Written By: Leah C. Stevenson, Esq.
A music artist’s creative abilities and skillset are incredibly valuable to the entertainment industry. With this in mind, music artists need to look at themselves as a business, one that is capable of generating millions of dollars. Most successful businesses cannot continue to grow and scale without team members who play essential roles and complete all the necessary tasks to keep the business afloat.
Most successful artists have a team behind them. This allow the music artist to truly focus on their craft while their team makes sure all the legal, business, and general affairs are truly in order. Every team member plays an essential role and ensures the artist is successful in all their endeavors in the industry.
Who are two important members of a music artist’s team?
Entertainment Lawyer
The legal and business side are the bread and butter for the execution of all deals in the music industry. With this in mind, it is important to have an entertainment lawyer on your team who is able to give proper guidance, review agreements, decipher contractual language, advise you of your rights, and to let you know whether a deal looks fair or favorable to your overall interests. This becomes particularly important when you are being offered deals and sent high-level proposals and agreements that contain verbose legal language. It is imperative to know your rights and to be completely informed of the contractual language in an agreement or you will be walking into deals blindly.
I cannot state how many horror stories I have seen where a music artist entered into a contract without seeking legal advice from a licensed attorney before doing so. Although sometimes these deals end up working out, more often than not, the music artist is not fully advised of all their contractual obligations and are usually surprised later down the line when they realize their advance is recoupable, they are locked into an agreement for potentially 6 irrevocable option periods, they have to foot the bill for recording costs once they deplete the label’s budget, or that they do not own their musical compositions or masters. Lawyers may be expensive, but entering into deals blindly and trying to buy your way out down the line is actually way more costly.
A lawyer not only advises you on how to navigate the industry, but they help you decipher contractual language, protect your creative works, ensure you collect all the royalties and revenue payable to you, enforce your rights, explain confusing legal and business concepts, and truly have your best interest at heart.
Los Angeles and New York are by far two of the best places to find a great pool of entertainment lawyers to choose from as these two cities are the entertainment hubs of the U.S.
Personal Manager
Behind every successful music artist is a hardworking manager who is determined to make the artist successful in the entertainment industry. An artist manager is a music artist’s personal representative that helps the artist build their career and is directly in charge of the artist’s professional development.
From an artist’s perspective, a personal manager is not only your right hand man, but they are also probably the single most important person on your team. Choosing the proper personal manager could mean the difference between success and failure in the industry.
Personal managers help music artists make major business decisions, forge relationships with execs and major players in the industry on your behalf. Additionally, managers help artists with their creative process, assist with marketing, converse with other team members on the artist’s behalf, coordinate appearances and tour dates, and generally serve the liaison between the music artist and other people in the entertainment industry. Often times, managers are very well connected in the industry and they have preexisting relationships with booking agents, publicists, lawyers, and executives at record labels or distributors which can help a music artist be truly successful in the industry.
Managers are a crucial part of a music artist’s life and they serve as an artist’s spokesperson and ultimate confidant in the industry.
Other crucial members of a Music Artist’s team
Although entertainment lawyers and managers are essential to a music artist’s team, there are other team members that truly assist in a music artist’s success as well. These additional team members include music publishers, booking agents, publicists, personal assistants, social media managers, accountants, CPAs, and other professionals who play an essential role to the overall functionality of a music artist’s business.
All of these team members are invaluable as they truly handle the general business affairs while the music artist is fully able to focus on making music and all other creative endeavors.
A music artist’s team plays an essential role and all the team members must work in tandem to ensure the music artist is properly advised, assisted, and fully able to focus on their creative obligations.
DISCLAIMER: The information provided on this website does not and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. This blog post is solely for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is created via these blog posts.
