Today’s guest is Maren Brombeiss, A&R and label manager for Last Night on Earth, record label of legendary house music DJ Sasha – a long-time personal favorite of mine since childhood.
She’s also an artist manager of Weval, JP Enfant, and Sasha himself. I’m a religious listener to LNOE, so I’m truly honored to have her here to discuss both her work and how she started her career on the management side of music.
Ep. 20 – Maren Brombeiss Show Highlights
3:42 – “I am involved in the A&R process and strategy – release strategy around records coming together.”
4:02 – “But then there’s also the not-so-fun stuff, which is a lot of the administration, royalties, publishing, budgeting, P&Ls. There’s a whole element of merchandise, marketing, social media, PR (when we’re going through campaigns). So there’s a lot of different components.”
6:50 – “I think, in order to be a manager, you also have to be somewhat creative, because you have to work on the artist’s vision, with your artist… So it’s just creative in a different sense, I would say.”
12:54 – “I was always writing to dance music. I wrote my dissertation – my master’s thesis – about dance music. And my bachelor’s thesis was actually about how marketing and advertising methods in the electronic music scene have changed.”
17:40 – “I was living in London for such a long time and it was like ‘Let’s go to a festival in Amsterdam on the weekend, let’s take the train to Paris, or let’s go to Ibiza next week.’ The flights are 50 pounds. You can just jump around.”
20:49 – “I’m not going to sugar coat it. It’s definitely not great at the moment. It’s also not great for managers. We work on commission. So it’s tough times all around, but honestly, Ross, I don’t know – we’re somehow just managing to make it work.”
31:25 – “You have to have good communication skills, and you have to like to socialize, because a lot of it is about networking and knowing people.”
36:40 – “If an artist ever said to me ‘Maren I need a month off’, then I wouldn’t be putting shows in the diary. And you have to be respectful of that. At the end of the day, we’re all people and this is a job.”
44:47 – “You got to hustle. You just go after what you want… You just have to be places. Be places, meet people. And, you know, don’t be afraid to ask – ask for favors like ‘can you introduce me to this person?’ ‘Can you help me with this?’ That’s how I got my first job at Sony.”
49:45 – “I couldn’t really imagine ever going back to being employed. If you go into a big corporate job, yeah you might have a bigger paycheck, but also, what is success for you? For me success is having this freedom that I have.”
55:11 – “That’s what I’ve done all my life – just following what makes me happy. Because if you end up sitting in a position that you’re not happy and self-fulfilled, that’s going to impact your well-being.”