Artist and Manager Awards - the winners

The fifth edition of the Artist and Manager Awards, jointly presented by the Music Managers Forum (MMF) and Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), saw South London rapper Loyle Carner named best emerging live act at the ceremony held at the Troxy in East London. Carner took home the Dice live award, which recognises the best up-and-coming live act in the UK and Republic of Ireland, chosen by a panel of 100 promoters, venues, journalists and broadcasters. Previous winners include Wolf Alice and Little Simz. Other winners included Peter Rudge (The Who, The Rolling Stones, Duran Duran), who was presented with the Peter Grant award by agent and Isle of Wight Festival promoter John Giddings in recognition of his more than four decades in management; Adele manager Jonathan Dickins, who won the artist award; Zita McHugh, who collected the writer/producer manager of the year gong; Years and Years were named best breakthrough artist, Stormzy’s manager, Tobe Unwuka, was recognised as breakthrough manager and the 1975 won artist of the year. IE Music’s David Enthoven (Tyrannosaurus Rex, King Crimson, Roxy Music and, latterly and most recently Robbie Williams) was posthumously awarded the industry champion prize, while Young Turks founder Caius Pawson was given the entrepreneur award.

MMF and FAC call for more action on term extension

The Music Managers Forum (MMF)  and the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) have called for an artist-centric approach to copyright term extension when it's implementation is considered in the United Kingdom. The two trade bodies, representing managers and artists respectively, said that while labels will benefit hugely from the upcoming extension of the sound recording copyright term from 50 to 70 years, and session musicians will receive tangible benefits too, the longer copyright term offers a "mixed bag" to featured artists, many of whom are in long term contractual relationships paying poor royalties - and are sometimes unrecouped despite significant sales. The  MMF and FAC had hoped that when the UK Intellectual Property Office considered requirements in the European Directive for some artist-centric rules to be included as part of term extension, they might propose giving artists the right to renegotiate record contracts at 50 years. That is not part of the IPO's current consultation on term extension, though a 'use it or lose it' clause and 'clean slate' provision are, both of which MMF/FAC welcomed. Though they also called for a standard minimum artist royalty to be introduced at the 50 year point.

Artists join festival's anti-touting campaign

The board of the Featured Artists Coalition have all put their names to the Fair Ticketing Charter, penned by the Association Of Independent Festivals earlier this year, which sees its signatories officially criticise the secondary ticketing market, pledge to do what they can to ensure tickets to events they are involved in get to genuine fans at face value, support in principle legislation to curtail the ticket touting sector, and call on fans to boycott resale sites.

FAC's endorsement of the Charter means fourteen more artists are now signed up, including Sandie Shaw, Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Mark Kelly (Marillion), Hal Ritson (The Young Punx), Crispin Hunt, Annie Lennox, Rumer, Lucy Pullin (The Fire Escapes), Chris Difford (Squeeze), Howard Jones, Fran Healy (Travis), Dave Rowntree (Blur), Kate Nash and Master Shortie.

Artist & Manager Awards 2012

It was the second running of the revamped Artist & Manager Awards at the Troxy in East London last night (27th November), the annual awards bash staged by the Music Managers Forum and the Featured Artists Coalition. Kylie Minogue presented the Peter Grant Award to her long term manager Terry Blamey saying "Thank you for helping a 19 year old girl become a woman and an artist and take on the world." And the winners are:

Breakthrough Manager: Owain Davies (Ben Howard)
Breakthrough Artist: Madeon

Manager Of The Year: Sam Eldridge (Plan B, Tribes)
Artist Of The Year: Plan B

Artist Award: Pale Seas

Pioneer Award: Amanda Palmer
Industry Champion: Zane Lowe
Peter Grant Award: Terry Blamey (Kylie Minogue)