How to Find a Music Manager: An Interview with Perry Davis

Today, we're sharing a fascinating conversation from our live series, "Patch Notes," where co-founder Max Pote interviews influential figures in the music industry.

For our inaugural episode, Max sat down with an old friend, music manager Perry Davis. Perry is a man of many skills and much experience, having helped found the management company 24/8, based out of Nashville, which represents loads of successful artists like Spag Heddy, Herobust, Ivory, and Viperactive.

In this interview, Max and Perry dive deep into essential questions for artists: how to get a manager, what managers look for, how to potentially get signed, and even how to become a manager yourself. It's an awesome path, not always the easiest, and something we're excited to learn more about.

Without further ado, here are the edited highlights from our interview with Perry Davis. If you'd like to see the FULL interview, head over to Futureproof Music School Youtube channel.

Unpacking the "Overnight Success" Myth: Hard Work and Diverse Skills

Max Pote: We've been seeing Viperactive's name everywhere lately, and that's awesome. I think that's really interesting as an artist, that's your dream, to kind of just find your space. But seeing the name consistently everywhere now... As a fan, when you witness that happen, it feels like they just came out of nowhere. When in reality, that's just not really how it works, right? There's a lot more to it. How did you find Viperactive, and what attracted you about them?

Perry Davis: That's a great question. Oddly enough, I became aware of Viperactive through another client, Spag Heddy, who was a huge fan. This was a couple years ago. He showed me some songs, and he was like, "Man, this guy's great. I want to do a collab." So, they did a collab called "In Vain." At the time, Viperactive was just making dubstep. It was sick, but none of it really stood out too much from the crowd, you know? It was a time where things were getting a little stale. But since then, he obviously honed his sound and created this new sort of hyperactive wave. Beginning of 2023, we reconnected, and he showed me all his new music and talked about his project, what he wants to do with it. I was really impressed. It wasn't until that point, couple years later, where I was like, "Yo, dude, I think there's something here. Let's see what we can do." And we started working together.

Max Pote: That's great. You love to see a come up story.

Perry Davis: It's funny because you mentioned seeing his name everywhere and people thinking it's an overnight success, but there rarely is an overnight success. That's not a real term. Viperactive has been committed to music full-time since he was like 13. He talked about being on Fiverr, making beats for a living that way, cranking out 70 beats a month. If you're working that hard, you're gonna get good at your craft. Over time, seeing his workflow now, that's shown through all the hard work. You can go back to his YouTube and see his drum pad videos from way back. While you might be seeing his name everywhere, it definitely wasn't a random thing.

Max Pote: Right. That's definitely not how it works. It's interesting that he mentioned Fiverr and the behind-the-scenes production work. It's possible as an up-and-coming artist to get super focused on only being a touring DJ and only getting record releases, and that's how I'm gonna make money. As possible as that is, it's also less likely. Would you recommend for a new artist to be working on things he was doing, like maybe sound design for video games, movie scoring, or side hustle work on Fiverr?

Perry Davis: Yeah. If you're looking to be an artist and you want to get better at your craft, it just takes practice, right? However that practice comes to you, you should accept it and do it, because it'll get you better. Whether that's the Fiverr thing, or for video games—they're different avenues of the music industry—but anything you can do to further yourself in the knowledge of what you're doing is gonna be helpful.

Max Pote: Charma in the chat says, "Fiverr gang." She does so much work on Fiverr as a side hustle. I would bet on it improving her skills as a songwriter in ways you wouldn't traditionally get just by writing your own music. Just like Viperactive, I bet he got really good at oddly specific random things that now are working for him. That if you were just pursuing the "successful famous DJ" path, maybe that's not something you would've focused on as much.

Perry Davis: Definitely. If you're writing music focused on being a touring musician, the way you approach it is different from doing it on Fiverr or as your job. There are different expectations. If you want to get a better workflow or whatever benefits come from doing something like Fiverr, you should look into it outside of just the money, which is a good part of it.

Content, Platforms, and Building Your Fanbase

Max Pote: What platforms are most impactful right now for building a loyal fanbase, and what type of content moves the needle the most?

Perry Davis: Interesting. There's no specific content that moves the needle the most, in my opinion. It's more about the quality of what you're putting out there. A lot of content nowadays is cookie cutter. People do the same things. When I'm scrolling, if I see the same video from seven different artists, I flip past it. But if it's eye-catching, unique, a little more artistic, then I'm like, "Okay, I'll give this a full watch." The thing that moves the needle the most is high quality and unique content. There's so much low-hanging fruit. For platforms, it's mostly social media. Instagram, TikTok seem best for discoverability, visibility. For community, Twitch is great. It's a good way to connect face-to-face. Instagram Live is okay, but there are restrictions. Twitter or X are great for open conversations. Threads too. It seems to be the communal spot. Think about what platform you're putting on, what works best there. But I tell my artists, if you put a lot of hard work into a video, make sure it goes everywhere. When you really want stuff going, people scroll most on Instagram and TikTok, and they see things there.

Max Pote: How essential would you consider content creation to be?

Perry Davis: Unfortunately, it's very essential now. It is the meta, and people are consuming short-form video content more than anything. It's both good and bad. There's a lot of competition, especially in electronic music. Many artists make good music, but that's all they can do. We're entering an age where dubstep is becoming more accepted and recognized. Music industry norms are folding into it. That's why we see more albums, more artistic branding, vision. Pop stars do this for every album. Tyler the Creator is a great example. He had the mask, the whole get-up. All of that was part of the artistic vision. Dubstep is still very young, but those standards are crossing over. I think it's good to have a fully artistic view and content around your music that reinforces your vision. But not every artist is a content creator. It's a fine line. I'm not a super creative person myself with content ideas. It's hard to come up with ideas for everybody. So I like that artists kind of figure out their own niche. But unfortunately, you have to have more than just good music nowadays. Content plays a really big part.

Max Pote: The most important thing, and the hardest, is that successful content is authentic. How hard is it for some people to just be authentic with social media?

Perry Davis: You just need to find your bag.

Max Pote: I think that's why so many producers do production tutorials, which aren't even that helpful. But how do you get through? What else are you gonna do? It's tough.

Perry Davis: It's very tough to find what works best for you. That's why you see producers mimic content. Like the production tips or dancing in front of the computer showing a new song. That stuff works, but it's low-hanging fruit. To break through, you have to be really creative or artistic. Otherwise, it just mixes in with the rest. You are being put in the same classes as other artists. While it fixes the artist's need to have content out, it doesn't move the needle for anybody.

What Managers Look For: Vision, Planning, and Long-Term Thinking

Max Pote: "When you first started working with Viperactive, what stood out to you that made you feel he had real long-term potential? And how did you approach building around that from a management perspective?"

Perry Davis: That's a great question. This was a first for me as well. I haven't signed a new artist like him in quite some time. My clients have been with me for a really long time. The thing that hooked me was when I was chatting with him, our third or fourth conversation. He had such a clear and concise vision for where he was at, to where he wanted to go, and how to get there. That made it really easy for me. I didn't have to come up with the plan. He had it, and it gave me clear points I could execute on. Every time I had a question, he had a full answer. He knew what he wanted to do, and that made it easy to get him there.

Max Pote: So, drawing out the core from that is having a plan in a realm where your future is unpredictable. Try and just make what you want to happen, happen, and then when opportunities, like conversations with you, come along, you're ready. When you're crafting that at earlier stages, you're guessing and saying, "This is what I want to happen." Which is not super easy. It's more like, "This is what I'm dreaming of happening, and I'm gonna prepare really well for when this dream is presented to me. And when it happens, I'm gonna execute." It's about preparing in advance for the life you want to live. Being an artist can feel very like, "I'm just gonna make my music, and it's just gonna go." But the best and most successful artists are a beautiful blend of analytics and scientific data collection with creativity. You can't just be like, "Forget it, my team is gonna help me."

Perry Davis: No, it doesn't work like that. Not unless you have the best, most connected team.

Max Pote: But how do you get that team without being the most talented person?

Perry Davis: Exactly. With him, he did have the plan, and he had been thinking about it for a long time. He's been doing music full-time since he was 13. He's known he wants a career in music no matter what. His goals are clear, achievable. He's not compromising on that. He's willing to do what it takes, to put in the work. Some people think they want it, or they see what others have and want that, but they don't realize the work it takes. It's not easy. If you want to be in the music industry, get into it. Pick up a DJ deck and play. But if you want to take it seriously and have a career, you have to work hard and treat it like a career. It's not just a music hobby anymore. It's a business.

Max Pote: You have to fund your hobby.

Perry Davis: Yeah. You have to fund your hobby, for sure.

Perry Davis: If you have enough brains to say no to a show, then you're already in the right headspace. Because so many people, especially new artists, rush into doing shows, and they think it's gonna be a good thing for 'em. And sometimes it is if you need to pay your bills. But when it comes to your value as a touring artist, taking a bunch of shows right off the bat is not always a great idea because it's not often when, say you're a no-name new artist, you go do a show, sell 75 to a hundred tickets. Like, that's not really translating into anything for your long-term success. If you do that too early in your career, you're essentially just shooting yourself in the foot saying, "Oh yeah, I went and did this headline show, but nothing good came from it." It's just like, well, why'd you do the show? So if you can see those instances now or early on, and say, "Hey, I wanna skip all that unnecessary noise and just work on your craft and your brand and all that," to where when you do shows, it's way more impactful, that's like green flags to me.

Max Pote: That's hard to do. I agree. The strongest point is the foresight to already be turning things down. It's like, "Give, give, give, I need a tour, I need a tour." And at some point, fairly early on, it does become detrimental to your brand. And it's just like, "Yeah, we can get 'em for 1k, 1k," and you're never able to break into the higher thing. You're never able to do a headlining tour, 'cause you're just like, having the goal of supporting other artists is like the worst thing you could ever have.

Perry Davis: Yes, it is. And so many people fall into that trap, right? They're like, "Oh yeah, well maybe if these promoters see me on tour with this person, they'll notice me." But realistically, it doesn't hardly ever work out that way. It's your own ticket value as a headliner. That's what really matters with touring. Every artist has an intrinsic ticket value. If you start getting popular and play a 9-10 PM slot at a 500 cap show for whatever mid headliner, you've essentially used up your potential on an opening slot. And all that value's gone now, when you could have maybe done your own thing, waited a little bit longer, and it actually meant something for you and your career. It's tough. Patience is... you can't teach patience.

Max Pote: You can try.

Perry Davis: You can try, you can show, but you can't. At the end of the day, especially as managers, it's a duality. I will see these things and say, "No, we shouldn't do this." But at the end of the day, it's the artist's decision. If they really want to do something, they say yes. You can't stop 'em. I tell people, "Look, I don't think this is a good idea. If you want to do this, you can. But this is what could come from it." At that point, that's kind of all I can do as a manager. Show you the options and let you make the decision.

Becoming a Music Manager

Finding the Right Opportunity

Max Pote: Steve asks, "How much effort is it for managers to help a new artist getting off the ground? Growing them from zero to one takes a lot of effort with relatively low returns at first. What qualities would make you decide to invest and sign a relatively unknown artist?"

Perry Davis: Yeah, that's a great question. At this stage of my career, I'm not trying to sign relatively unknown artists. Even with Viperactive, he had momentum behind the scenes that made me want to work with him. When I was first starting out, for new managers, it's a good idea to find unknown acts and build with them. You'll learn together how things go. That was 15 years ago. Now there are more opportunities for internships or junior management positions. That's a great way to start because you're with a team that hopefully knows what they're doing, artists who are touring and releasing. You'll learn what it takes to run an artist versus flying by the seat of your pants. Those jobs are few and far between. Most go to people who are connected, friends, already in the industry. It's hard to find those jobs. If you want to get into it without connections, find an artist you can attach yourself to and build with, who has potential. You'll be forced to learn who to talk to, how to deal with an artist, what to do. There are plenty of online resources now too - books, YouTube, webinars. From when I started till now, it's probably easier than ever to get in as a manager. There are more artists, creating more opportunities. Anybody can do it. People think there's a big barrier. That barrier is hard work. If you start out, find a good artist, work hard to break them through, people are gonna know who you are. Once people know who you are, that's all it takes. You've made it at that point. Both ways can be beneficial.

The Challenges of the Role

Max Pote: What's the hardest part about managing artists that nobody talks about?

Perry Davis: You have to be an expert at all kinds of things you're not an expert on. You quickly have to learn who to talk to, how to work releases, social media strategies, how to use them. You gotta be a therapist sometimes. You have to wear so many hats.

Max Pote: The therapist part is so real. The amount of hours I spent crying to my manager at two in the morning.

Perry Davis: You have to be in a position of a lot of responsibility. You have to be willing to meet the call anytime and do your best for your artists, even if it means doing hard work to figure things out. It's part of the job.

Skills for Success

Max Pote: What skills would separate an average manager from a great one?

Perry Davis: Attention to detail is one thing. The more disorganized your manager, the worse it is for you. And then tenacity. You have to be super tenacious. If you don't have that, I think that's the biggest thing. You have to be the amplifier for your clients. You have to be the megaphone saying, "Hey, this guy's cool. What he's got going on is really dope, and you should be paying attention." Some people don't do that. They're quiet, introverted, scared to talk to people and put themselves out there. If you're a new manager without a team, you kind of need to be that type of person, very tenacious, to succeed.

Learning the Business

Max Pote: How did you learn about the business side? Sync licensing, distro deals, all these specific and random things?

Perry Davis: It was tough. I read a lot of books. "Everything You Need to Know About the Music Industry" is a great book. I watched a lot of YouTube videos on other managers and learned from their interviews. Scooter Braun was a big influence early on, had good information on things I needed advice on. Having friends in the industry who've done that stuff, mentors, that's something I had later in my career. Since then it's been great, 'cause I can call people up that have been through a situation I'm going through and ask them how it went. But there's a lot of great stuff online now, a lot of knowledge to be gained if you want to be a manager. A lot more than when I started.

Max Pote: It's funny how that works. Same thing happened to me. I didn't have a real mentor until maybe five or six years in. That's tough. If you can get lucky and find someone...

Perry Davis: Hey, join Futureproof, and we got mentors for days here to help you.

Max Pote: Exactly. You're literally fixing the problem right here. I know. And I feel like half of the reason why I do anything in my life is to help people avoid the mistakes I made. If you can find someone to latch onto that's better at what you want to do than you are and has been in the game, highly recommend pursuing that and keeping those people around.

Perry Davis: Oh, a hundred percent. It's great to have.

Perry Davis: I didn't really have one, like for a long time. I think it's 'cause of the nature of how the industry was when I got started. That's probably the same with you. Dubstep's so young compared to other genres. We were on the first or second wave of it getting popular. It was a rare moment, the birth of the genre and its first exploration into popularity. A lot of avenues in traditional music didn't exist in dubstep when we were starting out. Having mentors, even if we had one, they probably wouldn't have been good. They probably hadn't experienced things we were dealing with. Now there are way more people you can learn from, way more opportunities to have a mentor, just have that knowledge available.

Final Gems of Advice

Max Pote: Any final gems of knowledge for an aspiring music producer? If they want to take the next step and hopefully get the attention of a manager or just level up?

Perry Davis: Man, three things. Work really hard. Know when to say no. And back up your hard drives.

Max Pote: Hey! Oh my God. Every single time. Back up your hard drives! Say it louder, dude!

Perry Davis: You don't wanna have four laptops stolen, like I've had in my life.

Max Pote: Four?

Perry Davis: One from the club, two from my house, then I got my backpack stolen in Australia. Just back, back everything up. Each one of those four times, zero backups. You can buy a terabyte hard drive, they're cheap now. Go get one. Back up your computer once a month. I promise you, when it crashes, you'll never regret it. You'll be so happy that's there.

Max Pote: It's so real. It's one of those things where when it happens, it's the worst thing ever. And then you're like, "Oh my god, I'm actually okay. Everything is fine."

Perry Davis: Which is rare for those situations.

Max Pote: Alright dude. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Perry. You're a legend.

Perry Davis: Bro, thank you for having me. An honor to be the first guest. To see how this series unfolds. Again, thank you so much.

Apply the Industry Insights: Level Up Your Music Career

You've just soaked up some serious knowledge from Futureproof co-founder Max Pote and seasoned music manager Perry Davis. They pulled back the curtain on what it really takes to build a career in music; debunking myths, sharing hard truths, and offering actionable advice.

From understanding the grind behind every success story and the importance of a clear artistic vision, to navigating content creation and knowing when to say 'no' to opportunities, these insights are gold. Perry and Max repeatedly emphasized the power of mentorship and learning from those who have navigated the industry's complexities.

That's precisely the environment we cultivate at Futureproof Music School. Get direct access to industry professionals, receive personalized mentorship, and learn the strategies needed to develop your craft, build your brand, and make smart career moves. Stop guessing and start building with expert guidance.

Ready to apply these lessons and accelerate your journey? Join Futureproof Music School today and get a 7-day free trial.