienced member of an artist’s team. It’s frequently the case that the artist doesn’t have a manager or is self-managed. So the agent is often the first person that the artist asks for advice.
So good agents need a broad knowledge of the music industry.
They don’t need to have all the answers, but they do need to understand how everything connects, and ideally, have a network of people they can introduce.
Examples might be:
“I’m not a publisher, but try speaking to X.”
“I know a tour manager, she may be able to help you.”
“This is a good website to start your search for a manager.”
“We don’t organise work visas, but I know a company who does.”
This way, an agent can be integral in helping an artist to build a team without taking too much time away from their core role, which is booking shows.
🧠 How we train agents at Midnight Mango
Here at Midnight Mango, we provide broad music business training to our agents.
We:
- Invite experts into our company to tell us about their work and how that fits in with what we do
- Run monthly workshops to share expertise between ourselves
- Foster a supportive culture where agents can learn from one another
We do this so our agents can offer good advice and, crucially, join the dots.
