“Managers do a lot more than they used to...” – super-manager Niamh Byrne on Gorillaz, how the role of manager is changing, and more

0:02Steve:Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally. It's the show that both looks at the finances of the music industry, but also the behind the scenes workings of the music biz. I'm Steve Lomach. He's Stuart Dredge. This week, a slightly different show once again, as we bring you the second in our series this year of interviews with people who work in the music industry in some form or other. we spoke last month to Ricky Bates from the joiners the venue in Southampton this month here's a chance to hear an interview which I did at the Music Ally conference the other week talking to Niamh Byrne who is from Eleven Management was key the one of the founders of Eleven Management who look after gorillas and various other artists we wanted it though to try and get to the roots of what are the challenges that face managers, both established managers like Niamh and new managers coming into the business.

1:05Steve:What are the challenges? What are the big things coming down the road that people, experienced managers are looking at thinking, well, this could be good or this could be a problem? It's basically an overview of music management in 2026, which is coming up. Stuart, you were in the crowd, in the audience for this, without spoiling the plot too much. Things that drew you in. Yeah, I think she was just talking about how the role of a manager is changing and some of the things they're doing that labels used to do. And just an idea of, can you do without a label if you're a manager and you're doing all these different things for your artist?

1:48Steve:and then yeah she was talking about sort of how managers are being paid and whether that should change and that was interesting to me because I don't know a lot about how that works but she was saying I think talking about that about you know what changes can be made to get managers to be properly rewarded for what they do for artists and she talked about AI because you have to at a modern day conference and yeah and it was good I think you know people people in the room afterwards they really enjoyed that session because I think it was just someone with nothing to sell no reason to brag, she was just talking about this is how things are for us and these are the issues I see, so I think it was a really good interview, I think people were going to really enjoy it

2:30Steve:Thank you very much for coming this is well something of a rare opportunity this to get an insight into the musical landscape from someone who has been involved in the industry for three decades now much of that in music management, working with artists like Blur and Elastica and Mary Chine Turing Breaks, before in 2011 co-founding Eleven Management, which is a really forward-thinking, creative, multitasking management company, which obviously has had huge success with the likes of Gorillaz and Damon Albarn. She's also currently chair of the MMF, spotlighting the challenging role that today's managers face in our ever-changing music world.

3:18Steve:Another round of applause, please, for Niamh Byrne.

3:21Niamh Byrne:Nice to meet you.

3:23Steve:Right. We haven't got long. 23 minutes, 46 seconds, it says there. But having said that, we should, for context, explain how you got into the music industry in the first place and what drew you to music management and then drew you back to music management.

3:40Niamh Byrne:Okay. So I'm going to have to go back to set the tone here. I'm from Dublin and from a kind of suburb in the north of the city and I grew up in the 70s 80s and it was kind of an interesting time and mass unemployment and we had the the backdrop of the trouble so actually as a as a kid kind of growing up in Dublin it wasn't it wasn't kind of full of a huge prospect and so as a kid we we used to kind of go to you might know the street we used to go to Grafton Street and that was kind of our kind of solace you know that was kind of where you know if you're coming from the north of the city to Grafton Street it's a bit like going to Barbados you know it was very colorful and for those of you kind of know that street and back then it was kind of full of kind of live performance you know it was like a series of kind of live shows that kind of went from one end of the street to the other so I think for me as a kid that was my first introduction to live music and because you know you didn't have money to kind of do anything else and it was amazing.

4:38Niamh Byrne:You know, there were skiffle bands, there was, you know, singer-songwriters, very different to what it is now, but it was a pretty amazing place. And then obviously as a child kind of frequenting that place, I started to kind of look at kind of punks and I remember kind of being incredibly inspired by kind of punks who inhabited kind of one end of the street. And I just saw kind of a spark there, you know? It was like a bunch of people who were like just doing whatever the hell they wanted, you know, in a country that had a lot of, like, issues. And it was just probably my first introduction to counterculture, you know, seeing a group of people kind of doing and pushing against convention.

5:20Niamh Byrne:And I kind of thought, you know what, I really like that. And so that was kind of my introduction. And then I started to obviously, because Dublin is full of musicians, they became my friends. And then I kind of ended up kind of, you know, being in a kind of world where I never wanted to be a musician, but I certainly kind of wanted to facilitate that kind of expression, you know? It was such an amazing thing to be able to do, and I think people who kind of inhabit that space obviously need support, and so I kind of always kind of had this vision that I would be a manager, so I didn't know any management.

5:56Niamh Byrne:And so, anyway, roll on a few words. I followed my sister to London. She was also in music. In fact, she worked at The Word way back then. So that was my introduction to music in London. And she finally, she said to me, I found this kind of job in a newspaper for a music manager in The Guardian. And I applied and I got it. And that is genuinely my start in music. I didn't know anyone. I just knew it was what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be around creative people. And that was kind of my kind of kickstart into management.

6:31Steve:Were you a good fit right from the very start in terms of the things that you need to be a good manager? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I guess it's quite a learning curve if you haven't been a manager and then you're working for a management company.

6:45Niamh Byrne:It's a really interesting question because I would have thought that I would just landed there. I answered that when I landed in that place and became a manager. but I actually think, you know, my background, you know, the fact that I was actually working around musicians and kind of actually I worked in Tower Records actually earlier. I had a lot of experience kind of being around kind of music and art and that I feel that was definitely useful. And, you know, I kind of spoke the language, you know, it's a different language.

7:14Steve:In terms of, I always wonder whether you have to be of a certain temperament or have a certain skill set to be a good manager, which I mean these days is probably versatility and what has been a common theme throughout the

7:28Niamh Byrne:life of managers is patience yeah I agree I think that is important and I think also I think people kind of misunderstand artists when they're kind of maybe can appear demonstrative you know but that that to me is only a sign of somebody who knows what they want and and somebody who knows what they want is actually a really really good thing and so yeah i think artistry can be very misunderstood and i think it is really really important to kind of understand you know most musicians are you know vessels for expression you know and that that means sometimes there are no filters you know and um we may be able to kind of uh manage that but you know artist is about

8:11Steve:expressing and so yeah you need to be patient yeah and the relationships that you build i suppose the one thing you're always looking for is to be able to look them in the eye and just say trust me oh

8:22Niamh Byrne:yeah I mean there's definitely I think there's two things that management require one is absolutely trust and you need to know that your manager has your back and if you're going to go down a hole and kind of into a creative process writing a record you need to be able to come back out of your hole and know that you somebody's got you you know things are taken care of and that you're working to the same level, you're matching the same level of work that they're doing, I think as long as you do that, I think you'll be, you'll succeed. And yeah, and vision, I guess, is another thing, an attribute, I think, of any management.

8:59Niamh Byrne:I think, again, when somebody's tunneling and they're going down into that kind of process, you need to basically have the vision of where it's going to go, and you need to know that destination, so that when they're ready, you can take them there and that's the that's the trick so there are there are some things which are constant

9:16Steve:what has changed though because when it must have been so many times working in music management in the 90s and working music management now what is what has changed for the better and has anything

9:28Niamh Byrne:changed for the worse yeah that's a long question and i had the most amazing kind of uh learning you know I learned the craft of management by working with some incredible people who were kind of working at a pile of phone records at the time it was an amazing amazing label that had amazing amazing people and that was amazing thing and I think kind of what's happened over the years is that that we've lost a lot of those kind of really amazing people and maybe kind of replaced with kind of younger people which is no bad thing by the way but I think there's still kind of you know a lot of uh experience that has has has kind of maybe been drained from the industry that would would have been better if there was kind of more balance um but yeah it's massively changed we used to go into a label years ago and and you would kind of go in and uh you would kind of be the manager do the deal making everybody else would basically facilitate the work and there was an amazing kind of level of service but that that's kind of chipped away and i think the the kind of management role has now shouldering a hell of a lot more than it did before and it's now us that are doing the kind of line share um of the work that's not a diss to kind of labels there are still amazing things out there but that's just the reality that it is now i think it's just a different a different landscape and management's a different shape so if there's two questions out of that I suppose um one is what you don't have then if you're picking up other roles that people were doing at the record company uh two things how do you find the time to be the

11:08Steve:manager you were and do all the additional work and two why are you signing to a label if they're

11:13Niamh Byrne:not doing the work yeah I mean this is a difficult question because management yeah that's twofold I think let's go up to the label question first and I think funding is a huge issue for management and I think I think today managers could probably do everything I mean like there's even possible to supply your whole entire control supply chain and but unfortunately kind of funding is really is really difficult so I think certainly kind of people are still reliant on kind of traditional kind of funding models and if you're not getting value from from the people that you are kind of doing those deals with you're going to get frustrated um because it's not kind of matching the level of kind of work that you're kind of putting in but unfortunately at this moment in time there's very little of anything else so it's a it's a difficult it's a difficult thing

12:08Steve:so how much when you when you when you're talking about doing things uh yourself because this is something I think you've been doing with gorillas where basically you've taken on doing pretty much everything being your own virtually being your own record label as well as management yeah I think

12:25Niamh Byrne:that's kind of probably true for a lot of managers these days and it's largely unseen I think the work of a manager is largely unseen I think we we as a management company and we are now that 30 years later I think my whole life has kind of been trying to get to this point that we're now kind of self-releasing the next kind of gorillas record ourselves and our team do everything and from kind of marketing campaigns to digital strategy to data management to fan management to production and I think at any one point in any gorillas campaign we probably have about three or four producers producing the kind of huge amount of artwork and and kind of animation that we do for any large campaign but it's only a team of 14 people and we're doing a worldwide campaign you know so it's a lot it's a lot of work yeah but just do you think then that um if we are

13:22Steve:we are continuing to use say the old model of finance would it almost be better if the record

13:30Niamh Byrne:label gave the management company the money well i i would say yes and i'm not not because i don't think that there isn't a role for labels i just think that managers are best positioned to do that work well you know and because we don't have kind of big huge rosters and to have to kind of contend with you know we've got smaller rosters and and we can basically make budgets go much longer we're much more efficient with the money that we get there's no wastage and we have to succeed there's no there's no question around that like that's what you need to do you need to sustain your artist's career you need to succeed and so you you do you do kind of put a lot of time and effort I mean we spend a lot of time looking at the thing that we posted last week and what effect that post had you know we go into minutiae detail and then we basically change kind of how we respond to things based on that information.

14:26Niamh Byrne:I don't think that if you were going to any label, good or bad, they would be able to do what we do. So yeah, I feel very passionate about what value managers add. And I think that kind of extends also to catalog. You know, I think it's one thing to acquire catalog. Fantastic. And it's another thing to add value. And I think managers add massive value to catalog. And that's worth a lot.

14:53Steve:i mean when you get to a certain level when you have a team and you can and a reputation and you can do do that sort of work what what i worry about is for younger managers now one they're being asked to do much more they've got to be more versatile they've got to have more skills across the board um but at the same time we're in a landscape where it often takes longer for artists to break so so it's hard for young managers to keep their heads above water and do a good job

15:27Niamh Byrne:yeah I mean that's my massive frustration you know is the normalization of kind of what managers have to do now and managers and still get paid on the premise that they're deal makers 20 that's what they used to do they made deals and they didn't do anything else and now managers do everything I mean, we had a conversation this morning where you were talking about a manager that was basically the agent and the publicist and everything. And that's true for a lot of managers. But yet that isn't seen or heard. And it's certainly kind of not valued in the same way. So I do worry massively that there's a normalization of kind of what managers are expected to do for the money that they receive.

16:14Niamh Byrne:and as you say, time as well. And we talked about time too because we don't seem to have any time in our days. I remember being able to go for lunch and it was, you could go for lunch. I can't go for lunch anymore, guys. And I think that's all kind of important because if you don't have space, you don't have time to think, you can't be creative, you can't push yourself, you can't think beyond kind of what you just have to do. and that's then true for artists who are also doing the same thing. So, yeah, I think it's not all doom and gloom, guys, but there's definitely opportunity. But, yeah, managers are doing a lot more than they used to be.

16:58Steve:Yeah, it's not doom and gloom. I think it's just, do you think it's time for a re-evaluation of what managers do in both ways, really, just in terms of appreciating the work of a manager but also maybe trying to find different ways of paying the manager so that you actually value them. Yeah, I mean, for those of you who don't know,

17:19Niamh Byrne:I'm obviously chair of the MMF as well, and the MMF is an incredible organisation representing 1 ,000 managers. And every year, well, first of all, Annabella, who I've probably seen in the room somewhere, basically acts on the mandate of its members. So the MMF are doing what the managers kind of want them to do. And so every year there's like this study or kind of focus on what people want to actually kind of do. And the resounding kind of information coming back from people was value of managers and kind of new remuneration models. And so we have actually kind of started to produce work that kind of show how you could potentially do things differently, how things could potentially work.

18:05Niamh Byrne:but I think it's still a little bit of a debunking that we kind of need to do that kind of managers are not necessarily skilled or not necessarily kind of the same level as what you would do if you did something else so there's a there's an education to be done and I think we're working to change that and but yeah

18:23Steve:needs to get better yeah I think there was report wasn't there that said managers are worth 714 million pounds to the wider UK music industry and if you're worth that sort of money then uh creating that sort of money then surely something should be coming back maybe we have forgotten that there are really good managers behind the scenes uh big artists and there's you know up and coming managers who work for three years just to get an indie

18:49Niamh Byrne:record deal yeah i completely agree and i think there's another figure as well that for every pound that is um that an artist kind of spends in a manager they get eight pounds back i think i I might need to be corrected on that. Is it eight pounds? Thank you. So, yeah, huge, huge value that kind of both artists and industry kind of get from their managers. And, yeah, I do think that it's important to invest in them, actually, because I think they're shouldering a lot of work, and I think they can give a lot back.

19:18Steve:Ladies and gentlemen, Niamh Byrne.

19:20Niamh Byrne:Thank you.

19:23Steve:Thank you.

19:32Thank you.