Expertise
What the job actually involves, stated plainly.
Artist management is a word that covers wildly different amounts of work. Here is what each part means in practice, and where the difficult decisions sit.
Artist Management
Representation, planning and the unglamorous coordination of everyone an artist depends on. Labels, publishers, promoters, producers, stylists, lawyers, broadcasters. The manager's real function is to hold the whole picture so the artist does not have to, and to make sure the person making creative decisions is not also the person chasing an unpaid invoice at midnight.
In practice that means release planning, budget discipline, negotiation, calendar control, and saying no to roughly nine things for every one that gets a yes. Most of the value in a management relationship is in what does not happen.
Artist Development
The slow part. Working out who the artist actually is, as opposed to who they think the market wants them to be, and then building repertoire, performance and visual language around that answer. It covers vocal and stage coaching, song selection, writing-room matching, arrangement decisions and the visual direction that has to agree with the music rather than decorate it.
This is the stage that gets cut when a deadline appears, and it is the stage whose absence shows on stage two years later. Tamir's background as a music director for television is unusually useful here, because it forces the question every audience asks without articulating it: what is this person actually like, and why should I care in the next ninety seconds.
Music Direction & Songwriting
Music direction for television and live formats means being responsible for what the audience hears: song choice, key, arrangement, band, running order, and the judgement call about whether a performance is ready. Tamir has done this for Israeli national television at Channel 13 and the Educational Channel 23, and earlier as music director and casting consultant on X Factor Israel and musical advisor on Israel's Got Talent.
On the writing side: lyrics and topline work for artists including Miri Mesika and Shimon Buskila, film composition for an international anthology project, and cross-language lyric adaptation, including the French versions connected with two Eurovision projects. Adapting a lyric into another language is not translation. The meaning has to survive a different set of stresses, vowels and cultural reflexes, and singers notice immediately when it has not.
International Positioning
Choosing markets is a strategic decision that most artists make by accident. Germany, Austria and Switzerland behave differently from France, which behaves differently again from the Nordics. Language, radio formats, festival calendars, streaming behaviour and what an audience will forgive all vary, and an artist has roughly one credible entry per market.
The work is deciding which market to spend that entry on, building the relationships in advance rather than the week of release, and preparing material that reads as native rather than imported. That is exactly the problem the current focus on the German-speaking market is aimed at.
Working together
Three shapes an engagement usually takes.
Full management
Long term representation. Strategy, release planning, negotiation, team building and day to day decisions. A small roster by design, because the alternative is doing it badly.
Project and campaign work
A defined objective with a defined end. A national selection, a festival campaign, an album cycle, a market entry. Useful when an artist already has a manager and needs a specific piece of expertise.
Songwriting and creative direction
Writing, co-writing, lyric adaptation across languages, song selection and arrangement direction, either alongside a management relationship or on its own.
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Worth a conversation?
Enquiries from artists, labels, publishers, broadcasters and festivals are welcome, in English, Hebrew or French.