Management of Musicians: An Exploratory Economic Analysis

Management of artists is a generally neglected area of cultural economics research, despite the high profile that agent-artist relations have enjoyed in the popular media and specialist music literature. This paper identifies the specific functions of agents and draws upon transaction cost analysis to devise a stylised model of the nature and evolution of agent-artist relaitons. Particular attention is focused upon the implications of this model for the size of the artist roster held by a particular agent.