music Why band managers need a solid music background

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,809]

Picture this:

 

It was the peak of your favorite band. The songs were just outstanding as the manager and band were hand in hand, working together to create well-written and outstanding songs that always hooked the audience from start to finish...

 

Now, picture this:

 

...but then the band manger is moving away and the band must now find a new band manager. Someone offers them to be the manager and they take it...not knowing that this guy is not even close to the experience of the previous manager. All you really see is the manager on a laptop just compiling .mp3 files or making simple limited loops. At the next concert, the audience is not really that energized and hooked. Yet this manager does not want to change. He thinks that his "music" is "the best" and something "amazing", when from the band's perspective, it's just the same repetition. 

 

Now that you've pictured this, let's get to the real deal here. 

 

A lot of well known popular bands have not been getting that much attention these days, simply because people known as "laptop guys" are managing the band, which is putting a major damper on their success. Now I'm not saying that every band out there has "laptop guys". "Laptop guys" are simply people who really don't have experience in music. They rather just sit on a computer or laptop compiling .mp3 files or making basic loops and claiming that they sound "good". This is perhaps the reason why band managers need a solid music background. Anyone can claim to be a musician, but it's not until you hear what they actually make determines the truth. And that is perhaps the biggest reason why the reputation of today's bands has gone down significantly. 

 

Thoughts?

[Grepper 3,192]

What do you mean by "making basic loops"? I don't understand how that relates to managing a band.

Also, do you have any examples of bands that would fall into the issue you described?

[Trot Shuffle 3,599]

I'm also lost as to how "putting loops together" coincides with managing a band.

Doesn't a band manager manage the business side of things for them? Such as dealing with venues, promotions, etc.? They're not in charge of making the music itself, that's up to the actual band members and audio engineers, etc.

I'm sure there may be something in a contract that says the kind of music they want the band members to make though.

[Sir Hugsalot 8,621]

I feel like you severely simplified what manager does for the band and showed a classic case of musician that lacks grounding, thinking it is so simple to release music and manage your musical project. Managers are actually extremely important (however OPTIONAL!) for any musical project. Their tasks, however are what can be considered "heavy lifting" and includes:

• reviewing, signing and negotiating all kinds of contracts. Contracts with record labels especially. There are a lot of terrible things that can happen if such contract is signed by inexperienced person and it's signed with a "big player" like Nuclear Blast in metal music.
• they sometimes watch over your public image, making sure you don't do something that can destroy your career
• they organize concerts, festivals
• they help you manage your finances, sales, copyrights

Overall they're literal backbone of your project that allows you to focus on what you do it for - your love for music. It's also noteworthy that band itself decides how much manager has control on. They can literally limit him to just manage finances and he'll do exactly that. 

What's important in each of those tasks is, they do not require any sort of musical talent or background. Manager has you for that. He's there to take care of "boring stuff", you're there to deliver music to your fans and to yourself. 

 

Also since you show only an unnamed example of a manager with no musical background butchering a musical project, allow me to provide named example of the opposite: 

Wintersun. They started BIG, debut album received lots of praise, fans became so crazy they called him "modern Mozart" (I heavily disagree with the term, but that's irrevelant now). But then he got ambitious. Mind you, Jari, project's owner is his own manager, nobody does that for him. But when it came to producing another album, Time, things started getting ridiculous:

• he talked about how many tracks he squeezed into it. Hundreds of midi tracks to simulate orchestra. After Time I was released... I can't hear that. I am not saying he's lying, I am saying he clearly thrusted a lot of unnecesarry tracks, which brings us to another point...
• due to his lack of experience or willing to learn he doesn't know how to mix it properly. He was heavily against any mix by any studio (that was funded by his recording label, more of that later) he was provided, so he started making it himself. Due to hundreds of tracks and no ability to properly handle them, mixes were pretty much unusable on any PC (and even today there's no way they'd work). His mistakes were most basic sound engineering mistakes - something, that with proper engineer wouldn't ever be a problem. He, however constantly blamed it on his weak computers (that weren't so weak at all). 
• He started attacking record label for limitations it was imposing on him. I'll be blunt. To them he was becoming a parasite. A lot of money was funnelled into his project yet release of an album was a distant promise. When he finally released half of it it turned out his mix is actually pretty terrible, leaving a lot of sound hidden behind noise. It was further confirmed with remix done by actual studio. Remix, that our Jari, of course, hated. To say this was poor negotiations skills would be an understatement. As far as business and PR is concerned he did a terrible job making more and more fans turn away from him, turning him into a clown. 
• He started asking fans for more and more money. Made an album (average one, where most of his band was replaced by MIDI) and literally paywalled it behind crowdfunding with indirect threat not to release it, should crowdfunding flop. The goal? To build his own studio. That's also, where infamous metal meme of Jari wanting fans to build him a sauna comes from as he wanted a sauna in a studio. Not just that, it was a literal house with studio wing xD The crowdfunding occurred few years ago btw, was a huge success. So he released the rest of Time album. Right? Right?
• No. He still doesn't somehow have resources. These days all he does is patreon podcasts, little to no music work and foggy promises. And no transparency as to where did the crowdfunding money go. He has lost his entire face, looks like a clown, his niche in metal was filled by other bands incorporating his music style more efficiently and actually producing music, when it comes to terrible project management, to me Jari is one of top examples of that. 

This is what happens when you lack grounding. All Jari's problems have one thing in common - they don't require a musician to fix. They require a manager. That manager doesn't need a musical background, but common sense, legal knowledge and willingness to help you push your project through instead of altering it in any way bigger than necesarry.

 

On 2023-11-09 at 7:53 AM, Trot Shuffle said:

I'm also lost as to how "putting loops together" coincides with managing a band.

I think he refers to electronic music or rap, at least some of it, relying on basic loops. A common stereotype that music done on computer is of poor quality.