Storytelling in the creative and cultural industries

Moral Music Management: Ethical Decision-Making After Avicii

“…Managers can be considered the Chief Operating Officer of the Artists global business". This is analogous to other definitions such as 'artist manager' (Morrow, 2006(Morrow, , 2013(Morrow, , 2018 but is distinct from broader definitions of music management, which might include the management of 'music' on behalf of a label or publisher, and so on.…”

“…Respondents weighed this against the illegality of the action. It was suggested that if the tour was extremely important to the musician's career this could potentially override concerns held regarding the potential illegality of the accused action, supporting ideas from Morrow (2018) regarding 'moral flexibility' among music managers.…”

“…The role can be extremely varied in how much or how little the manager chooses to handle for the musician, and this makes each musician-manager relationship 'unique and personal' (Anderton et al, 2013: 185). It is a role rooted in the management of risk, uncertainty and predicated on 'agility' (see Morrow, 2018 for perhaps the most detailed academic conceptualisation of the role).…”

“…There is a small body of academic literature interrogating the regulation of music management from a legal perspective (Hertz, 1988;Gilenson, 1990;O'Brien, 1992), but rather less considering this from an ethical or moral perspective. The work of Morrow (2013Morrow ( , 2018 has been a notable exception in this field, exploring what he has described, drawing on the work of Gino and Ariely (2012), as 'moral flexibility' (ibid, 2018: 95), which he suggests is part of music management. By this, he refers to the ability to justify potentially illegal, or at least unethical decisions, within a working environment which is largely free of formal regulation, and within which personal traits such as creative decision-making and openness can be seen to correlate with dishonesty.…”