About

Since its inception in 1992, the MMF has worked hard to educate, inform and represent UK managers as well as offering a network through which managers can share experiences, opportunities and information.

Our membership stands at over 1400 managers based in the UK with global businesses and a wider network of over 2700 managers in the USA.

Our core purpose is to:

• Educate: We support managers’ continuous professional development within an evolving music industry.
• Innovate: We create and highlight opportunities to develop and grow artist businesses.
• Advocate: We provide a collective voice and leadership to affect change for a transparent and fairer music industry for artists and their fans.

The MMF engages, advises and lobbies industry associates and wider industry on issues that are relevant to managers. We continue to recruit members and grow our network so we are truly representative of the wider management community.

The MMF is a founding member of UK Music, the European Music Managers Alliance (EMMA), the Council of Music Makers (CMM) and Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment (LIVE).

In 2022 we published the Essentials of Music Management book.

We also co-host the annual Artist and Manager Awards with the Featured Artists Coalition.

The top priorities of MMF are:

Educating the world on the role of the music manager: help people understand the increasingly important role of the manager, how it is changing and what it is we do.

Professional development: supporting our members in developing their knowledge and skills as music managers through formal courses and more focused workshops and seminars

Investment into Music Industry: encourage more investment into manager and artists’ businesses, including our Accelerator For Music Managers Programme, our ReBuild Fund for COVID-19 support, and artist investment opportunities such as labels, distributors, Help Musicians UK, PRS for Music, SME funding and Arts Council grants.

Representation: Campaigning on behalf of our members to affect change. Our Campaigns include:

Streaming – Our report Dissecting the Digital Dollar documents how streaming services are licensed by the music industry, why they are licensed that way and to inform debate around the evolving streaming sector. We actively encourage the industry to be transparent and ask for fair, industry wide equitable payments for artists.

Secondary Ticketing – The MMF were founder members of and support the FanFair Alliance, a campaign uniting fans, music businesses and artist against online ticket touting.

Mental Health – support managers in taking care of their own mental health and that of their artists signposting to professional advice as appropriate. We have recently re-published the Music Manager’s Guide to Mental Health and produced a report on digital burnout.

Collective Digital Licensing – hold those who collect artist and songwriters royalties to account, explore solutions to the data challenge to encourage innovation and growth.

Equality & Diversity Campaigns – we work with organisations that celebrate equality and diversity within the music industry, including Love Music Hate Racism and Pride in Music. We hold regular open conversation sessions about racism and other forms of discrimination in the industry through our MMF Unite project with Nadu Placca, The Zoo XYZ, and are a strategic partner of PiPA (Parents and Carers in Performing Arts), who campaign to enable and empower parents, carers and employers to achieve sustainable change in attitudes and practices in order to attract, support and retain a more diverse and flexible workforce.