NEVER WORK
WITH
YOUR IDOLS

35 COMMANDMENTS
FOR A SUCCESSFUL CAREER
IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

BY GIDEON KARTING
TRANSLATED BY ANTOINETTE FAWCETT

NEVER WORK WITH YOUR IDOLS

35 commandments for a successful career in the music industry

Copyright © 2022

Gideon Karting / Outliner Books

© Gideon Karting 2021

Authorial copyright

© Antoinette Fawcett 2022

Translation copyright

Layout by: Es & Zn - Esther de Boer

Dtp: Coco Bookmedia

Support: Eva, Jonas, Nina

Photo: Ben Houdijk

Font: Logical – Edward Wathert

Titlefont: Barlow

Edition: Outliner Books

ISBN 978 90 831 4872 4

ISBN 978 90 831 4873 1 (e-book)

NUR 400 / 660

BISAC MUS004000

SH SZ 42, 43 1/3

Gideon Karting

www.gideonkarting.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Gideon Karting has been a stalwart of the music industry for more than twenty years. He started this career as a concert billposter and in the years that followed developed into one of the Netherlands’ top concert promoters. In his work for Mojo Concerts and LiveNation he promoted all the Dutch shows of a wide range of leading artists, including Lady Gaga, Adele, One Direction, Arctic Monkeys, Bruno Mars, and BTS. For many years he was also the programme director of major festivals such as Lowlands, North Sea Jazz, and Pinkpop.

Karting’s insider view of the music industry, his dry sense of humour and sardonic outlook, have finally found their expression in a book: Never Work With Your Idols. Karting shares all the fruits of his experience in an amusing but practical guide, taking his readers on a journey through the music industry and all its wealth of stories. With the help of his 35 Commandments, aspiring music professionals will most certainly learn how to make a successful career in this sector. Never Work With Your Idols is essential reading for people starting out in the industry and a real nostalgia trip for seasoned insiders.

CONTENTS

CURTAIN RAISER – Who is Gideon Karting?

PART 1: THE ARENA

1. The Pyramid

2. Managers Are Completely Crazy

3. Who Gets What Piece of the Pie?

4. You Don’t See the Biggest Earners

5. Backstage Etiquette

6. The Gatekeepers

7. Methuselah

PART 2: THE ARTIST

8. From Narcissist to Superstar

9. The Artist is Sacred

10. IOU

11. Support Acts Don’t Sell

12. You’ve Got to Blame Someone

13. A Girl in Every Port

14. It’s All Got to Change

15. Never Work With Your Idols

PART 3: THE ACT

16. It’s Not About the Money, It’s ALL About the Money

17. It’s a Bad Deal?

18. Honesty Is the Best Policy

19. Contracts Aren’t for Signing

20. Beyond Your Own Backyard

21. Shake & Fake

22. Children Ruin the Music Industry

23. Abbey Road

24. The Seven Times Tickle

PART 4: THE ACTION

25. Leave the DIY to Others

26. Answer in Two Hours

27. You Can Make Mistakes

28. Better a Good Copycat Than a Bad Inventor

29. The Hen With the Golden Eggs

30. A Satellite Won’t Fly

31. Tomorrow Always Comes

32. The Show Will Go On, Even Without You

33. The Bigger, the Better

34. A Pass Gets You Backstage

35. Someone’s Got to Pick Up the Bill

ENCORE – The Pharaoh and the Little Grey Bird

CURTAIN RAISER

The word ‘origin’ indicates where something comes from, where something started, or its source of being or existence.

As long as you start something. Without a beginning, there’s no future.

WHO IS GIDEON KARTING?

The year that Charles Bukowski’s second novel, Factotum, saw the light of day was the same year my parents were busy creating their own factotum, their ‘jack-of-all-trades’. That’s me, in effect. I don’t really believe in the factotum concept, i.e. that someone can actually do all kinds of different things. People like that are usually far too caught up with minor details and then they have less time to truly excel in one particular specialism. But when I start listing all the things I’ve ever done, I do begin to question my own belief.

I started in 1992, as a singer-songwriter, and guitarist in a grunge band. So I could buy myself a guitar I worked for weeks on end, picking cucumbers in Dutch fields and greenhouses. Because I also needed guitar strings and electric cables, and I’d got pretty sick of the sight of vegetables, I swapped picking for sticking, and got work putting up concert posters for Nighttown and Rotown, well-known music venues in my home town of Rotterdam. That job meant I could easily get into all the concerts – and then I started photographing them.

Nighttown and Rotown became my home base. Because I was interested in everything and my pay rate was low, I soon started work as a lighting technician and DJ at dance nights and concerts. It didn’t take long before I started organizing those kinds of events myself, as well as designing posters and stage sets, and creating the marketing strategies. My band folded, but the photography continued, which meant I could go to all the important shows and festivals in the country, as an assistant photographer for the Dutch national newspaper De Telegraaf, among others. For years I was there, behind the scenes and in front, at every venue and every festival.

At night I was at gigs, while in the daytime I was studying to be a creative artist. But once I’d graduated from Art School, it was high time to start specializing. In 1999 I became Rotown’s local promoter, but with jobs on the side as well: running my own record label and organizing a festival.

After four years of promoting at a local level, the next step seemed obvious: I became a booker for Mojo Concerts, the biggest live music organizer in the Netherlands. It’s a subsidiary of Live Nation, the biggest live music organizer in the world. The first year I just booked local artists. After that I was allowed to work with international talent. I booked the very first shows in the Netherlands of Lady Gaga, Michael Kiwanuka, Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, One Direction, BTS, Imagine Dragons, Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, The Kooks, Triggerfinger, The Script, Adele, Mumford & Sons, The Kyteman Orchestra, and many others. Fantastic! And I programmed entire festivals, like North Sea Jazz, Pinkpop and Lowlands. Wow! My side-lines were now part of my work, and I had complete carte blanche. At that time I was the director of two festivals, TMF Smash and Songbird. I compiled albums and organized, directed and devised shows. I made books and statues, set up a new record label, and entered the world of podcasts. And now I’m once again doing what I graduated in: making creative art. I’ve stopped working for the concert promoter for the time being, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I’ve finished with the music industry. In fact, I have now started my own artist management company.

Because the common factor has always been music. During the past few decades I’ve immersed myself in the world we call ‘the music industry’ – a closed world that may look adventurous and exciting to the outsider, but may also be difficult to understand. That applies to many sectors and professions, of course. You’ll get beginners there too, with no understanding of what’s going on, whose clumsy actions simply make work for others. Because you can always spot these people and their actions a mile off, I’d really like to take the initiative here and offer the fruits of all my experience.

If this book means that the failures of the future will take a different path, that will be a win for the entire music industry. And if the real go-getters can get enough ammunition from this book to blaze their own trail in the industry, then it will definitely have hit its mark. And so much the better if you can see some humour in it too.

Come through this book with me as if you were going to a concert. In Part One, ‘The Arena’, we’ll explore the playing field. Who can you find in the music industry? What do these people do, and why? What exactly is their work? What do they earn? Where can you find them? Where should or shouldn’t you be?

In Part Two I focus on the artist. What exactly are artists, and what types and flavours can you find? What is their position in the industry? What does an artist do? How should you deal with them, and what benefits do they bring?

Next comes ‘The Act’, which is all about the tricks of the music industry trade. What steps should you take to make progress? Which rules should you follow if you want to be of added value inside it? What can you do, and what shouldn’t you do at all?

In Part Four, ‘The Action’, we’ll take a look at what you need to remember to survive in the music industry. Here I’ll zoom in on all the ups and downs, and especially on the downs of doing things by trial and error!

And naturally I’ll finish with an encore.

PART 1

THE ARENA

The music industry is the industry involved in the creation, performance, promotion and preservation of music.

Who are the people involved? What do they do, and why? How much do they earn? And where exactly can you find them?

THE PYRAMID

In the beginning there was nothing at all, except sand, flint and dry branches. And there was a small village called Witteon, somewhere in the Eastern Sahara. The villagers were simply dressed, in garments made of jute and with brown leather sandals. There was always an open fire burning there, with a few guys round it, who were always beating their drums. The village oddball would be there as well, leaning against a date palm and strumming his lute, while his wife played her flute every day to her heart’s content.

One day a minstrel suddenly appeared from the desert sands. He wore brightly coloured clothing and had a drum on his back and bells round his arms and legs. He had a pig-gut belt around his waist, with a guitar dangling from it. He carried a silver trumpet in one hand, and was a strong, well-built man. It was the first time he had come to the village, and his music made such a racket that the villagers threatened to tar and feather him and send him back into the desert. But the village chief forbade them to do so. He thought the music was fantastic and felt that the villagers really needed proper live entertainment. It would just take some time for them to get used to it. So he made a deal with the minstrel. They would welcome him to the village once a month and in return the minstrel could pass his cap around. The more coins there were in the cap, the more frequently he could visit.

Six months passed and the minstrel had come by every month, hoping to convince the villagers of the quality of his ballads, and at last they started to recognize some of the melodies. After nine months, they even started to look forward to the minstrel’s arrival. His visits were the talk of the day, not only in Witteon, but in all the surrounding villages. Rumour had it that people were actually saving up so that the minstrel would visit them more often.

Then the daughter of the village chief made another deal with the minstrel. If he would play in Witteon and the three neighbouring villages once a fortnight, he’d receive a fixed sum of cash, in ducats. In addition, the lute player and his wife were given the right to play his tunes. The minstrel signed at once. He’d finally got the security of a steady income and enough stability to let him focus even more on the creative process of writing new songs.

Meanwhile all the villagers were completely crazy about the minstrel and his music and they didn’t mind digging deep in their purses to pay for it all. And they weren’t only paying for the minstrel’s fortnightly performance. His signed desert flints were selling like hot cakes too. But this was nothing compared to the amount the lute player and his wife were paying for the right to use the melodies. The village chief’s daughter was sure now that she was just at the start of something bigger than anyone had imagined.

That was the precise moment the music industry was born. At least, that’s how it could have been. But when I speak of ‘the music industry’, what am I actually talking about? And what does that industry look like?

The music industry is a pyramid and the artist is right at the top. By the term ‘artist’ I mean a band, producer, DJ or solo artist. Below the artist there’s a whole food chain of individuals who help keep the pyramid as strong as possible. You can see the pyramid on page 19.

I’ll now give you a brief introduction to the most influential elements of the pyramid.

The Artist

That’s who it’s all about. Without an artist, there’d be no pyramid.

The Manager

Below the artist you’ll find the manager, the one who looks after the artist’s interests.

These could just be their business interests, although there are plenty of managers who also take care of personal matters. Some artists have more than one manager or management agency. In such cases, you’re usually talking about two managers: a general manager and someone for the business. The general manager keeps an eye on everything. The business manager specializes in all the business aspects of the artistic life. But that role could also be fulfilled by someone else, a lawyer, for example. A lawyer is hired by the manager or directly by the artist. That means that the lawyer can keep tabs on the manager and vice versa.

The manager is like a spider in the centre of a web, guiding the whole team. That team includes the record company, producer, publisher, agent, and perhaps sponsors as well. Below this team, there’s a whole range of other people ready for action, such as broadcasters, radio DJs, venues, and concert or festival promoters.

The Record Company

The record company – or label – is the part of the pyramid that makes sure the music gets an audience. So, if you’ve recorded a song, then the label makes sure it gets into the stores, or online equivalent. That started with singles and LPs, then cassette tapes and CDs, and now we’re in the internet consumption era.

You should see the record label as the link between the artist, the fan, and the future fan. It’s the label’s job to ensure that as many people as possible are exposed to the artist and their music and in as many possible ways. In the past, record companies sometimes even wanted to ‘create’ artists themselves. That dates back to the time when companies had songwriters under contract and would search out the right artists for the songs. Modern examples are boybands and girl bands like Take That, Spice Girls, New Kids on The Block and Milli Vanilli. But The Supremes, The Monkees and even The Jacksons were also (partly) put together by their record companies. Nevertheless that role has changed over the years: producers and managers have now largely taken over the creative element.

That is one of the reasons why the number of functions in a record company is much smaller nowadays. The norm now is to hire a lot of external parties to carry out the work that used to belong to the label itself, for example the roles of music pluggers or agents. So to make it easier for you to see who’s who, we’ll look at three important elements inside a record company: A&R managers, product managers (sometimes known as ‘brand managers’) and promoters.

A&R managers mainly focus on the artistic development of an artist’s career. ‘A&R’ stands for ‘artist and repertoire’ and obviously these managers make sure that the artist and their repertoire live up to their promise. They’re the ones who shape the artist, in effect. What often happens is that choices have to be made from a whole range of producers and songwriters. In short: which song will the artist sing and what will it sound like? In other words, they’ll decide how the artist can get the best song and the style it will have.

An example: Ed Sheeran has written a song with guitar accompaniment; he sings it by himself and records it. It’s ready to send into the world. Or: Ed Sheeran has written a song, Bruno Mars wrote the chorus, and Chris Stapleton improved the lyrics. The recording has been enriched with orchestral backing and an extra rhythm section, and as well as Ed Sheeran singing and playing the guitar, there are vocals and guitar riffs from Bruno and Chris too.

Both versions could be huge hits. So, the A&R manager predicts – preferably before a single note is recorded – which would be the best version.

Product managers or brand managers are people whose main job is to promote the music delivered by the A&R manager and place it on the market. In theory, this is their only involvement with the music. They mainly focus on the artist’s image and on answering the question: how can I get as much exposure for the artist as possible, so the public will buy the biggest possible amount of their music?

Promotional staff have the job of putting the product manager’s strategies into action. They’re the ones who make sure that the posters go up, that people talk about the artist online, and that there are interviews in all the right places. They also engage music pluggers to try to get the music played on radio stations and streaming services. But PR staff also develop ways of getting the artist more visibility on the radio, tv, online and in shops.

The Producer

The producer takes care of the way the artist sounds. In the past, the producer sat at the mixing desk and helped to find the artist’s own sound.

Some important producers, past and present, are Quincy Jones (best known for his work with Michael Jackson), Butch Vig (the genius behind Nirvana’s Nevermind) and George Martin (for ever associated with The Beatles).

As in the Ed Sheeran example, the producer works out (usually along with the artist) who will be part of the line-up, what instruments they’ll play and how the track will be built up and structured. It’s the producer, for example, who’ll come up with the idea of using an orchestra. Sometimes the producer will also collaborate in the writing of a song, and sometimes they’ll ‘compile’ it. That means that some elements of the song will be written by others and then put together in such a way that it becomes a whole. Someone writes a catchy refrain, someone else writes the lyrics, and yet another person creates the bass line and the melody. The producer will then search for a suitable voice and for other musicians, if necessary. This process lets them put together the best possible song.

       Advances in technology mean that it’s now a lot easier to produce music at home, making the music production profession much more accessible. After all, you can work much faster online and you’ve got a bigger range of options. Nowadays there are many more talented producers than in the past, and they all have their own style of production. That accessibility has made the role of the producer in contemporary music much more important and so you get to hear far more about them. That’s mainly because a number of well-known DJs are also producers and because a number of well-known producers now choose to stand in the spotlight.

The Publisher

The publisher is responsible for managing the rights to the music. Whole books have been written on this topic, and as it’s an incredibly complex and convoluted subject, I’m not going to explain it all in detail here. In fact, publishers like to keep things complex, so that no one will really understand how it works. But it comes down to this: if a song you’ve written, in part or alone, is played or performed, by you or someone else, you’ll receive a payment for it. Such fees, or royalties, can be very lucrative, and as a consequence there are plenty of people who’d like to help artists with this source of income. Not only by collecting the fees, but also by exploiting the music in other ways. Think of films, games or adverts, for example. As I’ve already said, this is a complex area with many opportunities that you’ll only understand if a certain type of blood runs through your veins. This may all sound a bit vague, but publishers are vague too, and so I’ll discuss this topic again in another chapter.

The Agent

The agent takes care of the live music element. There are usually two agents with responsibility for an artist’s live shows worldwide. One focuses entirely on North America and is based in the US, and one is responsible for the rest of the world, and will usually be based in London. It’s important to know that agents don’t organize concerts. Agents sell the rights for putting on a show. They have a worldwide network and so can phone contacts for shows in every country. Agents are responsible for the tour planning, which means they work out how the artist can perform in the greatest number of countries in the shortest possible time. They must have good geographical knowledge and need to be familiar with the regulations of all the various countries. For example, you need to be aware of any border problems in Eastern Europe to work out how long it will take to drive from Berlin to Moscow. It’s not unknown that a show can’t go ahead because the band is stuck at the border, unwilling to pay a bribe to get through.

The Promoter

The contacts that agents have in every country are called promoters. Promoters buy the right to organize a show. They know exactly where in their country the artist will get the best chance to shine. They’re aware of where and how they can get the best financial results, through good ticket price policies, for example. This means they can work out if they’re able to offer enough money to get an artist to give a show in their region.

What’s left isn’t unimportant

I don’t want to classify the remaining parties under the heading ‘unimportant’ because they all add immense value to the whole. In many cases, they’re even indispensable. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that a radio station plays songs, a music store sells CDs, and a festival or venue books the artist. Then T-shirts and other items portraying the artist are sold by the merchandiser, and the accountant makes sure that everything tallies.

And there you have it – a good overview of the pyramid. And now we can move across to the exceptions. Because it sometimes happens that the promoter is also the manager or that the producer is the artist as well. There are agents who own a concert hall and recording companies who also have a booking agency. But sponsors are always people who hand over money and want something from the artist in return. And merchandisers, as we saw, sell T-shirts printed with the band’s logo. Although there are some merchandisers who also own agencies… and so it goes, on and on.

The Fan

Although fans aren’t officially part of the industry, it’s impossible to leave them out of the story. There are only two factors in the entire pyramid concept that are vital to the artist’s survival, and apart from the artist, that’s the fan. To keep things simple for the moment, we’ll divide the fans into two categories: the superfan and the normal fan. The only real difference between them is their level of enthusiasm for the artist.

An example: Michael Jackson’s final studio album was Invincible. The record label decided to release it with five different album covers so they could sell as many albums as possible. Apart from the colour, they were all identical. The true superfan bought all five albums. Normal fans simply bought their favourite colour. By the way, the promoter repeated the same trick for Jackson’s London show, the one that was cancelled because of his death. The fans who’d bought a ticket for the show could get either a refund or an original printed version of the admission ticket, with a choice of no less than seven different designs.

The superfan will go through fire for their artist; they want absolutely everything to do with them and have to be at every show. The normal fan is quite simply just a little less fanatical. However, you can also include fellow travellers in the category of ‘normal fan’. These are the people who just tag along with the real fans, but who’ll still buy the album, the T-shirt or the printed oven glove at a concert. They’re perhaps not the sort of fan who’ll ask an artist for an autograph, but they definitely will tell their friends that they’ve discovered a great artist. And that’s what an artist needs to have success and gain a large audience: ambassadors who’ll tell their own network that an artist is really good. So then it makes sense to always keep an eye on the fans and take good care of them. Because if these ambassadors turn against the artist, their career will very likely crash.

The Unwritten Rule

So there you have it, more or less everything that makes up the pyramid. But I still have to explain its most important feature. If you’re going to do business there, there’s one unwritten rule: it works from the top to the bottom, and although it does sometimes work the other way round, from the bottom to the top, you must never break the food chain. In other words: you mustn’t skip any of the steps. A promoter never makes deals with the manager and an agent doesn’t phone the venue. It’s as simple as that. To keep the whole industry intact, the pyramid must be preserved. Moreover, managers are usually very bad promoters, publishers are terrible agents, and record labels are really not that great at promoting bands. Not so long ago, promoters did venture into the business of releasing albums and record companies started organizing concerts. Spurred on by a desire for cross-pollination, the music industry spent a couple of years shouting that the future was in so-called 360 degree deals. That’s why Madonna signed with Live Nation for all her activities, but in the end it was Universal who released the album. But more about that later.

Ultimately there’s only one undeniable truth. The artist is at the top of the pyramid and the fans are at the bottom. Everything that happens in between is to make it seem that the artist is as close to those fans as possible. So the record company makes sure that the music reaches the fans. The agent makes sure that the artist sees the fans in real life, in a concert hall. The merchandiser and the retailer bring a little bit of the band closer to the fan. If you look at it like this, it’s a strange model, because it really should be the other way round: the fan should be on top. If only because artists are completely crazy.

But if you’re a manager you need quite a few faulty genes too.

MANAGERS ARE COMPLETELY CRAZY

It looks like a cushy number, being the manager of an artist or a band. You get flown all over the world, meet the most extraordinary people and you’re always welcome everywhere you go. The most wonderful parties, the best restaurants, places that ordinary folk can only dream of. And you can – if only a little – set your stamp on the artist’s career. And if you really go all out, perhaps you’ll generate some form of fame for yourself too, and so get a taste of all the goodies that go with being an artist.

But it’s much more down to earth than it seems. There are plenty of music management training courses, but it basically isn’t possible to learn how to be a manager in advance. The vast majority of managers landed in the business by accident, because they happened to be in the artist’s circle. Classic examples are being ‘so-and-so’s cousin’, ‘so-and-so’s best friend’, or – better still – ‘so-and-so’s mum or dad’. And that’s not such a bad thing either, because managing an artist is more like being someone’s coach or best friend than being a business partner.