Music entrepreneurs and export readiness

This chapter examines the music export activities from the artist-manager’s perspectives, and their roles in moving towards export readiness. All managers are music entrepreneurs and do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to negotiations, deals and seeking out opportunities. More than 70% of artists/self-managed artists and 50% of artist managers identified that family/peer financial support was important in realising their music export activities. Before focusing on music artist managers as entrepreneurs, the general notion of music entrepreneurship is discussed as it is applicable to both music artist managers, self-managed music artists and other music industry workers operating as exporters. One interesting artist to consider in relation to how combinations of industry and state support can be utilised to harness international opportunities is the Melbourne-based singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett. The chapter provides a window into the activities of music exporters based upon the Export Strategies survey conducted in 2018.