BMG PRODUCTION MUSIC LAUNCHED IN CANADA, WITH ANNA ANDRYCH AND MATT CANSICK AT THE HELM. MARATHON ARTISTS’ JAIMIE HODGSON FORMED ARTIST MANAGEMENT FIRMA
MY THOMSON HAD JUST RETURNED
to London from her annual trip to India,
only to find Heathrow Airport nearly
empty as all nonessential travel in
England was shutting down due to the coronavirus.
“I had no idea what was going on until I got home
and was just like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” says Thomson,
45, the founder and, until February, CEO of manage-
ment firm ATM Artists. “I’m watching all these
people panic-buy toilet rolls, and you’re just like,
‘My God, do I have enough toilet rolls? Do I feed my
dog before I feed me?’ ”
As reality sank in, Thomson realized she needed
to do something to help her peers whose livelihoods
would be besieged by the pandemic. In just five
days, the former manager and marketer adapted thecurriculum of a music business class she had taught
in London in 2018 into a book called Artist Manage-
ment & Marketing: A Beginners Guide, which she will
soon publish for free online in order to help aspiring
managers during this period of isolation.
Thomson has plenty of experience to draw upon.
During her 20-plus-year career, she has worked
with DJ Snake, Kanye West and, most famously,
Swedish House Mafia, whom she shepherded to
global success and headlining slots at Madison
Square Garden, Coachella and Ultra Music Festival.
Thomson will also reboot her original class as a
free online seminar for interested youth looking to
learn from one of the most successful managers in
the business.
Teaching is just part of Thomson’s next act. InSeptember, she plans to launch a new company to
develop software that will help artists organize their
catalogs as a clear portfolio with asset values and
royalty information in one place, at a time when
streaming’s ubiquity has led to people earning royal-
ties from the streams of old songs. “To me, manage-
ment now is 50% artists and 50% artists’ portfolios,”
she says. “Streaming changed music from ‘Is my CD
still in Tower Records, so I might be owed two
bucks?’ to ‘I now have a retirement plan that I’m
going to leave to my kids.’ And who is going to look
after those assets for them?”How did you learn to become a manager when
you started out?
At first, I was a promoter — I used to run raves in the
middle of England — and by the time I was 21, Min-
istry of Sound asked me to run their DJ management
company. I had literally no idea what I was doing.
Then I started my own company. How you teach
yourself to be a manager is, honestly, half instinct and
half learning from others around you and from your
mistakes. Because you also can’t do something new
unless you’re ready to make the mistake that comesThomson photographed
March 20 at her home
office in Alveston,
Warwickshire, England.
FROM THE DESK OFAMY THOMSON
Manager and Author,
Artist Management & Marketing: A Beginners GuideBY DAN RYS • PHOTOGRAPHED BY RIEKO RIDLEY22 BILLBOARD • MARCH 28, 20207market_ftdo_lo [P]_27836096.indd 22 3/25/20 4:54 PM