By Emmanuel Afonne
A music promoter, Peter Omotosho, popularly known as Pedrotech has urged managers of Nigerian artistes to go beyond booking events and flights for them and source other ways of expanding the musicians finance base.
Omotosho, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pedrotech World Ltd., an entertainment and management company based in the UK, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday.
He said it had become necessary to draw the attention of some of these managers to their perceived roles as they were already missing the track.
Talent management goes beyond booking events for artistes. A manager must be a peoples person, having the necessary knowledge of the various income streams available for exploitation by the talent, he said.
According to Omotosho, many artistes engage management without doing the much needed background checks and so they end up having managers who only receive phone calls from clients who are interested in engaging the artistes services.
He said the managers were most times interested in receiving 20 per cent of revenue for answering phone calls.
The artistes can as well employ the services of booking agents and leave it at that.
It is important for artistes to know what to expect from their managers and I will start by saying, your manager should be your number one fan and critic, he said.
According to him, this is quite important to the artistes business because you can only represent effectively something you believe in.
A lot of people have asked what talent managers do and my response has been that talent managers help hire and manage any staff for a client.
Talent managers handle public relations and media exposure such as appearances on TV shows, interviews with journalists, and social media presence.
A talent manager can advise career and contracts but cannot negotiate job contracts on the talents behalf, Omotosho said.
He likened the attitude of some music mangers to that of shark, a predator in the ocean that prey on anything they are bigger than.
Often times they prey on aquatic animals bigger than them and in the entertainment industry, we have sharks as well.
Entertainment sharks are those who prey on up and coming artistes and sometimes unsuspecting established talents.
Anybody may fall prey to them especially when such persons are desperate for the big break.
These predators pose as industry experts, consultants, promoters, managers and so on without the necessary knowledge or connections to deliver their promises.
At the end, the talent in question ends up having the short end of the stick, they miss out on opportunities and their time wasted, he added. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
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Edited by Isaac Aregbesola
Source: NAN News