Chapter 1

The Importance of People

People are everything. Relationships are everything.

The most important thing in your life is the people in it. Your happiness, fulfillment, successes, and failures are closely attributed to your relationships with other people (including your family, friends, colleagues, and every person you surround yourself with). The same principle directly applies to the music business. The people in the music business are your most important business assets. Without contacts, connections, friends, and fans you will get nowhere.

When it boils down to it, navigating the music business means navigating the people. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to understand all areas of the music business. This means understanding all the people in the music business, what they do every day, and what makes them tick.

Once you have a better understanding of who the people are, what they actually do every day, and how they prefer to be communicated with, you’ll have gotten yourself onto the right path. 

The main reason I chose to write this book the way I wrote it is so that newer managers, self-managed artists, and aspiring managers (or anyone who wants to know more about the music business) may learn more about who makes the business go around. It’s important to know who the PEOPLE are in the industry, what they do every day, and the best way to approach them, get on their radar, and ultimately get signed by them.

Communicating

The entire foundation of this book is to help you avoid bad first impressions, being turned down, being ignored, and ruining your reputation by learning to communicate better with other people in the industry. Additionally, as a manager, you are the primary person responsible for building the team around your artists. For these reasons the following chapters include important information from each type of person in the business so that you can better understand:

• The role of each person in the business and how they relate to you as a manager
• Who they communicate with on a daily basis
• What their fees are
• What’s in it for them
• What they look for in artists before working with them
• How to contact them
• How to get on their radar
• How to get signed by them
• How to be prepared for and what to expect from meetings with them

If you’re currently trying to get in touch with a person in a certain role in the business right now and it’s an urgent matter, feel free to skip ahead to the chapter that addresses that type of role. Once you’ve read and understand how they want to be connected with come back to read the remainder of the book.