Roles in the Music Industry: What Do These Guys Do?

Manager

The main person who takes care of almost every aspect of the artist/band’s career; from allocating and assigning the ideal producer, to the largely spanning financial issues. They take charge of daily promotional activities, tours, photo sessions, videos. In simple terms, all of the planning is done by the managers. And how everything planned today will be affected in the future. Everything must be broadened and planned to be effective in 5 years’ time by them.

A&R

These people book studio time, proof read credits, deal with administrative elements and occasionally have the opportunity of signing artists’. Their job is to ‘scout’ for new bands. They deal with mostly paper work (more so now in modern 21^st century society) and ensure all the right people are where they should be at all the right times. A&R’s can be creative but the way the industry has progressed it has declined in creativity. Instead they search the internet for potential successes nowadays.  An advantage would be that there is more leeway in signing more interesting artists in the UK than in comparison to the States; it is the next American Idol that is signed who reflects artists and music that is already selling. They also are important for the continuous nurturing of artists they’ve previously signed and tend to be the main figures who try to increase recording budgets for upcoming albums.

Producer

The producer is the key link between the record label’s desires and need and those of the artist, so they will combine both necessities to form one final product. They can be a member of the band, the person with the vision, the songwriter, a musical collaborator, and engineer with a technical background. They can even be someone who isn’t in the forefront but rather sits in the back and occasionally says something of great value. These days they are much more hands on now so they are expected to have background experiences in engineering, music and programming.

Engineer

They work very closely with producers and occasionally are the producers. They use their technical abilities and studio knowledge to translate and interpret a band or artists vision into a viable record. Their role involves recording every element of the song and then mixing them together to create a final masterpiece.

Promoter

These people are responsible for booking and planning gigs and venues for those gigs. They will find and hire agents to find who is touring when and where and then book in advance for their artist/band.  Mostly have the duty of factors like advertising, marketing and overall structure and programming of the entire night. They will always have the final say. They are responsible for entertainments licenses, budgeting issues, ticketing, sponsorship, gig production & staging, they also decide of the level of publicity they wish to have for each event, but mostly local ones. 

Booking Agent

These people have the responsibility of booking tours, festival acts, negotiating fees, developing and noticing unsigned acts. They enable artists to increase (however it is more common for unsigned acts to book gigs themselves. Booking agents take requests, sort travel and accommodation and decide the artist’s itinery. They need to know exactly what the artist or band wants and needs, they have to be very committed and devoted to their artist/band. Ultimately, they plan the artist or bands career, so they have to be fully understanding of the band and their aspirations and aims. They are life managers for the person or group as an artist in the music industry.

Tour Manager

These people ensure that the artist’s get to the right venue at the right time for a gig and will be held responsible for solving any personnel problems whilst on tour. This can involve anything from handling the press to the wellbeing of the artist or band members for the tour to dealing with and keeping to the budget

Plugger

This category divides into three sub-roles; TV plugger’s, radio plugger’s and online plugger’s. It’s fairly self-explanatory in the sense that TV plugger’s are concerned with getting the band played on television, onto interviews,  sessions and live performances and radio plugger’s have the duty of getting the artist’s music played on the radio. Similarly, online plugger’s are responsible for the promotion of the artist or band through means of websites and mobile phone companies.

Publisher

Part of their duty is to take care of the rights of the songwriters and composers. Their main purpose is to ensure that the songwriter gains royalties from the record. They can also help with the selling of songwriters songs to artists’ and potentially get them licensed for films and TV shows. Publishers who are further up in the industry hierarchy can also aid with the recording process for a band. They also collect all the money from that is made from radio play and also if a song is used in advertising, whenever it gets played the artist or band will receive a sum of money which the publisher will collect.