Jess Keeley
Produced, mixed and transcribed by Chelsea Wilson.
TRANSCRIPT:
CW: Hi and welcome to Control the podcast where we speak to incredibly inspiring game changers and change makers in the music industry. I’m Chelsea Wilson here, your host and in this episode I am thrilled to be speaking to artist manager Jess Keeley
Starting her career as a broadcaster for triple j, Jess moved into the label side of the industry, working in publicity and record label marketing. After working as International Marketing Manager with Warner Music in London she launched a career in artist management looking after clients such as Shania Twain, MARINA and Arcade Fire. Now based in Sydney, Jess established management company Music She Wrote, focusing on building sustainable international careers for Australian talent including Jaguar Jonze.
In this conversation I chat to Jess about risk taking, the importance of branding and social media, how she approaches strategic planning and goal setting with her artists much more.
This is Jess Keeley In Control
CW: Jess Keely, welcome to the control podcast.
JK: Thank you for having me, Chelsea. Very much.
CW: So great to see you. I've got so many things I would love to chat to you about, but it would be great to go back to the beginning of your career if we can. In the turn of the millennium, the early two thousands, you were a presenter on triple J. This was before Facebook, before streaming platforms. And it was during the peak of CD sales worldwide. So quite a time in music to be on triple J. What was this time like in your life? And what do you think your main learnings were from working in media?
JK: It's so nice to revisit this because I'm 42 and there's been a lot of assessment over the last like two decades for me recently. And when I think about those early stages, it's really, it's so heavily drenched in nostalgia, obviously, um, but also for the period of time within Australian music. And I've reflected on it so much since being back in Sydney after living overseas. I left school and immediately was on Triple J, which was...wild. So I lived in Adelaide at the time and I did high school in Adelaide, and I actually was a kids TV presenter first when I was like 18. So I left school presenting on a show called Couch Potato in like 1990. I was on Couch Potato. So I did two years of that. And along that time, this sort of parallel moment had happened where I was really interested in radio and Triple J, the icon of that brand at the time, for me, I'm 19. Of course, it's like the biggest thing. So it's during the Big Day Out, it's during home bake, all of these really iconic Australian music moments. So it was great. I started doing mid dawns. I had no training. I just dived right in. So I was on the radio a lot from one till six in the morning. I had a real support network. Which at the time, and now when I think about it, it's so weird was, um, a lot of the male presenters and not in a weird way, it was supportive. It was a, a really interesting period of learning how to do something with all of that gumption that you have in your late teens and early twenties, where you swear that you're, you know, great at everything, even though in hindsight, you really realize you weren't.
The access that I had to the knowledge to older people's opinions on music to. My own development as a music lover at that point was so rich and exciting. And I did two years, I think then, um, at triple J in Adelaide. And then I moved to Sydney when I was 21, just with that full dream. I'm like, right, going to be on triple J forever, it's going to be great. And that wasn't the case, actually. I had a lot of transitional moments when I then moved to Sydney, but I think being involved in such an exciting industry at such a young age and having support, like genuine support from people that were just like, you're great at this, like keep doing it, just gave me all this confidence.
So moving to Sydney and not knowing anyone, just kind of turning up at the ABC in Sydney all of a sudden for my mid dawn shifts from one till six a. m., showed me that there was a bravery that really exists in those early stages of your life. If it's cultivated in the right way, it really can propel you.
CW: So you moved from working in radio to major label Warner Music. What led you to move into the label side of the industry?
JK: So the period between, let's say this, I went into label world at 26 and between like 21 and 26, I was just all Sydney media all the time, really, and national media, I was on Triple J. So we did, I was at Triple J until I was 23. Um, I left then to work for FBI radio, to start FBI radio in Sydney, with, um, a woman who is still my mentor today, Megan Loader, who's an absolute icon of media in general in this country, and that was a big jump. But it was just again, like the support and the kind of confidence that I had that that was the right move for me, that was amazing. I then went back and did some some television work with the ABC. And I think it was at that point that the trajectory and the kind of pathway for me, I realized wasn't just going to be easy every year. You know, there's, I reckon when I was about 25, 24, 25, that was, things felt a little uncomfortable for me. Finally, I sort of realized that maybe I needed to decide what it was that I wanted to do. Focus on that, get really good at one thing rather than just being enthusiastic about a whole bunch of things and to find out what I really wanted to do. I'd been doing some auditioning for TV roles again. I feel like there was quite a lot of periods for me at that point that were informative in a non positive way. And up until that point, I'd felt pretty special. You know, I'd felt like I'd really had this trajectory that was just going to play out with all my wildest dreams coming true. So in that period, I sort of assessed that maybe presenting, I'd hit my cap for tha, and also maybe I didn't have the drive to put myself into an audition space constantly, you know, I didn't know it was going to be an actor all of a sudden, you know, I sort of had these dreams that this, my personality would carry me. and it certainly had until that point, but then you realize that that's a really hard job. It's a really difficult process to constantly be putting yourself out there to constantly be the person that needs reassurance and criticism and public commentary on you. And that's what I found. So when I started sort of auditioning in a more serious way, I was like, oh, you know, I don't know if this is for me anymore. I think I've done it. Um, and I was at a music festival. I feel like it was splendor in the, maybe it was a big day out still. It was one of these periods where I was at a music festival and I saw this woman running around with a clipboard and a walkie talkie. And I was like, I feel like I want to do that.
I don't know what that is, but it looks powerful and it looks important. And it looks like she's involved with all these bands. Like there's something happening. There's an excitement. There's like an ownership over this event. And it was Viv Fanton, who's this publicist, incredible publicist. Um, and I genuinely can't remember what it was that got me to all of a sudden be assisting, her and Patti Revson, who was another incredible publicist of that era. I don't know, it just, again, my confidence. I was like, I want to do this now. And I did. So I started doing publicity and it, it was a weird thing for me. I think the relationships that I have with media were the clear winner for me. I could kind of walk in the triple J because I was working there and present music and kind of work in a way that felt, um, like I was effective and I could see progress. I could see the work rather than kind of commenting on the work on media. I could see that I was doing work that was helping musicians. And it was, you know, promoting music in a great way and also loved being backstage at a festival with a clipboard and a triple A pass and thinking that I was important in that space. Cause I loved the energy of that still do. So all of a sudden I was a publicist and then, you know, like a lot of things in my life, that kind of escalated quite quickly to the point where there was a reputation for me at that point about working with bands. And, uh, it happened that actually Warner Music asked me to come and work frontline international marketing for them, which is quite interesting in hindsight, because I'd never done marketing at all, but I think it was at that point. You know, what was this 2007? And I think there was an understanding at that stage that the intuitive nature of alternative music, like knowing where it sits in sort of this like media landscape and also the triple J landscape, especially in Australia at that stage was really valuable.
You know, it was, it was definitely financial for me as well as interesting. Like I love doing new things and. I think knowing that I was leaving this independent space, you know, a fantastic supportive community and I was jumping into corporate at a time when there was still a lot of hangover of selling out and, you know, being independent and having that integrity.
Like I did think about it a lot. It felt very uncool, but it also felt like I was finally going to be paid, which I hadn't been for a long time. And so I did that and it ended up, I mean, that changed. the course of my career after that, dramatically. And I was at Warner in Australia doing their English repertoire pretty much, like all their British signings, um, and releasing them here in Australia for, I think it was 20, 2007 to the beginning of 2010.
CW: And then you moved to London and continued to work for Warner.
JK: Yeah, that's another kind of, again, it's this wild thing. All of a sudden I walked into Warner Music and one of the main jobs was for them, was like, oh look, we've got all this British music, but we don't know if we should release it, should we, should we not? You know, they had some sub labels that could do it. Um, and it just happened that like within the first sort of three weeks, the first band that they asked, for my comment on was The Wombats and The Wombats were, um, a new band and the vibe before I arrived was that it wasn't worth releasing in Australia.
So I kind of came in again, this is the confidence of the twenties. I was like, you're idiots. You need, like, I think they were at that point, I think it was going to be a license to liberation or another label right? And I was like, you are crazy. Like I can, I can get this to be top 10 on the hottest 100 if you give it to me now, I mean, what, what was that confidence its insanity? Um, it was true, but that was just cause it was, it seemed like an easy thing for me. I had let's dance to joy division, which was the first one that single. Um, and then, you know, pretty much walked into triple J and all of that. You know, success for that band here in Australia happened and it has been one of the strongest success stories for a long time, you know, at that stage, anyway, for a band to just be so popular in this country for such a long period. And a lot of it was because I was, you know, working the record really hard. So when I went to London, um, I went over there and started working in international marketing because I had done quite a good job of, you know, the repertoire for that territory. And I just really wanted to move. So it wasn't offered to me. I asked for it. I was like, time to move. I just want to go somewhere new. I'm, you know, 29, done enough here. I want to get there. So I actually left Warner Australia and dove into it in London before they'd offered me the job, but I just presumed they would. They did, but I don't know what, what prompted that. It was, there was a shaky few months there before I could start, you know, weren't sure whether there was going to be a position for me there, but, you know, I kind of stuck to my guns and. Ended up walking into Warner International, but I only stayed there for one year.
CW: So you stayed there for one year because you moved into management, right?
JK: I did.
CW: And your first client was Lykke Li.
JK: Lykke Li was my first client. Yeah.
CW: I mean, how incredible.
JK: Yeah. I mean that again, it's just like this things that happened. I think when you're, um, luck, luck plays a massive part in. In what is next for you always, you know, it's like, are you lucky enough to be in good health? Are you lucky enough to be, you know, in the right place at the right time? It's also, I think, just being available for that. And I feel like that happened for me a lot because I just made sure that everything that I communicated and the way that I was presenting myself, I wanted to be memorable. I wanted to make sure that I was present and articulate and observant and connecting with people. So, you know, leaving an impression. I think also just being a naturally intuitive, empathetic person was helpful as well. \
So essentially re Lykke Li, I mean, again, it's just the timing, isn't it? So I'd met her and she was signed to Warner and Atlantic in the UK, and I had worked her record as a marketing manager in Australia. And she'd come and done falls festival, I think. And we'd met then. And, um, I recognize she was very young. She was like, you know, Maybe 20 or 21 at that point. And she was very young. She had all men around her. And even at that point, I kind of, you know, we spent a lot of time together. And, you know, there was probably only five years difference, age difference for us. And that's helpful too. You kind of have that big sister approach. And so we'd spend all this time together in Australia. And then on her second record, you know, I was doing international marketing at Warner Atlantic and I did her record. So we actually met again, in Berlin, you know, for two years later, and I was working with the record label and over that year, our relationship really developed.
And I think she recognized at that stage in her career that she not just needed guidance from a managerial perspective in terms of career, but also very much a lot of the care that management can offer when it's needed - support, it's emotional empathy. It's awareness. It's understanding the experience and trying to make it as easy as possible.
So a year into being at Warner, she was leaving her manager in Sweden. She decided that she wanted to move on and she asked me to manage her if I was happy to do it with, with another sort of senior heavy duty manager who was named Scott Roger. And so I went and met with him. And she was happy to do that as long as I could come.
So that was sort of it. Like, Jess needs to come and then we'll partner with this guy that's had decades of experience to be able to give me the learnings that I needed and also to advise her on that sort of bigger career trajectory that she was after. So that's what we did.
CW: I love that story and I love that she had the plan and knew what she wanted and negotiated for what she wanted as well as advocating for you as well.
JK: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely felt like that. Like, she was... really confident. She knew what we needed, but she also, because she'd had experience before that with the first record, she knew what was missing. And so it wasn't that I could fit into all of those roles, you know, even though I really tried, it was sort of this great combination.
And, you know, the interesting thing about this is actually the relationship with Scott for me was, longer and still is longer than my business relationship with her.
CW: It sounds like throughout your career trajectory, you know, that we've touched on so far, there's an element of risk taking. You've used the word confidence, you know, a few times, but it's also seems like there's no fear of failure.
JK: Yeah, I think that's probably true. I think it's probably true. There's also, there's no fear of failure when you are so keen on something new. I think that's another component because there wasn't my, I feel like my, my need and a lot of career moves has been experience. Like I want to experience that. It hasn't necessarily been financial, not all the time. Even though I've mentioned that once, but it's also about the experience of it. Like I've not done it before. That seems really interesting to me. That seems like a wild thing to do next. I get bored quite quickly. My brain works very fast, so I feel like I can conquer things. And, you know, I feel like when you're in it for whatever it's going to be, the expectation is very much set by that rather than aiming for an outcome in a success module.
So aiming for some kind of parameters. That you could say that is a success. I don't think I, I don't think I put that into play for myself. I do for the artists if they need it. So, you know, certain, um, metrics that you might want to hit in order for them to feel like it's been successful. Um, but I think for me, the journey of it is what I'm interested in, what we can do sort of along that path, take the learnings and the experiences that we share in that. And I think that is why I don't associate it with risk.
CW: Do you coach your artists in that kind of philosophy?
JK: Constantly, they don't always want it. They don't always want it.Artists are a fickle and difficult. You know what? It's funny. There's a combination between. Um, when we sort of talk about that, like the, the conversations that you have with a client, like a music artist client or a pop star client, a releasing client, it's very shaped by where they see themselves in the industry rather than the artistic output.
So I normally try to, to sort of compartmentalize it a little. I'm really practical. Sometimes that can be not tactile enough for the artist. And then you have to kind of reshape that a little, like I'm very good at the psychology of conversation with people. And you're trying to kind of, you know, it's this management school of thought where you, you try to get a no to a yes in as short a steps as possible. And that really is the skill set of management, right? It's like knowing how to shape something, a proposition or an outcome or whatever it might be for an artist that allows them to have ownership over the decision. Um, because you know, you're coming from very different perspectives a lot of the time and trying to incorporate creative energy into financial energy, you know, or outcomes, they're sometimes not compatible. So I do always try and put in place two objectives when you're at the beginning of any campaign, let's say anything you're going to do. It's sort of like, what is your creative output? What is the creation of what you're trying to achieve here? So is it an album? Is it a play? Is it a film? Whatever that is, let's talk about what that looks like. And what are your financial needs? Not wants, but needs for the year. And can they match in some way? Because if they can't match and you're a musician, um, it might be that you want to release a spoken word record, but you want to make a million dollars. Okay. So they're not going to be compatible. So that means that the art is not going to be the financial driver. So the art can come out and then we'll do a bunch of things around it that will hopefully get you the finance you need to live your life and do what you need to do. That's sort of the place that I try to come from is to have two separate conversations about it.
And the artistic conversation is the journey part. Do you feel satisfied with what you've put out? Do you feel satisfied that we've done the best job we could do? Do you feel like you've put in the greatest amount of effort that you could? And if you do, then, you know, it kind of doesn't really matter where it ends up in terms of other people's version of success.
And if it's not tied to a financial outcome, you feel even better. Cause that's when that area can get really confused.
CW: It's the constant struggle in the arts, right? It's trying to find that balance between making art, but also paying bills and where the vocational versus the artistic .. this is a conversation I have with musicians all the time about what gigs we do, what records we might play on, when we need the money, we don't want to do it, that feels like a sellout, but we need to pay the rent, doing this project to try and pay for this one, but what we want to put on socials and if that's going to complicate the brand.
JK: I mean, there's so, there's so many intersections here. It's so complex. You know, it's, and the thing with the industry too is the, um, it, it really is, look, I don't work in visual art, um, and I do have, you know, a little bit of cross, um, art form work in theatre and in film, but like the majority of, the money in music is not art based, it is brand based and that is different to say visual art or even fashion to a certain degree, right? So if you kind of, you know, when you're talking about creative industries, the thing with music is that the majority of the financial benefits come from the celebrity of it. It doesn't come from necessarily the art of it, especially now more so than ever. And that is the difficult part of this industry for certain kinds of personalities.
So, you know, with some of my clients, there is no chance that if they had released music now in 2023 for the first time, as opposed to, you know, 2008 for the first time, the landscape is so different that their personality and their way of releasing music would, would never break through. It just wouldn't.
And that's culture. You know, that's the zeitgeist. That's where things fit, but certainly just because of the demands on building and maintaining a sense of brand and celebrity and artifice that you can then monetize. That is the challenge I think for most artists now because being able to make a sustainable living just on your music or just on your touring is very unrealistic.
CW: Can you talk more about what you mean by Brand.
So if you, I've thought about this a lot recently, cause it's funny, the, why do you like someone? Like why do we love Taylor Swift? Apparently the whole world does, right? Why do we love Taylor Swift? We love who she is, but we love her brand. We don't know her. We love what she is, what she stands for now. And it's, it's been a lot of different things throughout the years, you know, throughout her career, there's been times when she's been unlikable based on some of the things that she's publicly done. But the cultivation of her name and her identity means that when she releases music, it's received with a presumption of loving it.
You know, it's that whole kind of super fandom. And I think traditionally in music, the releasing of the music has invited fans to then explore more of the artist and more of their work. That's not the way things are working now. So right now I can have an awareness of an artist, full awareness of them, and never have heard a song. Like, how do I know this artist? Why do I know them? They're in my zeitgeist. iSpice is an amazing example, right? So there's these sort of breakthrough artists that will come through that have something established. In terms of brand recognition, in terms of name recognition before they release music and the majority of releases now that are kind of, this is on a global scale, kind of breaking through, um, are from, you know, artists now who have already built up some kind of existing fan base and brand alignment.
So I'm using the word brand in a pretty crass way here. It's just in a kind of, you know, commercial sense, but you know, so Olivia Rodrigo. Um, releases music and it will be received automatically by very big audience and very well because she's been a Disney child actor for so long and that's how it works.
So, you know, that, that method is obviously tried and tested. It's happened for generations, but I think even more so now being able to find your audience first before you release music is almost a need for a lot of artists. And it makes it very complex now to think about how that process starts for someone, particularly the more introverted artist sensibilities.
CW: Well, yeah. And also people that want to have some sort of privacy. I mean, what happened to mystery? Back again, Chelsea, in my, actually, do you know what? No, I do this theory. This is like for any artists listening, like for people that think, okay, here I am, I've got this project. I want to release this. You know, recently, I think when we talk about social media, this is I'm getting into my advice section now, but this is so important. I just, we talk about social media and we talk about that in line with workload and mental health. Totally important. Right. However, if you remove social media, because it makes you feel terrible about yourself, if you remove that from your business strategy, you're really neglecting the smart part of how to release your music, how to market your music.
So this is where that headspace shift comes from art and creation into how am I marketing what I'm doing? And am I making money from it? You know, that's the reality of music, right? Why do you want to release music otherwise? If you'd like to just play live or you just want to do it for the sake of it, all of those things can fall away. But if you have an ambition to make money from your music in some way and have a music career, not paying attention to social media and how you market accordingly is a mistake. I would, when I have conversations with artists and, you know, we get into the, like, I don't really want to do TikTok and I don't really want to do TikTok, like it's so hard to do.And I completely understand I'm not going to do TikTok. I am not doing a TikTok a day, zero chance. I understand what that feels and looks like. We just have to be smart and realistic about what that means. So artists at the minute, if, if I was talking to an artist and they were to say to me, I cannot do TikTok, I'm not going to do it.
I'll be like, okay, that's fine. So we'll do it for you then as a manager, as a label or whoever that is, we're going to do it for you. Is that fine? If they're like, yes, that would be great. Create the business channel. Create my identity, use what I provide you to develop a way to market this music on TikTok, would love that.The problem we've got is because this association with social media has been about personality and authenticity and often these channels have developed for people before they've released music, which means they feel like it's theirs, their personal, you know, output. There is a sort of a confusion around the fact that that has to be them and they have to be doing it.
They have to be these TikTok influencers. It's really not the case. It just needs to be thought about in the same way that you would a music video or your cover art for your record. Like how are you marketing what you've just created? And what is the world that you're building around that? What's your own personal capacity?
And what are you prepared to allow other people to collaborate with you on? So you would have a producer come in and You know, help you potentially with your work, or you might have a drummer because you don't play drums. So if you know that you're not great at social media, you got to give that up. You just got to be able to somehow fill that gap in a way that, that allows your team, if you've got one, um, to support you in it, but also to get results and to understand what you're all aiming for collectively.
Because I feel like that is the conversation I have daily. And it is so depressing and a conversation of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just give me some ideas. I'm going to do some TikToks. And then it's never happened. I would rather someone say, I'm never doing it. Let's work out a way together that I can approve a strategy or approve a tone of voice or an identity, but that someone else can, can actually output.
That's the smart use of. Your time and your energy. Essentially the business side of music should be considered like a startup. So how are you going to fill these gaps? How are you going to make sure that, you know, your music is being represented in these places in the right way?
CW: So in terms of working with artists.And you've developed a strategy and you're rolling out that strategy. When you tick off some of those goals, how does that feel for you? Do you celebrate those wins or is it just ticking off an item and moving on to the next?
JK: It's a funny one. I, like I've reflected on this a bit recently, cause I've had really.
I've had really incredible experiences and successes in this job. There's no doubt when you release a record and it is received really well, and you feel really proud of your input into it as a manager, that that's celebrating, you know, that's really worth celebrating. When I can feel my input has...created an environment where it's like really elevated the work and really helped with the success of that, then I feel, I feel pretty great about that. And that's definitely what I celebrate probably more so than just the fact that, you know, you've done the spreadsheets, you've approved a budget, you've gotten the artist there, you know, you've helped them through something that had happened the night before where they're feeling really sensitive.
All of that's still satisfying too, but there's. Certainly some moments when, when all of those things combine and you're like, Oh, this would not have happened without me. You know, like there's a record that I released with an artist called Marina in 2015 called fruit. And it was like number four on the billboard chart.
It was the highest record she'd ever, you know, charting records she ever had in America. It was this incredible period of time where we worked together incredibly well. The campaign was really. revolutionary for the period and it created such an excitement around her and it was so surprising that it got to where it got.
And I think that, that was part of me realizing that it, that wouldn't have happened without me. And that was a really big moment. You know, I think before that with other releases, sometimes you can feel kind of like you are just sort of administrative depending on where you're sitting, but you know, there's a few campaigns that pop up where you're like, that's pretty.
That's pretty much me. Um, and likewise, you know, there was some moments with Shania Twain where, you know, working with Shania was an incredible experience and you realize, you know, you step into success when you're working at something of that level, you know, you just kind of walk into the today show and you're like, I'm just doing the today show now.
It's just how it works here. I am at the Grammys again. Like it's just, it just happens, but there was a couple of occasions early on when I was working with her, which were my kind of represent. to her back into the kind of music space and back into the industry and the culture. And one thing in particular, which was her appearance on a, um, comedy show called Broad City.
And it's this like very, you know, if you're a Shania fan or a Broad City fan, it's this very like iconic, funny appearance that she did on that show. And. That would not have happened if I wasn't managing her. I just happened to call the people that I knew who managed the people that wrote that show. And I was like, I'm just starting to work with Shania Twain.
You should write her in to the show. And, you know, a year later I got a script on my desk and she just walked in and did it. Um, and I love that. Yeah. And so things like that, it's not always the, okay, we've sold out the Hollywood bowl. It's not always that it's also just the knowledge in yourself that this moment that felt really transformative and important for the artist's career or their placement or their, you know, PR, whatever it might be, that just wouldn't have happened without your input.
So there's a few moments that I pick out where I'm like, Oh, that was, that was really good. I'm really good at the job.
CW: Did you and Shania go and have some Cosmos or something after this?
JK: A hundred percent. She will love this. What a drink. What an icon. She is. Imean, we still keep in touch. She's an absolute. So like. Yeah, she really is. You know, icon is, is a word that is so fitting for someone of that intelligence and output and energy. Oh man, she's so energetic, so much drive and so personable. And look, she was the only client I've ever had that gave me a. Um, and she's really, really supportive as my first baby. Yeah. Just really special in terms of like awareness and thoughtfulness around the experience within the industry too. So, I mean, I learned a lot from her kind of still do even just like watching from afar.
CW: Oh, I feel like I learned heaps just watching the yeah, the Netflix doco, which was incredible. Speaking about motherhood, you published a blog piece back in 2020, where you discussed being fired by some long term clients twice. When you had babies and I love this quote in the article, “if we truly respected the process of becoming a parent, it would be added to resumes as a set of life skills, which makes you more empathetic.Adaptable and focused. Employers would put in job descriptions that parental experience is preferred. I love that. This must have been a devastating moment in your career and also to happen twice, it's just horrendous. Can you tell us a little bit about this?
JK: Yeah, it's um, it really has shaped a lot of how I feel about this role as manager.
And it's certainly not like, you know, whilst it happened to me and it did happen twice. So, uh, on my first baby, I had a client fire me when she was four weeks old. And then on my second baby, um, I had a client find me when he was seven weeks old. Look, as a manager, you don't have that many clients. You're not out there with, you know, a heavy roster. And I think, I think, I think the takeaway for me was that the timing. Wasn't coincidental. I think with any presumption around someone's decision to have children and what that will do to their life and how it will affect it, like it will change. It invariably changes. It has to, your priorities change, your availability changes.
But I think what I mean in that quote is that why is that perceived to be negative? Because realistically we should be hoping. As humans, as our experience shapes us, as our life experiences shape us, you know, we experience grief, we experience breakups, all of those things affect the way you approach your days and the decision making that you have, the confidence that you have, the availability that you have emotionally to offer to someone else.
And so to me, the strongest disappointment was not the fact that that clients leave, they do, you know, management is. So dangerous for so many reasons. It's a heavy emotional investment. It's very heavy time investment. You know, if I realistically were, and this is even with Shania Twain, if I realistically worked out my hourly rate, it would be dismal, dismal.
The amount of work that I've done for free for artists for decades now is, is countless. Like that's, you know, that's what I signed up for, but you know, the really tough position that you're in when you When you know that it may not have been conscious that it was, you know, that the firings happened because I had a baby because no one's, you know, a sadist.
They're not out there going, yeah, she's had a kid. I'm going to fire her now. It's not that it's the fact that the three or four months preceding the birth of a baby, you are a bit more distracted. You're more focused on doing other things. You know, you naturally slow down physically. And also you become.
Someone that people recognize as having something in their life. They can see it. You've got a huge belly and they're like, I'll check you out. You are having a baby. So you sort of become this more obvious presence. And I think over a period of time that like, unfortunately eroded the trust potentially that these clients had with me and.
And that's what I mean about it being subconscious, you know, they're not awful people by any stretch. No, but they think I'm not going to be number one anymore. But also not consciously Chelsea, that's what I'm saying. They're not consciously saying that it's a feeling, right? It's like something that's sitting here just on your chest thinking.
I feel uncomfortable about this. And if I'm uncomfortable, it must be the manager's fault. Like there's something I'm uncomfortable with the manager. The manager isn't doing the job. That's what's happening. Got it. Okay. And that's, that's how you articulate it. Like the thing with this role, with this role is it is highly personal and yet meant to be about business.
And so I think what I deduced after this happening to me twice is that I won't stand for anyone telling me that life isn't personal. That business isn't personal. Of course it is. Everything we do is personal. It should always be personal. The disassociation of the personal with the business is a reason capitalism is awful because it's, it's forsaking all others.
It just doesn't make any sense to me. So it naturally doesn't fit with my values and my moral compass. It just doesn't sit nicely with me at all to think that I would. You know, scapegoat others for the sake of whatever financial benefit I can gain. Um, and unfortunately with management and that relationship that really does play into it, are you doing enough for me so that I'm gaining, so that I'm increasing?
And I think the natural art of sensibility is that if they haven't reached a success metric that they were hoping for. Or they're feeling really uncomfortable about what's just happened for them on a personal level. They'll normally deflect that to team members, to management, to agents. It's going to be their fault.
And I think that's a really hard part of the dynamic of management. Yeah, and it's funny actually, because it's very much artists in a particular period that that affects. Like really young artists are so thankful and excited about the team. And then really successful artists.
Um, you know, they're a bit more relaxed about it because potentially financially it's not as draining. So it's certainly kind of, you know, artists at a level that are feeling let down in some way by the industry, by their management, whatever that might look like. And that's normally when those moments happen.
And it's really unfortunate because it's prompted a lot by. You know, personal choices within the management's, you know, manager's life, or in my case, children.
CW: It's just an assumption that when you have a baby or, you know, you start a family, you're going to change in a way that is negative. You're going to become some really boring person that moves to the outer suburbs and no longer be interesting or have the sort of career focus or drive that you did before.
JK: Exactly. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? And in fact, it's funny because, um, because I keep thinking about that in terms of my efficiency. I actually, like, I'm so efficient now. I'm just like, I have so much confidence in making decisions. Cause I just, I gotta get on with it. I don't know if it's changing. I don't know if generationally it will change.
I'm just very clear now. For me, I am very clear about when I need to do something for my family and I tell the artist that. I don't make it up now. I'm not like, oh, I've got another meeting with some kind of international person to make it look like it's good. It's like, no, I'm going to my kid's assembly.
That's why I can't do the call. Or, you know, I can't start that early because I'm doing the school run. Like I'm very clear about what the parameters are for my own diary now. And to also make sure that that is respected and cause if I don't say it, if I'm suddenly self conscious about it and pretending that the kids aren't affecting my day to day.
Then I'm going to perpetuate the issue, you know, instead articulating it clearly with importance means that that artist feels it's really important to you. They totally get it. Yeah, of course you need the time. Fine. You know, it's because you're a part of it too. I think, you know, for me, it's interesting.
Like I do reflect on the period when I was pregnant before both of the babies and thought probably didn't talk about it with those artists. I probably didn't. Want to bring it up or reassure them or like articulate if I was worried about something, because if I'd allowed myself potentially to be vulnerable.
They might've respected my time a little more, but with management, you sort of set up this dynamic where you're like all problem solving all the time. So then when you remove that and you're not, you know, you're not sort of as available or, you know, like, yeah, I, I'm not, not to say that you know, that it was a reflection on me then doing it, but I do think that there could have been a way, if I'd been more confident myself, if I'd had role modeling that showed me what you did when you were pregnant, but you had clients then that might've changed the situation and the dynamics slightly.
CW: Recently you spoke on a panel hosted by ARIA that covered the new eligibility criteria for ARIA award categories. And you stated that there is no way based on the streaming numbers of 420 ad supported streams to equal one sale that an Australian artist can make a #1chart position. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
JK: It's absolutely true. And it's no one's fault. It is based on the size of our domestic industry, of our domestic market. So the funny thing with the streaming environment now is that it's so hard to find something new, we all go to what is present and that is like Taylor Swift.
So if you are an artist and you're releasing for the first time now and you're trying to get your music consumed at such a high rate, you're relying on a lot of different areas of discovery. Your own social media, the algorithmic moments that happen within streaming and maybe live or something else that you kind of trying to cultivate.
So there's a lot of different areas that you're trying to touch on. The difficulty with streaming is that it is. It is not a discovery platform. It just isn't. So the discovery has to happen elsewhere. And then everyone needs to come in and, you know, jump on Spotify or whatever other DSP you choose and find your music.
And in today's climate of very short attention spans, that's asking a lot of someone it's asking a lot. The nature of our market in Australia has. It's funny actually, because I'm getting into this. I'm doing a, um, a fireside chat with, with Alicia from Spotify, um, at Big Sound, because we're going to talk about this.
There is an idea that, um, you know, releasing in Australia is kind of like a fenced in process where you like algorithmically just sort of serving into your own audience again and again and again. And there is, there is definitely some truth to that. But I think what you're saying is that from a domestic.
Marketing perspective, our bandwidth as fans is being taken up with all of that international Awareness on other artists that's from a touring capacity because international touring is far bigger than domestic touring in this market and on streaming. So our tendency will be to pick up whatever is happening in the global Western English speaking Zeitgeist, which is predominantly American, and then to just follow that, to follow that path.
And then what that creates is your own self generating algorithm of getting that same content again and again and again. So why do we all know what Taylor Swift is doing all the time? It's because all of us at some point have intersected with Taylor Swift algorithmically and so that's all we get served now.
Or Beyonce, right? It's like you just know they're on tour constantly because that's what you're seeing. If you're, you know, if you're an Australian artist aiming to try and get some streams happening, there simply aren't enough people listening to music in this country to make that happen. And that is where we're in a real state.
So there's going to need to be some legislative and cultural changes that occur within the landscape to encourage this industry to be a commercial industry rather than a subsidized industry, which is really what the music industry is at present. And I don't know what that is yet. I think there is. I think there will naturally be this kind of, you know, there's this swing imbalance that happens a lot in culture.
You can, you know, the right artists are at the front of it and they change it and that's what's exciting. And I do, you know, not to say that we haven't been here before. You know, just in a different looking environment, but certainly the contraction of consumption of domestic music, such a gross way to say it, but it's the truth, um, has really reduced, really reduced.
It's not to say that those super fans are not there. You know, there's bands selling incredible amounts of vinyl. There are bands that are, you know, selling out great shows. What we're not seeing is. those bands being streamed in the same way or being supported in the same way consistently. And that's about growth, you know, that's about how artists go from being, you know, from selling 200 tickets to selling 2000 tickets.
And, you know, I think since, since that ARIA panel. I've broadened slightly sort of some of the references through different conversations around what might need to happen. None of us have the answers at all. Like no one does. Um, but it's certainly rang true to me that all of the different areas that artists need to support themselves financially and that they need for growth in their career, all of them need some kind of touch point to get back going again, and that might be media, you know, the footprint of triple J support is far less impactful now for.
releasing artists. The streaming support, like Spotify editorially support a lot of Australian artists. Genuinely they do. I don't think we're seeing Australian consumption of that. You know, I don't think we're seeing like Australian music fans listening, even though we're getting that triple J, A list rotation and the Spotify editorial support.
I can't see that happening. So there's something that's deeper culturally. Which is about building up those relevant connections with an audience and their bands that we haven't connected to again. And it's probably a lot of things that have happened over a period of time. And definitely the lack of live music through COVID has been a huge contributor to this.
And I think what we're seeing now is there's just the pockets of success that people are having is not replicable. So there's no pathway for artists anymore. It's kind of out there. You just got to kind of go for it and see what happens. Um, and I think that's, what's confusing a lot of us as sort of music industry executives, because we used to feel like we could be effective and now it's harder, it's harder to be effective.
It's harder to feel like you're good at this. Um, and that goes for artists as well. So I'm, you know, I'm very much trying to acknowledge the pain of it, but now really think about what it is that we can contribute to the rebuilding of the industry, which I, you know, it's probably five years away, I think.
CW: over the last few years, Jaguar Jones, an artist that you manage, has been a powerful advocate for equality in the industry and has spoken out about her experiences of harassment, sexual misconduct and abuse in the industry. She was part of the raising their voices report, which I'll put a link to in the show notes and her work campaigning in this space and doing interviews is so much energy and time and it's been so important. But it must be also a lot of time away from creating her own music. So I wanted to ask you if an artist or an industry worker who is listening to this wants to speak out about issues and advocate for change, how would you advise them to approach this whilst looking after their own mental health and continuing to work on their creative practice?
JK: I mean, what an absolute legend first, like Deena Lynch, Jaguar Jones. I describe her as being maybe the highest output artists that I've ever worked with. And when you think about the fact that I've managed Shania Twain, like that's saying significant things.
She is an incredible visionary. And I think what, what she's created is. a way of showcasing her experience in an artistic way at all times. That includes through, through advocacy. Her art intersects with everything that she does. That's her expression, you know, even as simple as, as the way that she asked for and communicated her own story.
Um, through a visual medium like Instagram, like she is a true visionary, the division between understanding experience and wanting to communicate that and then trying to advocate for change in it. I think has to be carried together. You know, you, it drives you for, for an outcome. You're, you're wanting something to come from it.
And it's the same as creation. You know, you're wanting something to get out. You're wanting to be able to affect. This outcome or this presentation of, of an issue, the mental health aspect of this is almost like there needs to be a catharsis that sits alongside that. So for someone like Jaguar Jones, I think she could not have done it any other way.
I don't doubt her need to express her experience. and to articulate it in a way that was understandable and that was powerful, is artistic. You know, even when you're going on the project, that's an artistic decision. Like she's doing that. She's creating the expression and controlling her output. And I think that is part of maintaining the mental health of it.
I think if she had... She had opted to not express in the way that she had that that may have created a worse mental health outcome for herself. You know? So I think my answer is that it's really, really personal. It's really personal, you know, we know statistically that the majority of assaults are not reported and not pursued.
That is, you know, it comes with, there's a, and there is a bravery in both areas. It should never. Be that someone feels that they are inadequate for not reporting or for not expressing or for not publicly acknowledging. There is a bravery in all of it. There is a bravery in surviving. That is just. The base level of where we sit, like the survival of that.
You don't need to be public to be a survivor. If you choose to do it, if you choose to be public with it, there is an intention there, there's a different kind of drive. And, you know, for someone who's been a support for that process, my major takeaway is knowing that it takes a lot of support and conversations and.
Resilience to get to even the end of it. If there is ever an end for you, if you could ever put a dot point on it and you may not be able to, it's something that, that sits inside of you and takes a little spot in your brain and will exist with you forever. So I think that, that it's around understanding what you need from the process and making sure that that, that you're getting that in some way.
So what do you need from this process of articulating your experience and. Making sure that that is in your head, even through the reliving of trauma and where you're sort of getting to. And there's so many support structures that you need in place in order to do that. And you should always make sure that you've got that circle, that intimate circle with you that can sit with you and do that.
But I think it is very much around focusing on what the intention is for this, for yourself. So that you can protect that as you go forward and keep coming back to that. It's returning to it, you know, and it might be that there's, you know, that it's, um, awareness or support or justice or all kinds of complex emotions that you might have to it.
But you need to feel that there is a drive for yourself, I think. That won't be shaken. So a sense of achievement isn't the right word, but a sense of progression for yourself, because that is, that's what you're going to take to in the end. Cause things will be disappointing through the process inherently.
CW: Jess, I know you've got a meeting to go to. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me on the control podcast.
JK: Thank you, Chelsea, for having me very much.
