Ten minutes before the artist is supposed to walk onstage at a music festival, their in-ear monitors stop working. The setlist has changed twice in the last hour. The artist, backstage, is now overwhelmed. The brand partner is asking for last-minute content. The festival team is threatening to cut the performance short if the delay continues. Somewhere in the middle of it all, is the manager – switching between phone calls, calming nerves, negotiating timelines and trying to keep the entire situation from collapsing in real time.
Most people watching from the crowd will never know any of it happened.
Artist management has always sat at the nexus of how music careers are built, but the reality of the role today is far more layered than what it once was. What used to be understood as a mix of coordination, strategy and industry navigation has expanded into something that now stretches across creative direction, business decisions, digital ecosystems and, increasingly, the personal lives of the artists managers work with. This ambiguity has been intensified by economics. In the early to mid-2010s, streaming platforms and social media started taking over how music was discovered, distributed and monetised. As traditional gatekeepers loosened their hold, artists gained more independence but also lost the structured support systems that once handled marketing, audience development and long-term positioning.
For many independent and mid-tier artists, building separate teams across PR, legal, touring, marketing and business management is still financially out of reach. As a result, managers are often expected to absorb multiple responsibilities at once, turning what was once a strategic role into an all-encompassing support system.
For many managers, the pressure begins with how immediate the responsibility feels. “Every waking minute, the only thought I have is how will my artist pay next month’s rent,” says Vedika Sood, senior artist manager at Bluprint, an artist development and management company working with emerging artists such as King and Natania Lalwani.
The impact of the right manager is visible in how quickly an artist’s trajectory can shift. Rapper Hanumankind, who is managed by agency Imaginary Frnds, moved from indie momentum to global visibility through focused campaigns and timing. A similar shift can be seen with pop group W.I.S.H., where a clear identity and effective positioning early on has built visibility quickly in a crowded landscape.
Shedding light on a duality that is often misunderstood, Dushyant Tak, artist manager and founder of DIS/ORDER by Dushyant&Co, says “Managing artists often looks glamorous from the outside, but in reality it can be hectic, unpredictable, and at times not immediately rewarding.” His independent artist management and creative consultancy works with acts like Hamshyre and Stuvi.
“You are the good cop, the bad cop, a best friend, a cheerleader, and sometimes even the person who takes the hit,” adds Tak on all the invisible roles managers play. In many ways, the role is defined less by specific tasks and more by the ability to move between them seamlessly, often within the same day.
A manager might spend the first half of the day negotiating a release rollout or finalising paperwork for a brand campaign, only to later find themselves talking an artist through burnout, financial anxiety or creative self-doubt late into the night. Emotional mediation, conflict resolution and constant availability are now prerequisites of the role.
While global markets operate with clearly defined roles across bookings, legal, finance and PR, those distinctions are still developing locally. Particularly for independent and mid-tier artists In India, that overlap becomes even more pronounced. “Managers in India are doing the manager’s job and the agent’s job and the lawyer’s job and the business manager’s job all wrapped up in one,” says Tej Brar, founder of Third Culture and former head of artist management at OML.
In the independent and mid-tier artist ecosystem, artists like Taba Chake, Gini and Reble have grown through leaner setups that often require managers to operate across multiple functions simultaneously, while building long-term support systems around the artist from scratch.
A shift is already beginning to take shape. Says Siddhant Shetty, independent artist manager, “The role of a manager will always be one of a generalist but building and rebuilding these teams around an artist, is something I’d like to be judged on, rather than how well I scrambled to do everything by myself.”
A good manager is not the one doing everything, but the one ensuring everything is being done well by the right people. Younger managers are more willing to question whether doing everything alone is actually necessary or sustainable.
Even with this change in mindset, the emotional demands of the job remain constant. The relationship between a manager and an artist is rarely confined to professional boundaries. A late-night conversation about a postponed release can quickly turn into discussions around burnout, self-doubt or financial anxiety. A manager may begin the day reviewing campaign plans and end it reassuring an artist questioning whether they should continue making music at all. “Showing up for an artist requires consistency, trust, and a level of selflessness, both in work and in emotional presence,” Tak says, highlighting the kind of emotional bandwidth the role demands.
For Sood, that involvement is central to how she approaches management. She speaks about struggling to draw boundaries and choosing to work with artists she connects with deeply.
At the same time, a large part of the job involves absorbing pressure rather than directing it. “Sometimes you are the person taking the punches in the ring, while also simultaneously coaching from the corner,” Tak says, describing how managers often shield artists from criticism, deciding what feedback to pass on and when.
Artist management is as much about emotional regulation as it is about business strategy, and that remains one of the most underestimated aspects of the role. “I loved the job, but I didn’t recognise my life anymore,” says a former artist manager who has since moved into brand consulting. “At some point, you realise the role isn’t designed to be sustainable in its current form.”
