What Artist Managers Actually Do and the Part of the Job Nobody Mentions Before You're In!
- Matt Errington
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
By Matt Errington - music industry educator and co-founder of Xpandr, currently teaching music business strategy to artists and emerging management and industry professionals across the UK.
An artist manager oversees all aspects of a musician's professional career - strategy, contracts, team coordination, income management, and the day-to-day decisions that shape a career over time. Standard commission is 20% of an artist's gross income. According to the Music Managers Forum, UK managers collectively contribute £714m in value to the wider music industry - roughly £8 generated for every £1 invested. The role is as much psychological as it is commercial, and it’s that personal part many people aren’t prepared for.
There's a moment most new managers hit at around the three-month mark. Everything is set up correctly, the strategy document exists, the meetings are booked, the relationships are forming. And then an artist phones at 9pm convinced they're pulling out of tomorrow's show because the anxiety has overtaken the logic, and the next 45 minutes aren't about strategy at all.
A student of mine described exactly this. "Is that normal?" she asked.
Yes. That's a Tuesday.
The business side of management is real; contracts, team coordination, income management, strategic decisions - and it matters. But the half that actually determines whether you're good at it is harder to teach and almost never appears in the brochure.
What follows won't cover everything, we have a dedicated Manager Pro course for that. But it should give you a clear picture of what the role actually involves, correct a few things that circulate, and give you a solid enough foundation to ask better questions. That’s my plan!
What does an artist manager actually do day to day?
The short answer is: whatever the artist needs to move forward, that day. The longer answer is a set of overlapping responsibilities that rarely look the same twice.
How do artist managers handle career strategy and planning?
Strategy is the part people imagine when they think about management - sitting across a table from a label executive, making big calls, positioning an artist for the next level. That happens. But in practice, strategy is mostly a series of smaller decisions made continuously, often under time pressure and without complete information.
A manager maps where an artist currently is, where they want to go, and what the realistic path looks like between those two points. They identify which opportunities to take and - just as importantly - which to decline. They help the artist develop a long-term narrative that holds together across releases, interviews, and collaborations.
According to research published by the Music Managers Forum in 2025, UK music managers contribute £714m in value to the wider music industry, with £8 generated for every £1 invested in management. Most of that value isn't a single career-defining deal. It compounds across hundreds of smaller calls, made consistently well over time.
Music Week described the manager-artist relationship as now "the most important one in the music industry" - a significant shift from even a decade ago, when a record deal was the headline goal and management was often an afterthought. That shift has changed what good managers need to know and how much latitude they operate with.
What does building and managing an artist's team actually involve?
Most people picture management as a one-to-one relationship between manager and artist. In practice, the manager's job is to assemble and coordinate an entire team around the artist - booking agents, publicists, lawyers, accountants, marketing professionals - and ensure everyone is working towards the same goals.
You're the hub. Every conversation comes through you first. Every disagreement between the lawyer and the label, every scheduling conflict between the publicist and the tour manager - that lands on your desk. One of the things that surprises new managers is how much of the role is internal coordination rather than external deal-making.
Early in my career I worked with a manager who had a genuinely breaking act - a team in place, a good independent label behind them, real momentum. On paper, everything was right. In practice, nobody was talking to each other. The publicist was pitching interviews for dates the agent had already blocked for rehearsals. The manager's job in that moment wasn't strategy. It was plumbing. Getting the right people in the same conversation, building the communication habits that make a team actually function - that's as much the job as anything that looks more glamorous from the outside.
How do artist managers handle contracts and money?
Standard management commission is 20% of an artist's gross income. That number is worth remembering, because it shapes everything - what deals you pursue, when an artist's income makes management financially viable, and what a manager is genuinely entitled to expect in return.
The management contract itself is the foundation of the whole relationship.
The main clauses to know:
The term - typically two to three years for a first deal
The commission rate and base - what income is included and what is excluded
The territory - whether the agreement covers global rights or specific markets
The post-term commission clause - sometimes called a sunset clause
That last one is where a lot of new managers get surprised. Even after a management deal ends, a manager may retain the right to commission income generated by work that happened during their tenure. That can mean receiving commission on a streaming catalogue or a publishing deal for years after the relationship formally concludes. It is entirely standard when properly negotiated - but it needs to be understood by both sides before the contract is signed, not discovered afterward. The Musicians' Union, the Music Managers Forum, and the Featured Artists Coalition jointly publish a specimen management agreement that covers all key terms in plain language. Reading it before you draft or sign anything is straightforward, useful preparation.
If you want to understand management at this level - the business mechanics, the deal structures, the commercial decisions - the Manager Pro course at Xpandr is built for people who want to do this properly.
What is the personal side of artist management that nobody prepares you for?
This is where it gets interesting. And where, in my experience, the good managers separate from the great ones.
One manager, interviewed by Vice, described the role as "70 percent psychology and 30 percent business." That's roughly right - and the 70 percent is what most people coming into the role aren't trained for.
A manager has to know when to push an artist and when to pull them back. They need to read the difference between an artist who needs honest challenge and one who needs genuine support. They have to know when a crisis is actually a crisis - and when it's a bad day that will resolve itself by morning, where wading in would make things worse.
"The business knowledge gets you in the room. The psychology is what keeps you there - and what keeps the artist's career intact once you are."
Here is the kind of situation that tests people most. A label offer came in for an artist I was connected to - not my client, but I knew the team. The deal looked good on the surface. Decent advance, solid distribution, marketing commitment. The artist was excited. The manager could see what the artist couldn't in that moment: the contract had a 360-degree clause that would have handed the label a cut of live income, merchandise, and brand partnerships for the full term and beyond. The advance would have been recouped within a year at the projected numbers. What was left wasn't a deal. It was a ceiling.
The manager had to sit in that meeting, with an excited artist who had been working toward this moment for three years, and say: "I think we should slow down." Not no. Not a rejection. Just: slow down, let us look at this properly.
That is the job. Knowing when the most valuable thing you can do is put the brakes on something the artist desperately wants. That requires both the commercial knowledge to see what the artist can't see, and the trust and relationship to say it in a way they can hear.
Mental health sits right at the centre of this. The Music Managers Forum has published guidance specifically on this point: a good manager protects their client's emotional and mental state with the same seriousness as their business interests. An artist who is burning out, anxious, or losing confidence will make worse decisions, give worse performances, and create more friction than any contract dispute ever could. The manager is often the first person to notice - and the only person in a position to do something about it.
What are the overlooked skills of a great artist manager?
The usual lists cover communication, organisation, negotiation, time management. Those are real. The ones that actually separate good managers from excellent ones are less frequently named.
Salesmanship - not in a pushy sense, but in the sense that a manager is constantly making the case for their artist: to labels, agents, journalists, brands, promoters, and sometimes to the artist themselves. The ability to build genuine enthusiasm in other people is not a nice-to-have.
Patience - artist careers rarely develop on a schedule. Youth Music's research on what managers advise newcomers is consistent on this: patience, transparency, and communication, in that order. Managers who need constant visible progress find the role corrosive. The ones who understand that some of the most important work is invisible tend to last.
Flexibility - no two artists are the same, and no career follows the same shape. The manager with a fixed playbook will eventually apply it to a situation it doesn't fit.
Knowing when to say nothing - new managers tend to fill silence. Experienced ones learn to sit in it. Sometimes an artist doesn't need a solution. They need someone to absorb the pressure for a few minutes so they can get back to thinking clearly.
Empathy, specifically - not a general warmth, but a genuine interest in how this particular person thinks, what they need, and what they're afraid of. That understanding is what makes strategy real rather than theoretical.
What about artists who manage themselves?
Some artists - particularly independent ones in the earlier stages of their career - handle their own management while they build toward bringing someone in. It works, for a period. The challenges are real though: the skills that make someone a good manager and the skills that make someone a good artist are different, and doing both simultaneously is genuinely hard to sustain.
If you're an artist in that position rather than an aspiring manager, Xpandr's Control Room program addresses exactly this - how to manage your own career strategically and sustainably until the time is right to bring someone in. We'll cover that in more depth in a separate post.
How do you actually get started as an artist manager?
There is no single path in. Some managers start by working with artists informally - a friend whose career they believe in, an act they found at a local show. Others come in via adjacent roles: music journalism, label internships, tour management - and step across when the opportunity arrives.
The role doesn't reward waiting until you feel ready. The learning happens in the doing. Starting with less established artists gives you room to make mistakes with low stakes, build a track record, and develop your network before the decisions get expensive. Most managers who end up being genuinely good at this started somewhere they wouldn't necessarily put on a CV - a bedroom producer trying to get playlist placements, a small act playing 50-capacity rooms - and learned more from that than from any amount of preparation.
The practical foundation is knowing how the industry actually works: how deals are structured, where income comes from, who the key players are in each part of the ecosystem, and how to get an artist in front of them. If you want the full picture of how music industry careers are built - including management as a career path - the Breaking In course at Xpandr covers exactly that.
"The managers I've watched build real careers didn't wait for the perfect artist. They got started, made mistakes with low stakes, and got better faster than anyone who spent the same time preparing."
Management is one of the most demanding roles in music - and one of the most rewarding when it works. The business knowledge matters. The psychological intelligence matters more. Both are learnable. And if you're serious about it, this is a genuinely brilliant career. Honestly!
Author: Matt Errington is a music industry educator and co-founder of Xpandr. He currently teaches music business strategy to emerging managers and industry professionals across the UK.
Book a call with Matt
If you want to talk through where management fits into your career plans - or whether the Manager Pro course is the right next step for you - you can book a free call directly. Book a time that works for you
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Sources and further reading
Music Managers Forum - The Value of Music Managers (2025)
The first independent research to calculate the economic value UK managers bring to the music industry - including the £714m contribution figure and the £8 return on every £1 invested. themmf.net
Briffa Legal - Music Management Contracts and Commission Clear, UK-specific legal guidance on how commission is structured and what is standard versus negotiable. briffa.com
MU, MMF and Featured Artists Coalition - Specimen Management Agreement
A jointly produced template covering all key contract terms in plain language - essential reading before signing or drafting anything. musiciansunion.org.uk
Vice - Mental Health and Artist Management
An honest look at the psychological dimension of the manager's role and why protecting artist wellbeing is a core professional responsibility. vice.com
Music Week - Why the Artist-Manager Relationship Is Now the Most Important One in the Industry
Sets the context for how the manager's role has shifted in weight and centrality over the past decade. musicweek.com
Go deeper with Xpandr
Manager Pro The course built for people who want to manage artists properly - covering deal structures, team building, strategy, and the full commercial picture. xpandr.co/manager-pro
Breaking In A complete map of how music industry careers are built - including management as a career pathway, for anyone earlier in the journey. xpandr.co/breaking-in
Control Room
For artists managing their own careers - the structure and strategy to do it sustainably until the time is right for a manager. xpandr.co/control-room
