Greedy managers are ruining artists’ lives

The Kenyan music industry has come a long way, no one is denying that. Back in the day, musicians had to do all the negotiations, book studio time, plan releases and whatnot on their own but times have changed.

Also read: Kenyans don’t give their musicians enough support

These days, they have managers who take care of most things and this allows an artist to spend more time in studio making new music rather than running around town taking care of small things.

But that is where the problem lies. While some managers are honest and just want to see an artist excel, other want to take advantage of them only to dump them later.

You see, many artists do not understand the s;mall aspects of the music business and when a manager realizes this, they use this to exploit the artist and this often leads to endless court battles.

We’ve seen many Kenyan artists falling out with their record labels or managers and believe you me, this trend will not stop anytime soon.

What happens in many cases is that when an musician is being signed up by a record label or getting a management team, they are always too excited to even read the contract thoroughly. They just sign it.

Later on, the come to discover that they gave away the rights to their songs which means that they can be used in an advert and they would not even get a cent.

In other cases, some artists come to discover that their so-called managers allocated themselves huge commissions from the money they make from performances and streaming services leaving them with nothing.

The truth is that fraudulent managers are ruining the lives of many musicians because after all the drama that ensues from the fall out, many of them find it hard to pick themselves; up since they already ruined their names.