Music Artist Management: How Technology Is Making It Easier

How’s That Music Artist Management Thing Going for You?

Successful music artist management is no easy feat. As a venue owner, you could be juggling multiple artists in one night—and each artist has their contract terms, pricing, demands, and schedules. With the air of desperation surrounding people wanting to get back on stage or back into seats, artists are looking to book shows as soon as humanly possible.

With so many shows in a month, it can get messy. 

While most of us have moved beyond a paper calendar booking system for events, many online calendars still lack the necessary bandwidth to cover every aspect of an event, let alone an event with multiple artists. Thankfully, the development of user-friendly end-to-end technology has revolutionized the way we plan and prepare for events. The only potential mess comes with a rock star smashing their guitar and crowd surfing, but unfortunately, there isn’t software to clean that up (yet). 

Simpler Music Artist Management in the New Normal

Let’s be honest. People don’t get into the music industry because they want to sit at a desk all day. And after a year of sitting behind a desk (or on a couch) at home staring at a Zoom screen, let’s just say that everyone’s eager to be up and about on their feet, engaging with other industry professionals. 

We’ve been talking about the what-ifs of concerts virtually for too long, and you likely want to be out having lunch or coffee meetings with others in the industry when you can. But when it comes to negotiating and getting everything in order, you can’t rely on a napkin at the restaurant to take care of business. That’s where music artist management technology takes center stage.

With a multi-platform system, you can use your mobile device to log all of the information from that meeting, and when you get back to your desk (or couch—no shame), you’ll have all of the information you need on your laptop or desktop. Cloud technology lets you take your artist management system with you wherever you go and share it with whoever you want.

Especially with the influx of people wanting to get back to live events, artist management software can keep you from becoming overwhelmed, losing opportunities to build your brand, and over or underbooking yourself. 

Everything in One Place

lanning an event shouldn’t feel like participating in a decathlon of navigating management tools. If all of your technology is separated, you have to log the same information multiple times, and sometimes things can slip through the cracks. Whether you’re a live music promoter, a venue manager, or a booking agent, you need to have all your ducks in a row for every single event.

So why are we still using multiple applications when we can have one that does it all? 

For example, some artists tour with openers, and others want to contract local openers in the various cities they travel to. Let’s say you’re a venue manager, and you have it on a sticky note somewhere that you’re supposed to provide the opener for a show, but that memo doesn’t make it into your main planning notes on your computer. A week before the show, the booking agent follows up with you about that opening act, but you totally forgot that was on you because you don’t have a centralized system, so you scramble to find a band on short notice.

On the other hand, with an integrated platform, at the meeting with the booking agent who says the artist wants a local band to open for them, you pull out your smartphone, open your management app, and make a note of it right there. When you get back from your meeting, it’s already there in your main notes, so you start exploring bands that fit the headlining artist’s vibe. You send them a few samples of your top three picks, and they pick their favorite. You book them, and everything’s ready to go.

It’s simple and effective, and it saves a great deal of time and effort. 

Track Numbers with Ease 

Rock and roll and math don’t always go together. Trying to make sense of an Excel spreadsheet for revenue and expense tracking is probably the least glamorous part of your job, but it’s one of the most necessary aspects of planning an event. If your numbers aren’t accurate, your business and reputation suffer.

With management software, you can ditch the manual entry and have your expenses, ticket sales, and internal revenue streams integrated in one place. The top of the line applications will allow you to link your ticketing platform, so your sales automatically update in real-time.

Management platforms give you access to templates that help you build detailed budgets and choose which team members have access to specific parts of the budget. You’ll be able to send invoices through the system so you can track your expenses as they occur instead of waiting for settlement. 

There’s much less of a chance that you’ll go over budget when it’s so easy to see how you’re performing and where the funds are going. You don’t even have to do the math to gauge break-even and net revenue because the system will do it for you. 

Prism for Music Artist Management 

All of this may sound too good to be true. How is there a system that takes care of everything from booking to settlements to expenses and more? And if this platform does exist, there’s no way it’s easy to use. 

Thankfully, technology is modernizing the live music industry. Prism Software is a fully integrated platform that can be used by just about anyone with an Internet connection. Our software was designed for music industry professionals by music industry professionals who realized there was a much easier (and frankly, better) way of putting together events.

Prism’s platform allows you to manage holds faster and more efficiently, increase accuracy with real-time data, and boost productivity by doing more with less. Honestly, you’ll wonder why you didn’t make the switch sooner. Discover how Prism can revolutionize your music event management process and schedule your demo today.