Career Spotlight: Becoming a Touring Manager

While many dream of touring the world as a rock star, one often overlooked way to enter the music industry is as an artist tour manager. Being a tour manager means taking charge of all business aspects of a tour to help musicians get their songs out to the world. They are the centralized source of information in resolving logistical problems and ensuring even the smallest details are executed to perfection.

It means also, making sure a band gets from point A to B, taking care of finances and services so that the artist can focus on delivering the best show. It requires management and organizational skills, negotiation, budgeting, communication, time and crisis management. Things rarely go exactly as planned but maintaining a cool demeanor, planning ahead help to minimize unforeseen difficulties.

There is a significant difference in job description depending on the size of the tour and budget. On small indie tours, the tour manager may also be the band manager, driver, or even a band member or friend from audio school, doing whatever comes up. Big budget tours often have a team in place with defined responsibilities for the manager, focusing more on making sure that others are doing their jobs and everything is on schedule.

While precise job duties will vary, tour managers travel with the band, overseeing intercity and overnight travel arrangements, supervising setup and loading operations, and even more. The tour manager is a key disseminator of information, including contractual obligations and the limitations of space in optimizing stage plans.

Tour managers often have a background in audio engineering courses with significant experience in touring. To get started in the profession, a passion for music certainly helps, with other music industry work or experience in event management school valuable for developing skills and networking contacts.