Music management is such a wild ride; it’s like being a professional gambler, studying the form guide and spending all day every day down at the TAB hoping your horse comes in.
Sometimes, you have a win, but a lot of the time, you just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and find the enthusiasm and energy to fight another day and try again for some kind of win. But along with all the physical, financial, and emotional ups and downs I’ve experienced over the last twenty years of gambling on the success of music and artists, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I feel like I was born to do this job, and actually being recognised for my contribution by the AAM with the Legacy Award, especially as a champion of amazing Aussie music globally, feels pretty bloody great.
When I was asked to write something about the state of the music industry right now, I almost didn’t want to do it. Because I’m not feeling super positive about things, and I’m usually a very positive person. I do think (hope!) we’ll all come out the other end of this sometime soon, but it’s really so difficult for artists right now.
As an artist manager, it’s the artists themselves – their art, mental health, longevity and happiness in general – that I really care about the most. And I’ve never experienced so much stress and real concern for the future from the artists around me. I feel like so many are almost on the verge of giving up.
I’m very much speaking from the perspective of how I see it for developing artists right now. Touring has become insanely cost-prohibitive, especially if you want to tour internationally and you’re from Australia or, even worse, Western Australia. And if you can’t tour, you don’t get to develop that special artist/fan in-person relationship that can turn into lifelong fandom. No tour, no merch sales.
DSPs don’t pay, and printing vinyl or anything physical is a big investment if you don’t have the financial backing of someone, anyone. And even the cost of mailing out vinyl and merch to fans has doubled or tripled. And if you want to sell anything at all, from tickets to shows to merch and music, digital marketing and advertising costs are involved.
The most difficult thing of all is constantly having to prod and poke artists to post on social media and give away parts of themselves and their art for free. It’s like whoever is better at social media wins, and those who aren’t are just left unnoticed.
Most of the artists I manage have to work non-music-related jobs just to be able to afford to get by, and the dream of someday being able to make music for a living feels less like it will ever become a reality.
Trying to get developing artists signed if they haven’t had some kind of miracle viral moment on social media feels almost impossible, too. I recently had a label reach out about an artist who makes incredible music and ticks all the boxes. I was excited at the prospect of some help from another team to develop this artist and not just my team and myself carrying the load.
Very early in the conversation, they wanted to know what their live sales numbers look like because if they can’t sell a certain amount of tickets, they’re not interested. They don’t have a huge number of headline shows because they’re developing. When we turn to our agents, they want to know when the next release is because they can’t really book shows without having something to hang ’em on. Once upon a time, festivals were the perfect place for an up-and-coming act to find new audiences, but so many are teetering on the edge of extinction, it seems…
Of course I blame Covid for so much of this, I really don’t think everyone has recovered from that. There’s so much less money in people’s pockets. We still haven’t recovered as an industry either. The costs of everything are just so high. And the artists don’t have enough money themselves to record an album with studio fees and producers and time off work. So how do developing artists break through without industry support and people just wanting to take a chance on artists?
In Australia, we’re lucky enough to have some really great grant programs we can apply to. But because everyone is struggling, you are now one of 500 artists going for the same grants, so being successful has become increasingly difficult. With each new grant rejection or album conversation stalled, grey clouds of depression are raining on artists’ heads because they start to feel worthless.
I have to try to encourage them to build online communities so we can show these labels “stats” of fans that may or may not buy tickets to an actual show or buy records. I’m asking our artists to find people online, in all different corners of the world, who are often silent and don’t engage in your work even if they are “watching”. And that takes so much time away from making actual music.
All the while, I know in my heart that what I’m asking of our artists doesn’t feel right. I’m asking them to exist and compete on the internet, which I’m pretty sure was never why we all got involved in music in the first place. A big reward for what we have been doing has always been the community—the live, in-person fans and friends who come to our artists’ shows and make us all feel a little less alone.
There is no replacement for the heart-and soul-filling community that music offers us. We should be using our artists’ socials to boost up their live presence, not replace it entirely. Because there is no replacement for the community that live music can give you.
I will never give up trying to bring brilliant music to people who’ll love it; I just hope it becomes easier on us all soon. I hope that is my real legacy: that the art we bring to other countries from Australia can be appreciated all around the world in person and online, together, for the well-being of ourselves and our communities. Let’s not let our artists just fade into our screens and scrolls.
