I hope my friends in A&R do not take offense. I'm sure they wonder what it is that I do. Nevertheless, I have heard many artist managers ask (rhetorically and cynically) “What do the A&R people do these days?” In my observation they still have jobs to do – but maybe it just isn’t what it used to be. It used to be that when I was younger and playing in bands that A&R were thought to be the people who might stop in at one of our gigs and offer us a big record deal. As time went on and I became less naive, I learned that A&R might indeed stop by the gig – but only after hearing about the band in advance and most likely listening to a demo (or if a solo artist with connections, acoustically in their offices). It used to be that the A&R person looked for the raw talent, signed the artist and found the songs for them to record. In my experience today, while finding songs is still a function of A&R, an artist who doesn’t come to the table with a few hit songs written by them or someone closely allied with the artist, their chance of getting signed is even less than slim (slim being the norm). And of course A&R used to help "develop" the artist – perhaps together with an ancient label department known as “Artist Development”. You might want to read Ritch Esra’s guest post on this subject, if only to lend some credibility to my observations.
While I have pretty much gotten out of the record deal shopping business, I still sometimes give advice on the process. And today I tell the artist that to improve their chances they should get out there and do it! By that I mean perform, record your own EP or Albums, sell them, get a fan club mailing list. In short, get in the music business – and thengo to the label not only with a demo and a pretty picture, but also with facts and SoundScan data in hand. Too many artists come to me and hope that I will do it all for them. It doesn’t work that way – at least not most of the time these days. Artists: Go to work and be in the music business – be a working artist! Don’t wait to be discovered by someone on the A&R Staff. Chances are it won’t happen—at least until you develop the entire package you have to offer.