01
Manager
Coordinates the broader career, helps prioritize opportunities, builds strategy, and often acts as the connective tissue between the artist and the rest of the team. The exact scope should be defined in the management agreement.
Foundation Guide
Who Does What on an Artist Team?
Understand the jobs of managers, booking agents, attorneys, business managers, publicists, distributors, publishers, labels, and the artist.
Choose Your Lens
Why this matters
Current View
Fan
When an artist suddenly gets “management” or “agency representation,” the music did not get handed off to someone else. Different professionals usually take ownership of different business functions around the artist.
01
Understand
Start with what the concept means and why it shows up.
02
Work It Through
Move through the practical decisions, tradeoffs, and moving parts.
03
Ask Better Questions
Use the prompts to catch assumptions before they become expensive.
04
Take It With You
Finish with a checklist you can use outside the page.
02
Booking agent
Primarily develops and negotiates live performance opportunities. A useful should create or improve live-business leverage, not simply forward emails the artist could already handle.
03
Attorney and business manager/accountant
An entertainment attorney focuses on contracts, rights, negotiations, and legal risk. Financial professionals handle accounting, reporting, tax planning, payments, budgets, and financial controls depending on their scope.
04
Publicist, radio, marketing and digital partners
These roles help create awareness, media coverage, radio activity, content, advertising, and campaign execution. They do not automatically create product-market fit; strong music, positioning, timing, and audience response still matter.
05
Distributor, publisher/admin and label
gets recordings to services and may provide additional tools. entities administer composition rights and revenue. Labels can provide funding, services, marketing, distribution, ownership structures, or combinations of those depending on the deal.