Music Publicists

My most recent class at Full Sail University has been teaching me about the importance of artist managers. Artist managers handle the business side of whatever industry they happen to be working in. For example, artist managers can work in fields such as music, literature, or film. In class, we recently watched a video featuring Marc Oswald, the music manager of many successful artists such as Gretchen Wilson and Cowboy Troy.

I love this concept of music management given by Oswald. You can see from the video that public relations is included as one of the spokes of the wheel. For the purpose of this blog post, I thought it would be interesting to explore the duties of public relations practitioners in the music industry, or music publicists. Any good public relations practitioner knows that his or her duty is to act as liaison between their client and the media or press. Specifically, music publicists take care of media relations for a music group or musician and must work directly with the artist’s management to uphold their image.


Just like the music manager, the publicist must wear many hats since they handle all areas of the artist’s public image. For example, a music publicist might oversee an interview with a talk show host or media representative. Prior to the interview they make sure that the topics to be covered are appropriate. Additionally, they may work with marketing to make sure that the messages communicated are an asset with the artist’s image.


Today, the role of music publicist is changing. Like with many careers, the Internet has greatly affected the way that public relations practitioners in all fields work. Social media, especially, has greatly changed a publicist’s duties. Artists can now talk directly to their fans and the media through social media channels. For example, every time Lady Gaga tweets to one of her 25,240,891 followers, she is sending a message to both them and the press.

Many people would think that this might make a music publicist’s job easier, but often times it can turn into a public relations disaster when artists fail to contact their publicist prior to posting. When a post does go awry music publicists usually face their biggest challenges. Damage control then becomes their highest priority. Whether a music publicist is writing a press release for an artist’s newest concert tour or cleaning up scandal, they must work directly with the artist's management in order to maintain their overall image in a favorable way.