Been seeing this unfold via all the guest speakers I get to talk too, to the point where the big pop management companies are negotiating different types of deals to reflect their handing of the artist development.
Does seem that management are doing the boots on the ground development work, and have been for a while, in part due to staff and budget cuts at labels, but also because the major music companies want to focus on catalog, and pick things up when they meet some kind of catalog value level
This piece really made me think. Your point about the "two arguably key stakeholders...moving in opposing directions" is spot on. This divergence creates significant friction, a complex system artists must navigate. The funding challenge Niamh mentioned is a cental node in this network.
I really appreciate this article because it puts words to a tension that a lot of us can feel, even if we’re living it from very different places in the industry.
From a LATAM perspective — and speaking as an emerging artist — the management / label push-pull you describe feels real, but also a bit uneven. In much of Latin America, managers often end up doing far more than “management” in the classic sense: strategy, funding, marketing, international outreach, sometimes even distribution. Labels, meanwhile, are often either absent, under-resourced, or only show up once momentum is already obvious. So the idea that artists “don’t really need labels anymore, except for funding” makes sense — but in practice, funding is the problem, and it’s a huge one.
What really stuck with me is how AI sharpens all of this. It doesn’t feel like a completely new crisis so much as a spotlight on how fragile the existing model already was. From where I’m standing, AI didn’t break the system — it just sped up a breakdown that was already underway.
I’m more conflicted about how parts of the industry are responding, though. A lot of recent label moves around AI feel closer to self-preservation than artist protection: deals that secure future upside without really addressing consent, authorship, or how creative work is being used in the first place. When training data is pulled from “public” platforms without permission, it’s hard not to experience that as a large-scale extraction of artistic labor — across music, film, and visual art.
This is where the management / label divide starts to feel almost philosophical. Managers tend to be closer to the human costs — identity, authorship, sustainability over time. Labels, by design, operate closer to scale and leverage. Neither side is evil, but the incentives are drifting further apart, especially under technological pressure.
I don’t think your piece tries to resolve this, and honestly, that feels appropriate. It captures a moment where the old balance is clearly breaking down, but the new one hasn’t taken shape yet. From my side of the world, this feels less like a simple industry adjustment and more like a broader cultural and economic reordering that the music business is still struggling to catch up with.
Thanks for taking the time to articulate this so clearly. Even where I feel uneasy, the framing helped me understand why these tensions keep widening instead of settling.
Great thoughts Diego - thanks for sharing! I agree with everything you say. There's another article I am working on at the moment about the equally uneasy relationships Universal for one are fostering with Big Tech, but that's another piece for another day.
Love this analysis of the power dynamics shifting. The point about proximity to art versus product exploitation is really key here, basically showing how managers are the ones actually betting on teh artist while labels are just hedging catalog bets. The AI angle makes this even more tense bc its one thing to license existing recordings but another to synthetically generate "new" works without the artist's creative direction.
Been seeing this unfold via all the guest speakers I get to talk too, to the point where the big pop management companies are negotiating different types of deals to reflect their handing of the artist development.
Does seem that management are doing the boots on the ground development work, and have been for a while, in part due to staff and budget cuts at labels, but also because the major music companies want to focus on catalog, and pick things up when they meet some kind of catalog value level
This piece really made me think. Your point about the "two arguably key stakeholders...moving in opposing directions" is spot on. This divergence creates significant friction, a complex system artists must navigate. The funding challenge Niamh mentioned is a cental node in this network.
I really appreciate this article because it puts words to a tension that a lot of us can feel, even if we’re living it from very different places in the industry.
From a LATAM perspective — and speaking as an emerging artist — the management / label push-pull you describe feels real, but also a bit uneven. In much of Latin America, managers often end up doing far more than “management” in the classic sense: strategy, funding, marketing, international outreach, sometimes even distribution. Labels, meanwhile, are often either absent, under-resourced, or only show up once momentum is already obvious. So the idea that artists “don’t really need labels anymore, except for funding” makes sense — but in practice, funding is the problem, and it’s a huge one.
What really stuck with me is how AI sharpens all of this. It doesn’t feel like a completely new crisis so much as a spotlight on how fragile the existing model already was. From where I’m standing, AI didn’t break the system — it just sped up a breakdown that was already underway.
I’m more conflicted about how parts of the industry are responding, though. A lot of recent label moves around AI feel closer to self-preservation than artist protection: deals that secure future upside without really addressing consent, authorship, or how creative work is being used in the first place. When training data is pulled from “public” platforms without permission, it’s hard not to experience that as a large-scale extraction of artistic labor — across music, film, and visual art.
This is where the management / label divide starts to feel almost philosophical. Managers tend to be closer to the human costs — identity, authorship, sustainability over time. Labels, by design, operate closer to scale and leverage. Neither side is evil, but the incentives are drifting further apart, especially under technological pressure.
I don’t think your piece tries to resolve this, and honestly, that feels appropriate. It captures a moment where the old balance is clearly breaking down, but the new one hasn’t taken shape yet. From my side of the world, this feels less like a simple industry adjustment and more like a broader cultural and economic reordering that the music business is still struggling to catch up with.
Thanks for taking the time to articulate this so clearly. Even where I feel uneasy, the framing helped me understand why these tensions keep widening instead of settling.
Great thoughts Diego - thanks for sharing! I agree with everything you say. There's another article I am working on at the moment about the equally uneasy relationships Universal for one are fostering with Big Tech, but that's another piece for another day.
I'll be sure to read it when you publish it.
Best regards and thanks for your work.
Love this analysis of the power dynamics shifting. The point about proximity to art versus product exploitation is really key here, basically showing how managers are the ones actually betting on teh artist while labels are just hedging catalog bets. The AI angle makes this even more tense bc its one thing to license existing recordings but another to synthetically generate "new" works without the artist's creative direction.