Career Path: Music Venue Manager

From local theatres and music clubs to arts hubs and city arenas, the career potential for successful music venue managers is huge – and as you’d expect, where the role’s potential is extensive so are the responsibilities involved! Then of course, as with every type of event management role, all of those issues which crop up unexpectedly, such as blackouts, sound system failures, and cancellations will require the music venue manager to step in and save the show! So what’s involved and how can you get onto this career path?

The role

The job of a music venue manager broadly involves overseeing the daily operations of a music venue. This might be in a single venue – from a small local theatre to a vast city arena, or may relate to a venue centre – a location made up of several venues, such as City Arts complexes and regional arts centers. The role itself may be defined as music venue manager, but could also be referred to as Arena Manager or Production/Facilities manager, depending on the remit of the venue and of the responsibilities you’re required to fulfill. Speaking of which …

The responsibilities

Now, as with all job descriptions, the responsibilities outlined below are not the only activities and duties required of a music venue manager! However, they do offer a useful insight into some of the fundamental tasks of the role:

• Managing the bookings and facilitating the events themselves;
• Hiring, training and managing staff – including staff supervision and rota management;
• Negotiating with clients wishing to hold events, whether regular clients or promoters of one-off events;
• Negotiating fees – including negotiation of which facilities and services might be included in the agreed price;
• Event preparation – which involves working closely with others in-house, such as the venue’s artistic director, sound team, front-of-house, box-office and maintenance staff;
• Working and negotiating with external colleagues, such as external booking and promotions services, the music, production or sound directors for artistes;
• Organising technical production – including the logistics and technical aspects of running the sets;
• Programming and schedules;
• Looking after clients and artistes – on the day or over the period of a concert run;
• Health and safety – including managing all health and safety aspects of the venue itself and performance and tech-related risk management;
• Promotion – a music venue manager needs to promote simultaneously: both the events being run and the venue itself as a performance hub;
• Social and networking – wider than promotion, this means being a part of what’s happening, within the community and within the industry;
• Account management – this may even involve some aspects of corporate hospitality, depending on the size and profile of the venue (think Manchester or Wembley arenas here to get a sense of the scale that this kind of venue management might run to).

The right person?

Every music event manager has to bring not only enthusiasm and energy to all of those tasks listed above but also capability and efficiency across that whole orchestra of skills which are essential for performing successfully in the role:

• Business understanding – although enthusiasm for music is a bonus, the foundation to successful music venue management is sound business sense – after all, venues need to be popular and successful to be profitable. Desirable business skills may include forecasting, financial reporting, and strategic financial planning – any and all of which may also involve data management, and researching both the competition and concert attendees, in order to ensure the venue’s ongoing appeal and innovation.
• Artistic understanding – the venue may be a concert hall or an indie-music hub, but understanding artistic quality and possibly the requirements and audience of a particular genre (or many genres) may be needed, alongside that sound knowledge of good practice in event management. An extensive network of contacts is also extremely useful here!
• Role understanding – all aspects of the role, from having a clear understanding of any venue-specifics,  such as competition from other venues and how the venue fits into the community, to understanding just what’s involved in performance as well as general event management, can make the difference to your success in the role.
• Marketing skills– to manage the promotional side of the role, strong marketing skills are needed. After all, event managing a music venue doesn’t just involve marketing each event and the venue to get paying audiences coming in, but also marketing the venue to the artists you want to attract – establishing the venue as successful and raising it’s profile so that it’s the place to perform.
• IT and digital skills – from understanding the logistics and risks involved in concert pyrotechnics, to maximising the use of social media for marketing and booking, as well as managing venue –related software for booking and ticketing, getting to grips with industry-related technology is an essential skill.

The route into a role

Working in the music industry is a popular preference, and working in events is also a fast-growing and exciting career choice, so the combination of these two factors makes music venue management a highly competitive area of event management to try to break into. As with many event roles, one vital way to position yourself into the right place, at the right time, is through gaining as much experience as possible. Ideally, you should be aiming to offer elements of all of the following ….

• Direct experience – volunteering at music events is a great way to gain experience in many of the relative aspects of music venue management, such as customer service and promotion. Volunteering as a steward is also a good way to not just get experience of the role, but also find whether it’s something you’d enjoy! It’s also ideal for sussing out what’s required behind the scenes and gaining initial contacts.
• Genre experience – as well as direct experience, seek work experience and voluntary roles in performance-industry related areas, such as theatre management, stage and concert production, box office management and arts event management.
• Managerial experience – think any and all types of venues and gain related experience – whether this is front-of-house, back-of-house, ticketing or clearing up, it all provides relative experience.
• Specific training – such as signing up for an event management course which includes practical opportunities for work experience and placement.

If you can’t find a venue to volunteer at, remember to be persistent. Instead, perhaps offer your services to a charity and put on your own charity event, as a way to get both your experience and your portfolio started! Remember, a mainstay of outstanding professional music venue management is successful performance – if yours is successful, the venue’s will be too! To help you build the confidence to do this, many of our courses offer work experience, volunteering opportunities, and CIM-accreditation so if you want to know more, please ask!