You need to do a lot of preparation before you are ready to find music business management to help you mold your career.
The development stage of your career before you reach this point should be well laid out and include a few basic things to ensure the management you hire is ready to hit the ground running. Among the things you should have ready to go are:
- Professional looking photos of you or your group
- A basic website with a custom URL that you can update yourself
- A mailing list and an online place where fans can sign for the list
- A social network presence that includes outlets like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube
- Live performance footage
- A bio that highlights your accomplishments
You’ll know that you are ready to hire a music business manager when your career reaches a level where you can no longer successfully handle all the details single handedly. The books, the website, the fan outreach, the music, the logistics – at some point, if you’ve been doing right, it becomes too much and that’s when you need to hire a professional.
With these things under your belt, you are ready to think about the qualities your music business manager should have. Having managed your own career for a while, you should have a good idea of the tasks involved and the skills needed to pull this off better than you or your band mates can. Some of the things you should be looking for from a top notch music business manager are;
- Integrity and trustworthiness are key elements
- Able to handle pressure well
- Well organized
- Good with people, able to schmooze, negotiate and otherwise manipulate others
These are the essential qualities you want in a music business manager who is booking your dates, negotiating terms and overseeing the logistics of your tour.
It is helpful if you know someone with a music business manager that would be willing to make introduction for you but a connection to anyone in an music executive position can make introduction,. You want to get to a manager who has a decent roster. What you are doing is networking.
Once a meeting is set or contact information obtained, present your well. Do not send a casual email full of text-type abbreviations. Treat this as serious step because it is.
Make sure you relate all your accomplishments. Talk about your sold out shows, the demo you just made with a specific name the business manage might know and how you have a mailing list of x number of names. Explain how you found this manager and why you are excited about working with him specifically. General and vague statements fall flat.
Make the music business manager want to get to know you and work with you. Offer him some business reason to nurture you relationship. He is approached by hundreds of artists and you have to have something unique to offer for him to want to invest his time in you. If you can do that, you just might be able to hire a top rated music business management professional.
http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/how-to-find-a-music-manager.html