In this solo presentation, Wendy Day explains why a music‑industry manager is the central figure in an artist’s team, likening the role to a quarterback or coach who designs and oversees a career plan. She outlines the essential qualities of a good manager—experience, strong connections, a solid reputation, and a proven track record of building artists from the ground up—and contrasts this with the limited value of family‑friend “managers” who act more like assistants. Day warns against treating managers as ATMs, emphasizing their fiduciary duty and the standard 15‑20% commission model, which should be earned only after the artist begins generating income. She discusses the optimal timing for hiring a manager, suggesting artists first build a fan base and some revenue so they can attract higher‑level managers who can immediately add value. Finally, she advises artists to negotiate contracts with clear term lengths, performance minimums (e.g., annual revenue targets), and exit clauses to protect against under‑performing managers, underscoring that a great manager can make or break a career.
Chapters
Hi guys, so we've been covering how to put together a strong team, and the backbone of that team, the foundation of that team, the main player of that team is your manager. Your manager is like your quarterback or your coach. They're the person that you bring on board that brings all the other team members together and makes sure that the plan is being followed, the plan for your career, of how to build your career. So a manager is somebody that has experience in the music business, strong connections, a great reputation, and hopefully has already built, um, an artist or two from the ground up. They sit down with you and figure out what goals are, where you're trying to get to, and then they put together a plan with you of how to get you from A to Z. And then they're the ones that sort of oversee that plan as you move forward. So they're very much your coach or your quarterback, as I, as I already said. A manager has to have great organizational skills. They have to have some understanding of how the music business works. Yes, there are a lot of managers in this business that are brand new and don't have any experience and don't have any connections. And it's not that— it's not that they can't win. It's just that if you're a new artist and you've never done this before either, why would you want someone guiding you that also hasn't walked this path? Wouldn't you want to have a manager that's already done this and succeeded in the music business? I know a lot of new artists bring on like a family member or a friend to manage them, but that's not really a manager. That's kind of a glorified assistant. That's somebody that helps you with your day-to-day and helps you get work done. That's not somebody that can actually plug you into a booking agent or introduce you to a powerful attorney or get you on the tour of an established artist that has a similar fan base to yours. And those are all skill sets that a great manager needs to have. So you can have a day-to-day person that handles your, um, your everyday business and then have a manager that oversees every other aspect of your career but doesn't handle the day-to-day aspect. Um, also, a manager is not somebody that's an ATM machine. Like, they're not put on earth to fund your career or to pay for stuff that you can't pay for. In fact, it makes me a little bit nervous when there are managers that are putting out money for their clients because it makes me wonder Like, what happens to that relationship if the manager's not making their money back fast enough? Are they going to make decisions based on what's going to get them their money back fast— fastest? Or are they making decisions based on what's best for the artist? Like, a manager has a fiduciary duty to the artist, and hopefully that includes not making moves that will benefit the manager more so than the artist's long-term career. Now, when should you hire a manager? That's such a hard question to answer because it's different for everybody. If you're doing okay without management and you're kind of doing this yourself, and I know almost everybody watching this is doing it themselves because that's why you find this topic interesting, um, if you can just hang in there and do this for yourself as long as you possibly can, the level of manager you're going to attract is going to be so much stronger and better and further along than if you're at a very entry-level place in your career and you're trying to land a superstar manager. A manager's goal in working with an artist— I'm looking at this now from the other point of view, right? So we just talked about, um, what a manager does for you. Let's talk about what you do for a manager. So a manager gets paid 15 to 20% of your entertainment payment income. So if you're in a position where you're not earning any income yet, that means that manager's gonna have to work for free, pro bono, until you start making money. And there's a point where you can start working with an artist and you can see where they're just about to pop off and start making money. And usually the show money comes first, but you can kind of see where an artist is about to start making money, and that's when it makes sense for a very experienced manager to come in. Because you can take— you may not take the artist from A to Z, you might take them from D to Z or F to Z, you see what I'm saying? But what you're doing is you're coming in at a point in time when the artist already has something going on, and you can start to make income almost right away, it just makes it a much better situation for a manager to start making money when they start working with the artist. And a management position is not one of those jobs where an artist should pay the manager a monthly stipend or a fee of any sort. The, the manager should get a percentage of the work that they put in. So basically, they're— they eat what they kill. But the artist has to be at a point in their career where the manager can just step in and use their connections and their relationships to get the artist, um, to a point where they are making money. It's not like a great manager can step in and sprinkle magic pixie dust and start the artist making money immediately. In order for you to make money as an artist, you've got to have some sort of a fan base. There have to be people that are following you and watching you, and fans of yours that are willing to support you financially by either spending money to come to a show or streaming your music or buying your merchandise. When you're a brand new artist and you're virtually unknown, it's really hard to get people to support you financially. You almost always need to give away your music for free and build that fan base up so that you can then start making money. And a manager, once they step in, they're able to get you from the level that you're at to the next level. But it's very, very difficult to get an artist from day one when they enter the music industry to a point where they're making money immediately. So all that to say, You're gonna hire a manager when it makes the most sense for your career and you can attract the best level of management to you. When a manager does a deal with you, they're gonna sign on for 3 years or 5 years or, you know, however long. So you don't want to be stuck with somebody that's inept or that doesn't do anything for, you know, for a long period of time. You want somebody to step in and hit the ground running. I would suggest to any artist that's doing a deal with a manager that you have some sort of— some sort of a level that they need to hit. Like, even if you put into a contract with the manager that they have to make you a certain amount of money every year, a really great manager knows exactly what they bring to the table and how much they can bring you in a year. They have no problem putting in a minimum requirement so that if they don't deliver that much income for you, then you can choose to replace them. That doesn't mean you have to. Like, for example, you may say, okay, you have to make me a minimum of $100,000 a year. Your manager may make you $90,000 a year or $50,000 a year. That doesn't mean that you're going to fire them. It just means that you've got an out in the contract in case it's the type of manager that you've brought on board and signed to and they don't put in any work. And that happens all the time. You know, managers aren't exclusive to one artist. They usually have a roster of artists. So you might bring somebody on that has a great reputation and somebody that's a great manager, but they're so busy with what's already on their plate that they don't have the opportunity to work with you and get you to the next level. And you need to have some sort of an out in your contract so that you can get away from somebody that isn't delivering. And again, just because it's in the contract doesn't mean you have to leave. It's just there in case you have to pull the ripcord and jump out the plane with the parachute. This is your parachute. So I hope that explains a little bit more about what a manager does. They're the one that steers your boat. They're the one that helps you put together the plan of where you want to be, and then they bring on the accountant, which is also called a business manager. They choose the attorney. Now, when you're, when you're negotiating with the manager to hire them, you each need your own attorney. But once you are— once that contract is signed and they're contractually obligated to you and you to them, you can then use the same attorney. And usually The manager is the person that deals with the attorney, they deal with your record label, they deal with your fan club, they deal with the content creators, with all of the marketing team, the video team. They're the person that represents you, so they have a lot of power and they have a lot of control over your career. So choose very, very, very wisely. A great manager can make or break your career. A shitty manager will always kill your career. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Check out the videos on my YouTube page at youtube.com/thisiswendyday. Bye.
