Artist managements face collapse as coronavirus shuts down live music

Sometimes it’s hard not to reach for a cliché. ‘Falling off a cliff edge’ has simply been the best way of depicting the all but instantaneous collapse of artist and artist management income at global lockdown. No performances. Hence no fees paid (force majeure routinely cited) and no commission for managers, in the vast majority of cases.

Emerging insistently from the weekly Zoom sessions bringing together artist managers and other music industry professionals from around the globe (courtesy of the International Artist Managers’ Association) is the determination that some way, somehow, systems must be put in place to mitigate exposure to such financial calamity in the future.

One focus has been on ways in which at least middle- and top-ranking artists might pay managers if not retainers (illegal in the UK, for example) then a more even spread of commission amounts through any given year. However, the main discourse has been around developing business models involving, where possible, staged up-front payments by promoters to performers, culminating in a final instalment following the engagement. These payments would be first made available when engagements are agreed/contracted. This proposal has materialised within the IAMA business committee chaired by Donagh Collins, chief executive of the Askonas Holt office. Ideas have been road-tested with a group of orchestra CEOs from Germany, Switzerland and Finland.

‘This isn’t a situation where IAMA can start demanding anything,’ Collins explains. ‘The hope is that many individual promoting bodies worldwide can be persuaded to pay a deposit on a fee - maybe 25-30% of the total - as part of an early setting-out of the basic agreement in a ‘Heads of Terms’ document. This sort of thing already operates at opera houses, where payment in three stages is a widespread practice. There’s been a growing trend for contracts themselves to be issued later and later in the day. This hardly encourages the idea of up-front payments.’

‘The whole contracts procedure needed tightening up irrespective of Covid-19’s arrival,’ adds IAMA chief executive, Atholl Swainston-Harrison. ‘The crisis has opened existing fault-lines. One other obvious thing it has highlighted is the need for far more precision in contracts about where financial responsibilities lie in the event of cancellation.’

Any IAMA initiative nonetheless has to take account of two factors. For restraint of trade reasons the association cannot act as a cartel and impose regulated procedures. And while the association will inevitably consult bodies representing promoting organisations worldwide, those bodies could have no power to instruct members.

Ergo, change can only come about via the painstaking persuasion of individual promoters. Each has its own procedures. Each operates within the framework of particular national law and public arts funding policy. One of the few bright spots amid the viral gloom, says Swainston-Harrison, is that ‘some promoters in countries where the arts are well-funded by the state have been willing to pay out a proportion of agreed fees when cancelling concerts these last few months - in France and Germany, for example. In contrast, though, legal strictures in some territories expressly prevent public funds being distributed in the event of cancellations.’ Where this leaves the prospects for new payment protocols in major concert-promoting countries where public funding is more modest remains a moot point - the UK and USA, most obviously.

An IAMA Extraordinary General Meeting in mid-June found association members in broad agreement on the path ahead. Various mutual benefits of up-front payments were suggested. They make more likely the re-scheduling of a cancelled engagement, for example, while also committing the performers concerned more firmly.

One emerging template for the future comes from Canada, where artist managers and promoting organisations have been meeting regularly - among them, Barbara Scales of the Latitude 45 Artists office in Montreal. ‘We’re appreciating the spirit of collaboration,’ she reports, ‘and discussing the idea of shared risk whenever possible between promoters, artists and managers. There’s nothing concrete but we’re planning meetings with the Canadian Association for the Performing Arts [CAPACOA] at which agents and promoters can look at the rationale for such a reform in standard contracting. Payments that have been made by promoters during the pandemic represent a drop in the bucket compared to the money lost, but the principle is reassuring and a recognition of the idea of fairness and sharing.’

One approach being considered by the IAMA business committee is the circulation internationally of specimen Heads of Terms for individual promoters to consider. ‘It would take a few years for them to adjust to our proposals,’ reckons Donagh Collins. ‘But all we’re requesting is an appreciation of the plight of many musicians and their managers, just as we recognise the desperate times promoters are going through. Both our roles will be crucial to the way the music business operates in the new normal.