We were lucky to catch up with Alex Hallerman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I think “risk” best describes the role of a manager in the music business, especially those who are independent with no company backing other than their own. Time is currency, and we have to spend it wisely. When taking on a new client, or even evaluating relationships with current clients, I have to weigh decisions between passion, faith, and the data. Risk versus reward is real and there’s only so much time in a day for one person to work on multiple acts/producers. Management for me has been one of the biggest yet most rewarding risks I’ve taken in a professional career because it’s allowed me to put my faith into people whom I’m passionate about, while also [sometimes] seeing the reward via continuous growth, on the other side. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out, and that’s okay, it comes with the territory. But when it does work out, it’s an exhilarating and incredibly fulfilling journey that I get to partake in with insanely talented people. I love it, but this risk isn’t for everyone.

Alex, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m 30 years old and I’m going on my 5th year of management in the music industry. My brother who’s a producer (whom I also manage today), sent me an artist back in early 2019 that he found on a random Twitch channel & who shared a SoundCloud link in the chat. I reached out to that artist letting them know I was interested in getting into management and what I was about. We worked together for 9 months and the rest was history (he signed a deal and we split up, which can be common). I’ve kinda just went from each opportunity to the next, and today I have a roster with artists, producers, writers, and engineers alike but it all really started with the artist thing, I think that’s my favorite part (but of course love the whole team!). I met gavn! in late 2019 and had him fly down to LA where he recorded “crazy”, and we released it a year later after I posted my first video on TikTok which went viral. I think the rest was actually history from then on actually. Each experience prior to that and since that has taught me a lot about myself, whom I want to be as a manager, and how I can better aid my clients day by day because it really is day by day. A lot of people treat this as race and burnout is real. Sustainability is where I try to stay and push on my clients because while clout is fun and exciting, it’s also fleeting. After your first viral TT and every label/manager/publsiher in town wants to meet or take you to dinner, it sort of gets old. I always try to just focus on the music, the client’s goals (sometimes they have their own , and sometimes I help them figure that out), and put that out to as many people as possible. At the end of the day, it’s the people who listen to music and the fans who keep this flame lit, and so if you can service that at it’s core, you can keep pushing. We just want to make amazing music and have it resonate.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I love this one and I probably won’t shut up about it because I’m not really afraid anymore. The way the music business currently stands (and probably has stood before my time) is, it’s absolutely rigged and we are playing a zero-sum game. To make it digestible, the major labels and DSPs are in bed with each other, and while I’m not entirely positive on where the leverage stands because I’m not privy to the licensing deals between them, I have a feeling the three major music groups are in control of the entire landscape, and Spotify/other DSPs alike are just at their whim. Independent artists are suffering at the behest of wealth distribution via major labels in the music business (so are publishers but that’s an entirely different conversation with similar principles). We need the payment model (currently pro-rata) to change to a more sustainable model for artists like the ones I manage, smaller and bigger. The model should be the user-centric one in my opinion, because it allows for consumer money (what is paid to streaming platforms every month) to be allocated exactly to the artists they choose to listen to, and not a pie of money like it currently is that is split up amongst who streams the most. If I open Spotify every month and only listen to Artist A, and only Artist A, no matter how many streams Artist A gets, my money shouldn’t be going towards Artist B, C, D, E, etc. on and on and on. But as it currently stands, most of the wealth is split amongst bad actors (streaming fraud) and the major labels, even though independents make up a huge portion of the market today. Majors have a part in this business and aren’t going anywhere, but there needs to be a fair payment model and I just don’t know if that’s going to happen with how the platforms are in bed with the labels who license the highest streaming catalogs to them (Drake, Taylor, The Weeknd, Ariana etc.). And with the news of UMG/Deezer employing an “artist-centric” model in France, that sets a scary tone for the future as that model is similar to YouTube, where there is a threshold to earn these 2x/4x amounts per stream, and who get’s to decide who is a “professional artist”? The labels? To fight streaming fraud? I think there are probably other ways to fight streaming faurd besides setting a bar for who can earn royalties at what rate but I digress.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Just being vulnerable, real, and putting your best self out there on these shortform platforms like TT/IG, for those pursuing artistry. The platforms are continuously evolving and TT today is very different than TT in 2019/2020/even 2021. It’s a value platform and its changed in how we use it and the information that is being provided on it. That coupled with the explosiveness of it’s reach and how many people use it today, you really need to be “unique” to stand out. I think vulnerability and authenticity wins in that regard because the entertainment business is so finicky and fabricated. When you can be real, with real people who are going through real life events and living through real life emotions every day, especially in this economy, you can capture attention. Just be yourself.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/1to1.mgmt
• Other: instagram.com/alxhllrmn