Now that Taylor Swift has gone from being one of the biggest stars in music to one of the most recognizable names in the world, period, it got us thinking: What happened to the manager who helped her get here?
Swift has had plenty of people who can lay claim to her success, from the executives at Big Machine Records to two major agencies and a sharp promoter to an active publicity network to her own mom and dad. But back in 2007, when we talked to her and her then-manager, Rick Barker, it was Barker who built a business plan that seemed concise, but just really hard to do.
It laid the groundwork for what Swift would become.
When Barker was the West Coast regional rep for Big Machine, he told Swift if she wanted to sell 500,000 albums, she’d need to meet 500,000 people.
“He was the first one to ever say that to me and it sunk in,” she told Pollstar. She played everywhere – from an ACM board meeting to Pollstar's office (or at least tried to) – and did marathon meet and greets long before she held that famous daylong event at Bridgestone Arena.
"One of the things that Taylor is insistent upon is that they’re not rushed," Barker told Pollstar at the time. “You know, they obviously can’t spend five or 10 minutes individually but she never wants to make them feel like it’s a cattle call."
Even then, Swift would sign for nearly four hours after a show was done.
"One time, they shut down the venue and we brought everyone outside,” Barker said.
“I held a flashlight to her face so people’s camera phones would work. There were 300 people lined up. If she starts something, she doesn’t stop until it’s completely finished.
“Basically they leave there with that picture, that autograph, that memory and they share it with everybody that they know. If they have a bad experience with it, they share the same thing.”
Barker quietly became Swift's manager but, within a year after we talked to him, the two parted ways. Over the years, we've heard compliments from industry professionals about him but he didn't seem to reemerge. After contacting several people for information, we had no choice but to type “Rick Barker” into Google to see what came up.
He was the first result: the founder of “Music Industry Blueprint,” an online course in career building for anyone interested in the Music Industry. So we called him.
Anything you'd like to say, right off the bat?
Just that I don't take any credit for Taylor's success. She hasn't changed her strategy from the first day she and I sat in my red Suburban, along with her mom, and started our radio tour in San Diego. She told me,
“I want to be the biggest star in the world.” Her strategy was to go out and meet as many people as she possibly could. She says in the liner notes of her first CD,
“Everything I learned about radio I learned in the back seat of Rick's truck.”
I'm so proud of her for staying true to who she is and staying true to her plan.
There has been discussion here in the office that her mom was her real manager.
In reality Taylor has always been her own manager, and as I had the “title” of manager, I was blessed to be a part of a great team. I can tell you one of the coolest things ever was having Taylor thank me from the stage after winning an award and watching my email and phone light up with people asking if I was really that Rick Barker.
Since Taylor we haven’t really seen an artist authentically connect with and maintain touch with their audience through social media. So now I'm teaching people how to do that and to remember why social media was invented in the first place – as a way for friends to stay connected. It wasn't a place to sell stuff, but that's what happened. The labels realized they could promote to the artists' friends and handed that off to the publicity department. All of a sudden, people ran from MySpace.
The same thing happened at Facebook, and people stopped engaging there also. I am not blaming anyone; it is just we need to spend more time learning psychology and less time digital marketing. All I'm trying to say is,
“OK, artist. Look at the biggest star in the frigging world right now and what does she continue to do? She uses her social media as a way to engage her fans and maintain the trust and friendship she has kept over the years. Learn from that.” But it pains me when they all want to chop her down.
Can you elaborate?
Yeah, everybody likes to think her daddy bought her this or, because they had money, that happened. It's all ********. There's no shortage of daddies with money with daughters who sing. If that's the magic pill, why don't we have a 1,000 Taylor Swifts?
Right. That company – ARK Music Factory – that attracts Rebecca Black and others ...
And that's the thing! If that's the secret, if it's, “Well, she has Scott Borchetta on her team,” then great. Not every artist on Big Machine Records has gone on to Taylor's success. “Oh, well, she had the best players on her record.” Great. Well, those players have played on other people's records, too. So why don't they have Taylor's success? Why? Because they don't have Taylor Swift's work ethic. You cannot teach that. Everybody thought, “Oh, ****. We'll just show up to Nashville with our daughter dressed in a sundress and cowboy boots. That's the secret!” That wasn't the secret.
The secret is Taylor cared so much about her fans and she used her music as a way to do research, then sold that music to her friends. Most other artists record an album, try to sell it to strangers, then wonder why it doesn't sell. That's because people forgot how to build relationships. Not Taylor! She wanted a gold record, so she met 500,000 people. People laughed at her and I in the beginning. Here's this 16-year-old kid and a guy who came from small town radio. But they weren't laughing in the end. Now she's changing the game. I'm so proud of her and I don't take any credit. We both wanted to learn and we taught each other a lot of things. She was amazing to learn from and I'm honored to have been a part of it. She did the work.
If you're interested in what Rick Barker is doing right now, read more here:
http://www.pollstar.com/news_article...source=twitter
