Manager Spotlight offers a small insight into the heads of incredible managers. This week in the spotlight is Tony Garvey // Red Light Management

How long have you worked in Management? 

15 years.

Who do you manage now?

AC Slater, Shift K3Y, Chris Lorenzo, Joy Club, Nathan C, Aazar, Turno, Taiki Nulight, Anti Up, Jack Beats, Cause&Affect, Arctic Lake, Akiro, Cashio

Where did you find your first client and what inspired you to take them on?

At the time me and my business partner Marc Thomas were running a Music Promotion and Music Marketing company called Go Music Promo, most of our business was consultancy and Artist strategy for Major Labels. Part of this was commissioning remixers to break certain Artist in to new areas/scenes, we quickly noticed a lot of the DJ/Producer/Artists we were commissioning to do remixes were unmanaged and thus started working with them in that capacity. It was their ability to work very quickly on turning round a remix or production but also being able to exploit their work through their own touring – so promotion, production and touring were the things we specialised in very early on. One of our first clients for management was an Artist called Borgore, this was right at the start of the Dubstep scene, he was an Israeli Producer based in Tel Aviv. We took care of his bookings initially bringing him to Europe and the US and very quickly grew his Fanbase who became very fanatical, from there we started a label ‘Buygore’ together which in turn brought in new talent which we were able to develop through the label and in turn under management. Shift K3Y was one of those artist back in 2012 and he remains our longest Managed client.

What’s a good/bad day at work look like for you? 

A good day at work is concluding a project, deal or release that we’ve been working on for some time, everything is a team effort and when it all finally falls in to place it’s very rewarding for everyone involved for their creativity and vision and reminds us how lucky we are to work in this business, to actually make a difference.

A bad day is dealing with unnecessarily difficult business, usually with unreasonable or inexperienced managers, thankfully this happens rarely, we thrive on challenges and have built up a very good relationship and reciprocated respect amongst many areas of the industry from Mangers, Labels, Radio, Media etc so a bad day doesn’t happen too often.

What has been the highlight of your management career to date?

That’s tough because we work with quite a few clients and each give us their own moments that we are proud to play a key part in and that ranges from a chart success, an award or a tour. To be honest the highlight in all this is still being able to contribute so much to brand new fledgling careers alongside remaining conceptual and forward thinking with long standing clients.

What do you think are the big challenges for a manager in 2020?

With so much music in the market place and so much hitting streaming services every week, the challenge is to get noticed both internally by music teams and by listeners at the front end, particularly with brand new artists that don’t necessarily have an existing fanbase to draw on instant engagement – and quite often no significant budgets to build a team to create the right story. In amongst all the useful insights, data and tools it still remains a challenge. The sheer volume and choice and the window to get those viewed all takes a number of factors to fall in place.

What music are you currently listening to?

Everything from Drama to Karsten Pflum to Billy Lockett to TSHA to Roy Wood to Tokimonsta. From our own camp there is some pretty immense new music coming this which Im already hooked on whilst working on the projects.