How management works in the music industry

Part of the Music Research Seminar Series 2025-26

Speaker: Michael Murphy – Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology

Location: School of Music Lecture Theatre 2

• This will be a hybrid event. The guest speaker will be present with us in the School of Music, and colleagues and other guests are encouraged to join us there. But if you are unable to do so then please consider joining us via Teams.
• No booking is required. Those wishing to attend online should contact series convenor Dr Ellis Jones (e.n.jones@leeds.ac.uk).

How do artists attract the attention of major record labels?

How do those artists negotiate deals with major labels?

And what happens then, when you compete for the attention of the label and the global music market?

Michael Murphy worked in the music industry in Dublin, London, Toronto and New York for twenty years. During that time, he managed a band on each of the major labels (BMG, Sony, Warner, EMI, Universal and Disney).In his book, Music Management: Lessons from the Managers of Number One Albums, Routledge (2025), he documents the tactics, personalities and successes of a number of mangers. They include the managers of the Beatles, the Monkees, RUN DMC and K-Pop icons. The book explores some of the pioneering women managers in the music industry, and the key role played by Black entrepreneurs. Murphy also stresses the importance of do-it-yourself (DIY) in the music industry. And he shows how many artists are active in their own self-management. These examples include Kurt Cobain, Jay-Z, Dave Grohl, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift.

Michael Mary Murphy was part of Dublin’s small DIY/punk music scene during the 1980s. He wrote for fanzines, helped to organize gigs and worked in his local indie record shop. In 1989 he was hired by Richard Branson’s Virgin record label in London. He moved from there to Imago (owned by Terry Ellis co-founder of Chrysalis records) in New York. There he worked with Henry Rollins. He subsequently founded his own music management company and was personal manager for artists on each of the major labels. He wrote Pop Music Management: Lessons from the Managers of Number One Albums, Routledge (2025) and co-authored with Jim Rogers, Sounds Irish, Acts Global: Explaining the Success of Ireland's Popular Music Industry, Equinox (2024).