The How (and Why) of Hiring a Concert Tour Manager – by a Concert Tour Manager
When to bring in a concert tour manager and how to pick the right one – a guide written for artist managers based in the UK.
So, you think you need to hire a concert tour manager.
You have music clients. You are in the planning stages of putting a concert tour together. Maybe a string of club shows. Perhaps promoters have offered you a couple of decent festival slots for next summer. But you are busy1 — organising press, taking care of distribution, posting on socials, checking on Meta ad campaigns, and more. The thought of the work involved with planning and implementing touring is too much.
You think about hiring a concert tour manager (CTM) – great, I’m available! 😉
But seriously, before you reach out to a CTM, you probably want to examine your situation and decide what you’re looking for. And when you talk to a CTM, maybe ask her about her views on the following activities, issues, and challenges.
Can you do the work of a tour manager yourself?
I once worked with the manager of an artist who was breaking through. The artist was receiving many offers from festival promoters; at one point, there were two or three offers a week coming in for festival appearances.
The manager would phone me each time, asking for a budget/LPE 2before he OK’d the offer. I would then plumb the figures into my budget spreadsheet template, check it over, email over the finished budget and charge him for the work done.
My charges, though small, raised some eyebrows. I pointed out that the manager could take any of my previous budgets, amend the figures in the sheet based on the new offer, and be able to decide without having to ask and pay me. The manager said he would rather I produced the budgets as he valued my expertise.
I was flattered, but I still think he could have saved time and money if he had used my template to create a basic list of expenses every time.
This story should illustrate a point – is there any aspect of the tour manager’s job that you could do initially?
Simple tasks, such as getting quotes for a splitter van or sleeper bus, and producing a list of predicted expenses, should not take you long, and will you give you the answers you need, without having to wait for another person to be involved.
Be a concert tour manager for a day
One aspect of the CTM’s work is travelling on-the-road with the artist. As a music manager, this is probably the one activity you will need to hire a CTM for.
You know you are busy; days away travelling could be spent in your office instead, working on deals and joint ventures for your artists.
Music festivals take place on weekends. Music artists can usually travel to and from domestic festivals in a day.
Could you ‘sacrifice’ a weekend day to accompany your artist to a greenfield site and act as ‘tour manager’ – especially if you could be back home the same day?
You could save your artist a great deal of money – money that could hire a monitor engineer for a day’s rehearsal and the gig itself, instead of relying on the festival’s ‘house’ audio team.
Define the scope of the tour manager’s work
OK, I have not persuaded you that you can do some work yourself, and you decide to hire a CTM. Now is the time to decide, and to describe, the scope of the work.
Do you need a ‘full-service’ CTM to take all the admin work from you, to produce budgets and end-of-tour reports, organise visas and work papers, and run a comprehensive itinerary in Master Tour?
Or do you need a glorified babysitter who can drive a van?
Either of these two roles may apply to your needs.
Or perhaps – a CTM somewhere in the middle – one who can produce budgets, books the transport, and will double up as sound engineer, or merch person, or whatever. Whatever is needed for your tour or festival appearance.
The important thing is to define exactly what you think the job should be.
What are the responsibilities?
Even with a full-service CTM on board, what aspects of your managerial work will you continue?
If you both understand the work’s scope, you’ll be more efficient.
At the very least, defining the scope will help you discuss the CTM’s salary. Which brings me onto…
Money should not be the issue
“If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur.”
I love this quote by Red Adair3, an American oil well firefighter. The implication that an amateur will cost you more in the long run is true in any service industry and is worth reiterating here.
Using myself as an example: I have expertise and experience in the live music business and concert production industry, and I can justify my daily rate. However, you may think my rate is too high out of principle, or you do not have enough income from gigs to afford the expense. You may hire someone who charges less.
This is a mistake.
Instead of the amount in pounds, make a hiring decision based on value.
You need a CTM to solve a problem; you don’t have enough time, expertise, or experience to guide a successful tour or festival performance.
I can solve that problem, and money should not be an issue.
Now, the CTM who charges less may be as capable as I am, and that is OK. If they can solve your problem at a lower price, go with them. But you shouldn’t look at price alone as the reason you go with a particular hire. If they charge less because they are an inexperienced amateur and unsure of themselves, you will probably spend more money and more of your time helping them to do the job.
Which defeats the purpose of hiring a CTM.
The CTM will adjust their rate accordingly
Instead of deciding based solely on price, evaluate the value an experienced CTM offers and then adjust the scope of the work so that the CTM may feel comfortable in dropping their daily or weekly rate.
For instance, modern CTMs increasingly handle VIP, merchandise, and create social media content on the road. Your prospective CTM will probably be happy to negotiate a lower rate if you cut these activities from their workload. (One of the band members could take on merchandise and content creation, for instance).
Look at the key problems you are trying to solve and work with the CTM to define the scope so that those problems go away.
Budget for the cost of the pre-production
If you hire a “full-service” tour manager, they’ll be busy with a great deal of pre-production and advancing work before the tour. This work will stretch out over the preceding weeks and months, and it is not viable to pay her daily or weekly rate for this work.
Instead, budget to pay CTM 20% of her total salary for this pre-production work.
CTMs commonly complain about not being paid for pre-production and advancing, and I think we should evaluate how much work goes into this activity, and that we should adequately compensate CTMs.
20% of the final salary for the tour as a fee for pre-production is acceptable to me, and I am sure to other CTMs.
Make sure the commission amounts are in the budget/LPE
The booking agent’s commission of 10%, plus your own commission as an artist manager, can be a sizeable chunk of change.
(Hopefully you commission on the net, not on the gross of the tour income, but still…)
Please make sure these are lines in any budget/LPE.
This is especially important if applying for tour support from a record company. You know that excluding the booking agent’s commission from their finances could leave artists without enough money – but does your CTM?
Insist on a start-up cash-flow forecast
You and the CTM will engage the services of many suppliers (transport, equipment hire etc), and also have to pay for accommodation and rehearsals before the tour starts. These expenses need to be covered, but your artist won’t have any earnings until after the initial concert.
Yes, the booking agent may have deposits held in escrow, and you may have applied for tour support; these amounts may or may not be enough to pay suppliers when due.
Having a clear cash-flow forecast of start-up costs is vital.
Since suppliers to the concert production industry have increasingly strict payment terms, they usually refuse to allow the equipment to be used until they receive payment.
Ideally, the full-service CTM you hire should track and report on start-up cash flow and help you inform suppliers about payments.
Who organises the pre-tour phase?
Many music artists are solo artists4 who need session musicians, as well as road crew, to make their show happen.
Organising the auditions, rehearsals, stems, in-ear moulds, hotels, and transport for everyone is just as big a job as the tour.
Review the CTM’s budget/LPE to confirm it covers this activity. Even simple activities, such as picking up a splitter van, can take all day and cost a good day’s wage for someone – is it in the budget?
Get the right answers to the right questions
You are employing a CTM to solve your problems – not enough time and trying to make things work with little money.
You will have questions and ideas related to these problems.
Your CTM must be able to answer your questions, or at least know where to find the answers.
When I began, I had firm beliefs about the CTM’s role; I believed I should know all job-related answers and be an expert in live music.
I realise now that was misguided.
You cannot expect your CTM to know everything about everything.
There is constant change affecting our industry – the border and immigration policy in Europe and the US, for instance. Using that as an example, those who know immigration and visa processes should know the current situation, and the CTM should know how to contact those experts to check with them.
Your CTM’s role isn’t to know all, but they should be able to find answers when asked.
Keep the merch operations away from the concert tour manager
I will not go down the ‘merch is the lifeline for touring bands’ road here and merch may be a part of your artists’s operation. In that case, there is a lot of money on the (merch) table, and with that, a lot of responsibility.
Is that something you want your CTM to be involved with?
Probably not.
At the baby-band, <500-capacity, level, it is easy for CTMs’ to sell merch – a box or two of shirts, one design, three sizes – most CTMS will not object to spending the time from doors to changeover, manning the merch stall (well, I don’t, anyway).
What I am talking about is when an artist becomes a ‘merch band’, selling £15-20 per head at their concerts.
At this level, you will probably have one of the big merch companies come sniffing round – Global, BSI, Sandbag etc – and they will offer to take over merch operations for you. They do the artwork design, printing, distribution, on-the-road selling, and accounting – for a price.
And you may decide you don’t want to get into that type of deal, and keep your merch operations ‘in-house’.
You are responsible for the initial costs, but you get to keep all the profits.
And then have your CTM supervise this operation.
Another mistake.
I have experience trying to run merch at this level on-the-road and it’s really too much to ask any CTM.
I am not talking about the actual selling here; I’m talking about the stock-keeping, re-ordering, banking cash, and accounting, which goes with a DIY merch operation.
Venues with concession stores require additional effort.
Adding high-volume merch vending would be too much for your CTM on top of her regular job. So, I advise against having your new CTM deal with the merch operations.
Establish clear communication
I think it vital to establish with your CTM:
What is your preferred method of communication?
WhatsApp has become popular for business messaging, but do you use it?
Do you prefer phone calls or email?
It’s good to discuss this with your CTM what communications you prefer. This will avoid frustration for the both of you.
(I dislike WhatsApp for business communication, for instance, so I will always email you unless you tell me otherwise).
What are acceptable hours for contact?
Your CTM may be touring with another artist before your tour begins. Her replies will be limited to a certain time frame daily. She should inform you of this, given her slow replies. Similarly, share your ‘office hours’ and your work unavailability times.
What shared document system you are both going to use?
Concert touring creates and lot of electronic documents which need to be shared between you, the CTM, and other members of the touring party. And everyone has their own preferences about how to share the paperwork.
Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, and Drive, are all popular choices, and you can bet that every member of the touring team uses a different one!
Someone needs to decide on a centralised storage solution, one that is free to the users, or paid for by the artist.
Who pays for Master Tour?
I’d like to say you don’t have to use Master Tour and unfortunately I can’t envisage running a tour without it.
Master Tour is not perfect, and its use is so ingrained in concert touring that we all have little choice for an all-in-one solution.
The software costs about £60.00 a month, and it would be nice for your CTM if your artist paid that cost for the duration of the tour.
So, how do you find a concert tour manager?
Your first port of call for finding a CTM should be your network. You know that the music business runs on recommendations, so ask around. Your artist’s booking agents should be able to point you toward reliable CTMs for instance.
The Showcase International Music Directory is a great, free (as in beer) resource. ‘Showcase’ used to be a big, physical book, and it is solely online since the pandemic, with no loss of quality contact information.
Posting on the Facebook Touring UK crew page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/UKTouringCrew will yield many replies.
I would try to be as specific as you can in your request as we road crew are a snarky bunch and will flame your post with sarcasm if your post is missing vital details.
You don’t have to post a long list all the tour dates, just make sure your specify:
- the venue-type (club, theatre, arena-level, festival run)
- the start and end dates of the tour
- the countries the tour will visit
- what you envisage the transport situation to be (splitter, sleeper)
- how many band members, how many crew etc etc.
Ask prospective candidates to direct message (DM) you their details, rates of pay etc, or set up a disposable email account (see below).
Likewise, posting in Bobnet (especially if you are looking for US and Canadian crew) will get you qualified candidates.
Replies to job opening are by email, and you can set up a free Gmail account for this purpose. For instance, an email address like [email protected] would hide your artist’s identity before the tour announcement.
Conclusion
Hiring a concert tour manager is not simply a question of logistics.
There are the questions of value, scope, and trust.
A good CTM will free you to do what only you can do: manage your artists’ careers.
But to get the best from that relationship, you must define exactly what you need, communicate clearly, and recognise the expertise they are bringing on board.
- This article gives an overview of the work involved in working for a modern music artist:
https://open.substack.com/pub/musicx/p/there-has-to-be-a-better-way-how? ↩︎ - ‘A list of predicted expenses’ (LPE) is an accurate description. The budget is the amount of the performance fee – ideally, the expenses should not exceed the fee. ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair ↩︎
- A clip from The Rest Is Entertainment highlights that the number of weeks bands topped the UK charts has plummeted https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9hOyt2oSz1/?hl=en. ↩︎