Keeping Manager and Record Label Relationships Together

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The Pattern That Kills These Relationships

I'm not going to call out an exact artist, but as one of you who's watching will know, we've recently been doing work on a situation where a label told an artist they were going to do a lot of things, the artist is working hard, and the label is doing nothing. This artist is locked into a three-album deal, and the contract is pretty tight — they're not getting out of it. So they have to make this relationship work, much like when parents stay together for the kids. You've gotta get them to high school and get to your freedom.

So what I want to talk about is how these relationships often go wrong.

On one end is the record label or the management — whichever relationship we're discussing. On the other end is you, the artist. You all have a meeting, and you agree you're gonna go do a bunch of things. You go do the work. You return two weeks later, and the label has done nothing. Now you're pissed. You start to lose all your momentum and your will to work because they're not working. You get down to a lower baseline, you discuss doing some more work, and then they don't do those things either. Now you're discussing even less the next time. And then you give up on talking to each other because nothing's getting done, and the relationship goes to hell.

Now, for those of you who are managers or labels reading this, you're probably saying, “Yeah, that happens with the musician and us all the time too.” And that's exactly why I talk about it this way. There are two sides to this coin, depending on who's being lazy. What we're always going for is equilibrium.

The Balloon Joke

This is a joke I learned at my first job at a record label in the 90s. My boss told it to me the first time I was disappointed with myself about what I was doing for an artist:

You're standing in a field, and a guy comes by in a balloon. He yells down to you: "Hey, I'm stuck in this balloon, I need to get out — what do I do?" You say, "Try to get close to a tree, jump out onto the branch. Or find a hill, jump out, you'll be safe." And the guy in the balloon goes, "You must be a record label, because everything you're telling me is obvious to anyone with half a fucking brain and totally unhelpful." And the guy on the ground says back, "You must be a musician, because you got yourself into a stupid situation, you're wondering how you get out of it, and now you're blaming me."

Both sides can be wrong. That's the whole point.

Why Momentum Is So Easy to Lose

Here's something I come back to all the time: if you put up a short-form video expecting 200 likes and it comes back with 150, you lose five points of motivation. If it meets your expectations exactly, you gain zero. If it exceeds them, you only get two points back. So you're already working against yourself — every miss costs more than every win pays back, and those misses accumulate fast.

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