Is team-structure important? “Absolutely”, says Carsten Stricker

As an artists popularity grows, he or she is usually encouraged to get a team to work with. For some partners it’s even a condition for setting up a collaboration. Other people work in a grey-zone, completely without titles or contracts, which might cause confusion when dealing with other representatives in the business. In order to get an inside perspective, we asked Carsten Stricker from the German music promotion agency Verstärker three questions on this topic.

Carsten Stricker from German music-PR agency Verstärker

For you, as a PR-company, is it important that the person representing the artist in the PR-artist-relation is also the manager?

No, not at all. It just has to be made sure that he/she has an official mandate and is entitled to make the decisions that are necessary, especially when it comes to contracts, clearances or budgets.

Music business is quite complex so sometimes decisions cannot be made by single entities (label or promoter etc.) but need to be discussed with a bigger team. The representant should be able to access all these partners.

Mutual trust, transparency – and most of all great music!

How much do you value the team around the artist? Does the artist’s team structure affect your decision on whether or not to work with the artist?

Absolutely. When the structure hasn’t been right, e.g. when people have been (financially) unreliable, haven’t “spoken our language” or have had very unrealistic targets we’ve had to turn down several interesting projects.