How we work
The spotlight belongs to the artist.
Management is the part that keeps working when nobody is watching. Here is what that means in practice, what we run on your behalf, and what it costs.
What management covers
The work
Strategy
Choosing the work. We start from where an artist wants to be in five years and plan backwards, which usually means declining more than we accept. The shape of a career is made mostly of turned-down opportunities.
Deals
Negotiating terms and then holding them. Fees, splits, riders, releases, sync, and brand work. We sit alongside specialist entertainment lawyers and accountants rather than in place of them, and we will tell you when something needs a solicitor rather than a manager.
Day to day
Promoters, labels, publishers, producers, press, and the people around an artist. Travel, logistics, and the unglamorous scheduling that decides whether a tour is survivable.
Release and campaign
Planning singles, EPs and videos on a calendar that holds together, with the assets, dates and paperwork ready before they are needed rather than during the week of release.
The long view
Careers are measured in decades, not seasons. We would rather build something durable than take the fastest opportunity in front of us.
The platform
Included for every artist
Most artists lose hours every week to admin that lives in a mailbox and a spreadsheet. We run our own platform so that work has somewhere to go. It is included in management — not a separate product, and not something you pay extra for.
Your website
Designed, built, hosted and maintained by us, and kept current as releases, dates and press change. The artist owns the domain and the content. No template subscription, no plugin that breaks the week of a release.
Booking module
Every enquiry, hold, offer and confirmed date in one pipeline, with the terms attached. Promoters get a straight answer on availability, and nothing falls between two inboxes.
Scheduling
One diary for shows, travel, sessions, rehearsals and press, shared with the band and crew so that everyone is working from the same version.
Billing and invoicing
Fees, deposits, invoices, chasing and statements. The artist can see what has been agreed, what has been invoiced, what has been paid, and what is late.
Data stays the artist's. If we ever part ways, you leave with your website, your contacts, your dates and your financial records.
Starting out
The sequence
- One
A conversation
An hour, no obligation. What you are working on, what is not working, and where you want to be in five years.
- Two
A written plan
Before anyone signs anything, we set out what we think the next twelve months should look like and what we would do first. If the plan is wrong, this is a cheap place to find out.
- Three
Terms in writing
A management agreement covering commission, term, scope and what happens if either side wants to end it. We recommend you have it reviewed independently before signing.
- Four
The first ninety days
Website live, booking pipeline and diary set up, invoicing in order, and introductions started. Housekeeping first, because everything after it depends on it.
Commission and terms
Commercials
We work on commission, agreed in writing before we start, so that we only do well when the artist does. Twenty per cent is the industry standard for an artist at the stage we usually come in at, and it is what we charge. We would rather say so on a public page than open a conversation with a number nobody expected.
Live is commissioned on what is left after the tour has paid for itself, not on the gross. A show that sells out and still loses money is not a success, and commissioning the top line would mean we got paid for one regardless of the other.
The terms
- Commission
- 20% of gross income
- Live
- 20% of net touring income, after costs
- Applies to
- Live, recording, publishing, sync, merchandise and brand work
- Term
- Three years, then continuing year to year, with ninety days’ notice on either side
- After the term
- 20%, then 10%, then 5% across three years, and only on work contracted while we were managing. Nothing after that
- Never commissioned
- Recording and video budgets, tour support, session fees for playing on other people’s records, and anything agreed before we started
- Expenses
- At cost, with anything over £250 agreed first
The platform, the website and its upkeep are included. We do not charge separately for tools, and we do not take a cut of anything we did not help bring in.
The sunset clause is the part worth reading twice. It exists so that an artist can leave without us continuing to earn from records and shows we had nothing to do with, and so that we still see something from the work we did that pays out after we have gone. Three years, tapering, then it ends. Some managers ask for longer. We do not.
Nothing on this page is a contract or legal advice. Terms are set out in the management agreement, and we would always rather an artist had it looked at independently first.
Who we are
Emberlight was founded by Andrew Collins.
He scaled Service Industries Ltd from $15 million to $220 million before its acquisition by NCR Corporation, and in 2009 founded Grant & Graham, the advisory firm he still runs. Its work is placing former chief executives and finance directors into companies that need something fixed rather than admired, now across thirty-eight countries.
$220M
Scaled from $15M
before acquisition
2009
Grant & Graham
founded
38
Countries with
active presence
None of which qualifies anybody to hear a song. Music was the constant running alongside all of it, and Emberlight exists because at some point the two stopped being separate.
Coming to this industry from outside it, what struck me was how much of it still runs on memory and goodwill. Contracts that arrive after the show. Invoices nobody chases. Terms an artist signs because somebody said they were standard. In any business I have worked in, that would be a failure of management. Here it is treated as the character of the trade, and artists are expected to accept it as the price of being taken seriously.
It is not the price of anything. It is just the old way, and the old way survives because it suits the people who benefit from an artist not knowing where they stand. A career is a business. Nobody trains an artist to run one, and most of the managers offering to run it for them have never run anything else.
The creative part cannot be systematised and should not be. That is the artist’s, and it is the entire point. Everything around it can be, and thirty years of fixing companies says the same thing every time: talent is rarely what fails. What fails is the machinery around it. Cash nobody is tracking. Deals agreed and never papered. Decisions taken because somebody was in the room rather than because they were right.
So the commission terms are printed on this page instead of waiting for a conversation you have to ask for, and we built our own software rather than buying something that half fits. An artist should be able to see how their manager gets paid before they sign anything. A manager should never be the reason a career stalls in administration.