Success in today’s music industry completely depends on the artist. The success in the music career depends on the artist’s passion for the music, his or her skills in negotiating business contracts, dealing with publicity, getting noticed, managing sales records, media relation, so on and so forth. It is always ideal for any artist to deal their own business aspect of the music industry, but as a musician you would want to devote all your time in creating new music or perfecting your skills and rehearsing with your band, rather than having to worry about the business contracts or publicity.
Well, what do you do then? Well, for starters there are people in music industry who are well versed with the business end of the musical world, they have contacts with major label companies, and they can promote your music and also manage your media relations. These people are known as artist managers; they have been around for a long time in musical industry and have played an important role in launching careers of many famous musical artists. These managers offer their services for a certain percentage of the income of the artist. The legal agreement between an artist or a band is called an artist management contract or the band management contract. A typical contract is for 7 years; however, the duration might vary depending on the understanding between a manager and the artist involved.
As with any business contract, this contract mainly deals on the amount of percentage which the manager receives in return for the services offered. There is one important clause which both the manager and the artist should be aware of, it is called the “sunset clause”, which is usually included in the artist management contract. This basically protects the interest of both the manager and the artist. The manager recognizes the talent of an artist and works for the success of the artist career, if the artist decides not to use the service of the manager and would like a split from the manager, then the sunset clause would allow the manager to collect a certain percentage of the commission for a period of two years after the split. The percentage might vary depending on the artist and the manager involved. From the artist point of view, this clause allows the artist to split from the current manager and move on to a better management team once their career reaches a whole new horizon, without having to pay the same percentage as mentioned in the original artist management contract for a period of 7 years.
For more details on the artist management contracts, please visit ‘Reach Fame’.