Why Getting a Manager Won’t Fix What You Think It Will

About two years ago an artist came to me for consultancy about her career situation. She had signed a management deal eighteen months earlier with someone who had a genuinely good contacts list and probably genuinely good intentions. Labels, booking agents, a few decent sync connections, everything was pointing towards career progression. The first few months, there were introductions with emails flying around, people being cc’d, the sense that things were really happening and traction was taking place. Then, all of a sudden, it went very quiet. Regular reporting just stopped, no formulated communication structure was ever spoken about, and crucially, no agreed plan for the year(s) ahead. When she asked questions, she got vague responses and promises about something coming up or ‘in the pipeline’. Understandably, she was concerned and disappointed.

What she hadn’t questioned at signing, and what nobody had flagged to her, was the commission clause in the contract. Historically, management has a commission based structure of twenty percent of gross income. Not net. Gross. That single word, in a clause nobody spent five minutes on, meant every pound she was earning from live shows, sync placements, and merchandising was subject to commission before her costs came off. The end result was she was paying considerably more than she expected to for eighteen months of introductions and very little else.

This story is not unusual. A version of it arrives in my inbox more often than I’d like, in fact weekly. The following mythology runs deep in artist culture: get a manager, go to the next level, experience success. Find the right person with the right contacts and you’re suddenly in rooms you couldn’t get into before. It’s driven in part by aspiration, part folklore, and I believe it has been actively promoted by people who stand to benefit from artists believing in it.

Some of that mythology is a hangover from an earlier era when a manager with strong relationships genuinely could get an unsigned act in front of the right label A&R person and that would have been enough. I’d strongly argue that era is now almost entirely over. What has replaced it, is a system that now asks considerably more of both artist and manager, and the mythology has not kept up with the reality.

About the Author

Ron Pye is the CEO of IQ Artist Management, where he works directly with artists across all genres on full management and specialist consultancy. The management industry he writes about is the one he operates in daily.

The commission structures and deal mechanics he covers here are territory he knows from direct practice: as a manager negotiating terms, and as a consultant called in to review contracts after relationships have already broken down. The cases that inform this article are drawn from both situations.

His academic background sharpens this analysis. He has an MA in Music Industry Studies, completed at the University of Liverpool in 2024 with Distinction, and has examined the legal and commercial frameworks governing artist and manager relationships, including how deal structures have evolved and where they continue to fail. That research sits directly behind the MMF section of this piece.

The Commission Conversation Nobody Has

Believing in this mythology means artists walk into management conversations with one number in their heads: twenty percent. That figure has been treated as the standard for so long that most people don’t even think to question it. But twenty percent of what, exactly? Commission calculated on gross income looks very different from commission calculated on net, and the word “gross” in a management contract, is where more disputes begin than managers want to admit.

Twenty percent of £250,000 is £50,000, roughly the threshold at which commission management starts to look like a viable income for the person doing the work. That is my own simplistic calculation, not a cited figure. Most developing artists are nowhere near those numbers. Those middle years, when the audience is building but income is still low, are precisely when the traditional model breaks down. Which means managing an artist at this stage simply does not pay enough to justify the time involved. Something has to give.

What typically gives is the time spent. The manager often takes on more clients to compensate for the income shortfall, which reduces how much attention any one artist receives. And/or they put the acts not currently earning revenues at the bottom of their list of priorities. Neither of those outcomes is what the artist signed up for, and neither is stated in the contract that’s been signed.

In November 2024, the MMF published a Management Deals Guide. It was aimed at being an honest evaluation that, in the contemporary music industry, the traditional management model is changing. MMF CEO Annabella Coldrick noted that people’s concept of management has never followed a single standard, stating there is a “disconnect between how the rest of the industry believes managers are paid, and how our members operate in practice.” Kwame Kwaten of Ferocious Talent was somewhat more blunt: the commission model had simply been “unchanged for 40 years.” Those are not the words of an industry at ease with where things stand.

The retainer model has emerged as one viable response. Rather than a percentage of income, the manager charges a fixed monthly fee. Artists then get cost predictability. For the manager, it means a reliable income whether their client is currently earning or not. Hybrid arrangements are also appearing more often in active deals. From what I’ve seen the concept is a modest monthly retainer combined with a reduced commission rate once earnings pass a certain threshold. Managers in active practice charge anywhere from 15 to 25 percent, depending on the deal, and none of these structures are standardised. The MMF guide was an honest admission that the traditional model hasn’t been seriously revisited in decades, and is, dare I suggest, outdated.

Not All Management Looks the Same

Full management is what most artists picture when they think of having a manager. Exclusive representation, commission on income, involved in every decision across releases, live bookings, press, deals, brand conversations. The scope is broad by design. The manager becomes part of the artist’s business infrastructure, not just an advisor in the background. That breadth only makes sense when there is enough activity to fully justify it. A full management setup for an artist with one EP and no tour history is going to be a lot of overhead for very little to manage in actual reality. Both parties will end up frustrated before long, though the manager often won’t say so for fear of upsetting the artist.

Consultancy works a little differently. Rather than full representation, the artist brings in a specialist for a specific area: royalty collection, sync licensing, a particular campaign, or a contract that needs picking apart. No exclusivity, no commission on general income, usually project work or a fixed retainer. This is not a lesser version of management, it’s simply good business. For artists at a certain stage, or with a clear gap in one part of their operation, a good consultancy arrangement is often the better option. They get the expertise without the commission structure running across absolutely everything they earn.

The third arrangement involves two managers splitting the responsibilities. Each covers a different geography or function. The most common version is a personal manager handling domestic operations while a second covers another territory, typically touring or commercial partnerships in North America or Europe. It works best when both managers have agreed, with the artist, who is to handle what specific parts of the career. Advice given to the artist will then be evaluated against those parts that each manager handles separately.

So at IQ, the consultancy option exists because I have seen too many management relationships fail when the artist was not at the right stage for full representation. Signing them too early is not a kindness to the artist, it has to be a financial reality for both parties. A manager who takes on acts before they are ready is setting up a relationship that does not have the foundations to function.

What Both Sides Actually Need to Bring

A management relationship is a partnership based on trust. That sounds pretty obvious, but the word “partnership” does a lot of work that the actual conversation about management rarely spells out.

On the manager’s side, the job is a process, not just presence. Presence is easy. Anyone can attend a gig, send an enthusiastic email, make introductions over dinner. Process is the part that separates a working relationship from an expensive friendship: regular reporting, agreed timelines, a clear picture of which decisions the manager handles alone and which the artist needs to approve. When a manager signs an act, takes their twenty percent, and then goes quiet for three months, the relationship has already stalled. Although, the commission is running quite well. Nothing else is.

The patterns that sink relationships are usually the same. Managers make introductions but rarely follow them up because of a lack of time. Creative decisions start appearing that nobody requested or can appear micromanaged. And when things are not moving, rather than raising the problem, some go quiet. Artists who have been through this once learn to spot the signs early.

On the artist’s side, the relationship only works when there is something there to manage. An artist with no income, no live draw, and no audience growth puts the manager in a position where every door they knock on requires them to sell faith rather than evidence. There is that often-used line that circulates among photographers stating simply ‘I can’t eat exposure’. Finding yourself in this situation can be exhausting, and it will wear down even the most genuinely committed of artists and managers.

The friction in most management relationships does not start with personality clashes. It starts with mismatched expectations that nobody addressed at the outset. One side assumed more than was said. The other agreed to terms without thinking through what those terms required of them.

Before IQ takes anyone on, I am as clear about what I expect from the artist as I am about what they can expect from me. I had that conversation with a client a couple of years back: touring schedule, response times, how creative decisions would work, what I would never touch without being asked. It took about forty minutes and is probably why the relationship is still functioning today. I believe that a working relationship must start with that amount of clarity. Trust compounds.

Management Is Amplification, Not Creation

A manager can take something that already has momentum and push it further. Open doors the artist cannot open from where they are. Make introductions that would take years to build alone, negotiate deals the artist would not know to ask for, put weight behind conversations that were going nowhere. That is the genuine value a manager can provide. But a manager cannot build an audience that does not exist. We cannot manufacture traction. Nobody can. Management is an amplification, something has to exist first.

What traction looks like now is not what it looked like ten years ago. It was never just a vague sense that the music was good, but the bar has moved considerably. What a manager needs to take into any serious conversation is evidence: a live draw that is growing month on month, social engagement that goes beyond the immediate circle, streaming numbers that are moving on their own. Labels, booking agents, sync supervisors, brand partners. They all want to see something before a conversation gets serious. A manager presenting an act with none of that has nothing to work with. Go in without it and the room will nod politely and wait for you to leave.

The way that foundation gets built has changed too. Artists now spend serious money on digital advertising just to find out whether anyone responds to their music. It is the process now, and any manager worth talking to will know why you have done it and respect that you have done it. The question worth asking before any conversation about representation is what the organic signal looks like underneath the paid activity. Is an audience growing underneath it, or is the engagement entirely bought? That distinction matters more than the raw numbers.

The tipping point for management is when the weight of existing traction starts costing the artist opportunities. When the emails they cannot get to are deals falling through, when the relationships they cannot maintain are going cold, when the activity itself has outgrown what one person can handle alone. That pressure is the signal, and it is a reliable one.

I turn artists away fairly regularly. Not because the music is not good. Good music is everywhere, and it always has been. But mainly because there is nothing there for a manager to work with, and signing them anyway would not serve either of us. I’ve also lost count of the number of conversations I have had with artists who are in this position who take this view personally. The conversation quite often becomes a combative one. Most management companies will not say this because it means walking away from potential income. If that question is still unresolved for you then, Do You Need a Music Manager? goes into considerably more depth.

How to Read the First Conversation

The first conversation with a potential manager will tell you a lot. A manager who asks about your income and commission expectations before they have even finished listening to your catalogue is thinking about the commercial relationship first. That is not necessarily a bad sign, but it tells you where their head is before they know your particular situation. It also tells you where the industry is right now.

A manager who actually works to a process will ask different questions first. What are you trying to accomplish in the next two to three years? How do you see yourself getting there? Do you think your goals are realistically achievable? How does the live situation look? Where are you seeing any organic traction at the moment? The conversation starts with the artist’s situation, not the deal structure or the revenue underneath.

On commission: anyone who proposes 20 percent of gross without discussing what “gross” covers has either not thought about it carefully, or has thought about it very carefully and is hoping you have not. That distinction matters a lot in practice. Commission on sync income calculated on gross sync fees looks very different from commission calculated after the publisher’s share has come off. An experienced manager knows this, and they should raise it themselves without being asked. If they don’t, well, raise it yourself.

On the retainer question: a manager who has never heard of a retainer or hybrid structure, or who dismisses it without engagement, has not paid attention to how management deals are evolving. It’s worth asking them directly, even if you are not entirely sold on it yourself, their response will definitely tell you something. As mentioned earlier, the MMF’s own guidance now acknowledges the range of structures currently in use. It’s not a particularly radical concept, but I believe any manager should be aware of it and have an opinion on it.

If you want more depth on how to find the right manager and what to look for when you do, The Art of Music Management covers the practical side in detail.

Where IQ Fits In

IQ Artist Management

IQ offers full management and specialist consultancy for artists across all genres. Working without genre restrictions is a very deliberate choice, and is genuinely exciting for us. We believe that the right roster is built on genuine interest in the work being produced, not on fitting artists into a category. Artists get to work directly with me and my colleagues who are highly experienced in all genres of music.

IQ is also deliberately selective. Not every enquiry we receive is the right time for full management. The difficult part is conveying that to extremely ambitious artists who have decided already that they need a manager. Some artists need targeted specialist help in one area rather than full representation, and the consultancy option is built for exactly that. If you are interested in either, the services pages have more detail, or you can get in touch directly.

IQ Digital

If you find yourself thinking you need a manager, but the audience is not there yet, your live draw is small, and you have been at this for years without the numbers moving, a management deal will not solve that. A manager needs something to amplify.

IQ Digital exists for artists at exactly this stage.

Why do I need to be an expert in absolutely everything just to make a living from music? Where do you start with building an audience? Is there a right sequence to follow? There are so many marketing tools, techniques and courses out there. Which ones can I actually trust?

Familiar questions?

IQ Digital is a new service built around answering them practically. Not a course, and not a funnel of cleverly marketed generic advice handed down from someone who has never turned away a client. A structured process, built by a practitioner who actively works in this industry, focused on getting you to the point where a management conversation becomes viable. The sequence matters. The order of things matters. That is what IQ Digital is built around.

More detail will follow very shortly on the IQ Digital pages.