What can the top of the charts in the world’s biggest music market tell us about management? Michael Murphy’s new book, Pop Music Management: Lessons from the Managers of Number One Albums, analyses pop music successes to understand the role of managers and management. It illuminates the key trends in music management and how these have changed significantly in the last 60 years. This book features insights into equality, diversity and inclusion, and highlights how pop music management has contributed to consolidation in the global music industry.

Murphy examines the management behind acts, including Taylor Swift, the Beatles, K-pop icons, hip-hop pioneers, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Carole King and many others. By providing clear and concise examples of the management behind Number One albums in the US charts, the book invites the reader not only to think about real-world management but also to consider getting involved with management themselves. Here, he shares an excerpt from the book, looking at the role of women in the industry:

FROM THE INCEPTION of the Billboard charts on 17 August 1963, all the way up to 13 January 1973, every Number One album in the US had a male manager. That’s an exclusive men’s club for 490 weeks.

Statistically, for that time, women managers made up zero per cent. And the statistics are stark. But change did arrive. On March 24, 1973, the Billboard Album Chart was 500 weeks old.

During that time, women managers had been Number One for a total of five weeks. That’s one per cent. Although it was a revolutionary moment, you wouldn’t know that from music history. It was significant. But at the time, it wasn’t really acknowledged.

And it was quickly forgotten.

The business author, Joan Magretta, in her clear yet comprehensive book, What Management Is (2013), describes an “old feminist joke” (Magretta 2013, 217). It’s about two of Hollywood’s most glamorous film stars. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers graced movie screens with their artistry in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet Fred was more celebrated despite the fact that Ginger matched his moves while dancing backwards and in high heels.

She had to achieve at a higher level, yet got less acclaim. But women face more than physical demands. They often face pressures, or downright hostility, in any industry where the culture is macho or has evolved to suit the vision of men. It’s not difficult to find examples of this type of culture in the music industry. And this might help to explain the historical lack of female representation in the industry.

Women in the music industry

A lot of research has been done on gender equality in the music industry. The findings are conclusive. Women are underrepresented; they generally exist at the margins. Catherine Strong and Sarah Raine (2021) looked at the academic work documenting music industry roles. For people who identify as women, they found that, compared with men, on average, they:

• earn fewer royalties for their music works
• get played less on radio
• are under-represented in the charts
• are de-emphasised on Spotify playlists
• have shorter careers
• are rare in key decision-making positions. (Strong and Raine 2021, 1)

They cite the 2019 report written by Smith, Choueiti and Pieper. This analysed the Top 100 singles in the US for the years 2012–2017. Only 22 per cent of the artists were women, only 12 per cent of the songwriters were women, and only 2, yes 2!, per cent of the record producers were women.

It’s no surprise that the singer, guitarist and academic, Helen Reddington, has argued that rock music has been “the slowest of all recent cultural phenomena to incorporate the female creative producer” (Reddington 2012, 2). The absence of women is a problem in itself. But there’s also a knock-on effect. Women lack role models to look up to and to be inspired by.

Michael Murphy. Josephine Scott Josephine Scott

I would argue, the very idea of the swinging ‘60s was made possible by the artistic vision of Mary Quant. Capable female entrepreneurs formed part of the 1960s music industry. For example, Sally Henderson managed the Jabberwock venue in Berkeley and the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo. Both of these California venues helped stimulate and showcase emerging talent.

By the end of 1971 she was listed in the annual Billboard directory as both the booking agent and the co-manager of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Even before this, in 1966, while she was just 20 years old, Gail Colson, along with another woman, Jennifer Ashley, was managing The Rockin’ Vickers in London. The band included Lemmy Kilmister, who later fronted the uber-cool metal band, Motörhead.

Colson subsequently became one of the leading managers of her generation with her high-selling client, Peter Gabriel. 1973 was the year when the charts finally hosted a Number One female manager. It was a big year for big rock acts. And it was a pretty good year for pop icons, too. Artists with Number One hits included The Beatles, The Stones, Elvis, The Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Jethro Tull, Chicago and Elton John. These male-fronted acts, with their male managers, dominated the charts. The chart competition was intense. But it was also the year when the male management monopoly was finally broken.

Barriers broken

When Carly Simon and her manager, Arlyne Rothberg, reached Number One with No Secrets, suddenly a major barrier had been broken. Apart from Carly Simon, Diana Ross, backed by the mighty Motown machine, was the only other female Number One act in 1973. But these women were doing serious business. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon only lasted a week at Number One. Carly Simon’s No Secrets was there for five weeks.

Singer-songwriter Carly Simon and Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger in 1971. Alamy Alamy

Carly Simon brought a poetic eloquence and a warm voice to the top of the US singles charts with songs including “You’re So Vain”, “Nobody Does It Better” and “You Belong to Me”. She doesn’t write much about her manager in her autobiography. But the words that the singer-songwriter uses speak volumes: “She took me on as her client and protected me. For 14 years, I had the best”. At the time of her commercial breakthrough, she described her feelings about her manager:

Arlyne is amazing. She’s the best manager and the best friend that anyone could have. She’s not out to make money with me at all. She really believed in my talent and wanted me to do whatever I could in the most comfortable and best circumstances available. I don’t think a man would be able to do that.

As a young female singer, Carly Simon had good reasons to be wary of men in positions of power in the music industry. When she was offered a recording session with a well-known producer, she had to refuse his sexual advances by adopting what she remembered as an…

Audacious look, as if to say, If you’re the kind of person who takes inordinate pleasure from insulting women, well, distance yourself, asshole.

The recording session had been arranged by the management company of Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan. Simon recalled Grossman’s unsubtle advances in the studio, too. He allegedly told her, “Carly – when is it going to be our time? When are you and I going to get it on? . . . You know, you’re a nine out of a perfect ten”.

The stories of key figures in any industry don’t get told unless they are viewed as important. Any history has an inbuilt bias. The stories that are left out are often more important than the stories that are told over and over. Some of the most shocking absences from the history of the music industry are the stories of pioneering, pivotal women.

Rothberg’s impact

The career and achievements of Arlyne Rothberg are significant. Despite this, I couldn’t find a comprehensive account of them anywhere. So I’ve pieced her story together from newspaper articles that mention her. What emerges is a fascinating life. This also provides an insight into the music world and wider culture of the US in the 1960s and 1970s when pop music became more professionalised.

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Janice Ian, musician, during an interview in 1975. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

In the early 1960s, an article in the Chicago Tribune alerted readers to a sale of antiques in a prestigious local hotel, the Palmer House. To draw attention to the event, the newspaper included a photograph of a young lady, Arlyne Rothberg, sitting on a lion from an antique merry-go-round. Her style is typically 1950s; she wears a string of pearls and has well-coiffed hair. At the time, she was the “assistant press chief” for the hotel and throughout her career, she proved to be skilful at presentation, publicity and understanding what the public wanted.

By 1962, she was responsible for the press and publicity for Chicago’s Mister Kelly’s and London House nightclubs (Lyon 1962, 13). Rothberg was now firmly in the entertainment business, and it’s notable that Mister Kelly’s showcased both stand-up comedy and music acts. Women were an increasing presence in press relations for Chicago’s nightclubs. As one local journalist noted, “most of our town’s top night spots now have gal press agents”.

But they were written about in a different way than male professionals. It was almost as if they were expected to be grateful for attention and a job. To the male reporter, all of “em [are] little darlings. . . . Take a bow, gals” (Lyon 1962, 22). Rothberg never got to take a properly respected and well earned public bow. She was too busy representing her clients and guiding their careers. She created an environment where they could make uncompromised work.

The pop music industry held women managers back for decades but eventually they broke through and guided a number of artists to the top of the US charts. It is notable that the first women managers who reached Number One represented female acts: Carly Simon, Janis Ian, Donna Summer and the Go-Go’s.

The Queen of Disco, Donna Summer. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Here’s a great “what if”. What if women had been well represented at the upper level of the music industry from the start? Would things have been better? Would we have a fairer, kinder and more representative industry? Would our pop stars and icons be different? Did the fact that the Number One managers were part of a “boys club” have an effect on the music we heard? We’ll never know. But it’s still worthwhile considering.

What we do know is that women were absent from the list of Number One managers for a long time. And that makes it important, and exciting, to discover something about the women who did break into the formerly exclusive boys’ club.

Who were they? Where did they come from? What was their approach to management?

And the more you look for evidence of their achievements, the more you realise that history has neglected them. It’s time to put them back where they belong.

Dr Michael Murphy is a lecturer in the Department of Humanities and Arts Management, Entrepreneurship at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin. He specialises in the areas of Music Industry, Sociology, Management and Communications. His new book, Pop Music Management: Lessons from the Managers of Number One Albums, is out now.