The 30%: Artist Management With Maggie McHale
Graphic by Bre Cura
By Emily Herbein
The 30% is a series that profiles women on the artist side of the music industry and is meant to showcase their diverse talents in spite of the lack of equal representation. “30%” represents the percentage of women who hold paying jobs — as artists or as members of their teams — in the industry compared to men.
This feature has been so long overdue, but I think it was worth the wait because now Maggie and I both have way more industry experience under our belts than we did when we were at St. Joe’s together. Maggie’s one of my favorite women in our music community to talk to because I think there are just honestly few people who understand the intense highs and lows of working on the journalism and management and press sides of this industry. She gets, in the same way I do, just how fulfilling working with friends can be, and that passion to help the people she cares about is what sets her apart in my eyes as a manager. That’s not an easy role to fill, and as a woman especially, it’s so easy to feel overlooked. However, watching Maggie grow her management company, PBG MGMT, since 2018 and help establish some of my personal favorite artists, has been a true joy because she’s not afraid to advocate for herself. Our paths have intersected a lot over the last two years especially — I’ve profiled Trap Rabbit and Sophie Coran here, two of the artists she manages, countless times. I really can’t say enough about Maggie other than how thrilled I am to work with her and support her projects. Along with PBG, she also manages Original 13 Ciderworks in Kensington, writes for Atwood Magazine, and runs her own video series called In The Mix Music and Drinks. She’s like the definition of a badass self-starter and I’m so excited to share this interview. We talk about burnout, not being afraid to advocate for yourself, and where she feels the most at home. I hope you learn something about all of the different roles she fills.
x, Em
Emily: What did your introduction to the music industry look like? How did you know that was the space you were meant to fill?
Maggie: I've always been passionate about music and going to concerts and I have so many music friends. And honestly, it wasn't until my sophomore year of college that I really thought that I could work in the music industry. I was at Saint Joe's for journalism, and at the end of my spring semester, Atwood Magazine actually followed me on Twitter, so I read up on them. I saw that they were a music blog, and I was like, "Oh shit, this is really cool. Let me just, like, tweet at them and see if they have any applications." And so I did. And they did. And I got hired like ten days later. That was like my first *real* introduction into actually being a part of the music industry.
Then the summer going into my junior year, I did an internship with BEN FM, the radio station. I was a sales intern so I worked with promotions, which was cool. I mean, I didn't really know anything about radio, so I thought I'll just dip my toes into all these different industries and see which one I like. And BEN was cool. I liked working for a radio station. I didn't really like sales all that much, but they ended up hiring me after to do more promotional stuff. They have these events that they sponsor — I don't know if they actually still do — and so they would just need people to go as representatives for the radio stations and to show face and give away prizes and stuff like that. And so that was another way that I felt like I had more of an "in," because people would come up to me and think that it was just so cool that we were from a radio station, especially like suburban middle-aged people who just listen to the radio all the time, like it's so cool when a radio station is at your business or whatever.
And then from there, I just sort of was like, all right, I've done sales, I've done promotions, I've done journalism. What else can I do? Let me just get my toes into all of it. During my senior year at Saint Joe's, I took music marketing with Dr. Allan and there was this one class where the founder from Fame House came in and gave a talk. And he was explaining how they do all the social media marketing, advertising, and merchandising for all these different artists. And I was like, "holy shit, that's really cool." And so I went up to him after the class was over and I was like, "Hey, this is really cool. I'm really interested in this." And he was like, "OK, cool, here's my email." I emailed him and eventually ended up having like five rounds of interviews for a digital marketer position. So I was running social media for clients and creating marketing plans and release plans and stuff like that, and just helping with general media rollouts. I started almost exactly a month after I graduated from college, which was just crazy.
But I left there after about nine months and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had sort of started dipping into management, but nothing like I do now. I left Fame House in March 2018, and then like a week and a half later, I started managing this band called FV. They don't exist anymore, but they ended up being my roommates for like two years. And through beginning to manage them, I realized that I really enjoyed working in that space and I could sort of encompass everything that I already had experienced in the industry under this management umbrella. And so then in June of 2018, I launched PBG and here we are now.
Emily: What does "PBG" stand for? I don't think I've ever actually asked.
Maggie: It's not an acronym actually. The house that I lived in in London was on a street called Pembridge Gardens, and so my housemates and I would always refer to it as twenty-one PBG because the house number was twenty-one. It's just sort of like an image of this place that I love so much and that I lived in, and this is coming full circle with London and everything I did there.
Emily: I think you have such an interesting self-starting story because you've done the freelance DIY thing and then you also have had the corporate experience. How do you feel like those two sides of the industry compare and how do you feel hustling in both has shaped your work ethic?
Maggie: I feel like a lot of my corporate experience informs what I do now in my own business, but the corporate thing was my first job out of college and it was salaried at a major label and I was like, "Holy shit, this is the coolest thing ever. I'm twenty-two and I'm running Alicia Keys’ Instagram account. Like, that's insane." But at the same time, there were a lot of expectations obviously that I couldn't live up to not only like as a twenty-two-year-old, but just feeling like marketing wasn't really going to be the thing that I enjoyed the way that I thought it would. Just because I figured that I loved social media and I use social media often and I've helped other people with their social media in the past, it just seemed like it would work really well and it didn't. So I just think that working for myself now has allowed me to figure out what exactly I want to do. I mean, it's very stressful because you are responsible for literally everything, and my artists rely on me to do certain things and hit certain expectations. But on the flip side of that, I can come back to them and be like, "OK, well, this is what I'm able to do and this is what I'm comfortable doing."
Emily: This is something that I'm trying to figure out still, and I think my time management skills go up and down. You know — you're in charge of everything that you do. How do you avoid the burnout and stress from self-imposed deadlines that probably no one else cares about, and how do you avoid disappointing the artist that you have on your roster if you need to do something that you just can't do for them?
Maggie: I don't always, honestly. I get burnt out a lot. And, you know, therapy helps. I have a therapist that I talk to every week and she's great at keeping me in check and making sure that I know that I can set boundaries because I'm very guilty of constantly overextending myself and overreaching and promising things that, in my head at the time feel fine. But then, like, it actually comes time to do it, and I'm sure you know, you feel like a chicken running with your head cut off. It's a lot to deal with. I wouldn't change anything about my trajectory or what I do, but I do wish that I was better at keeping myself in check.
Emily: That was a lot of the last couple of years for me as well, because Philly Live picked up a lot after college, and then when I took Bre on to help me with some projects for a little, we completely overbooked ourselves. And I love to be busy and I love to say yes to things, but I didn't realize how dangerous that can be until I was fully in the middle of spiraling out. I was just like, panicking about it. What if this isn't what I like? Because why is it stressing me out so much? That was such a hard conversation to have with myself, because I know there's nothing else that I want to do. And there's clearly nothing else that you probably want to do either. So it's kind of like quieting what's going on up here, and I'm understanding that people are usually very open to your boundaries, which is something that I was afraid of, so I never set them. If I had to say no to someone or extend something or set a legitimate rate for a project, I was hugely afraid of being a letdown. But the right people will always be okay with however you have to respect your own time.
Maggie: You just have to be honest and you have to communicate. And, you know, if people don't respect your boundaries, they're not worth working with or working for.
Emily: So in keeping with the theme of having respect for yourself and your own time — when you bring on an artist as a manager, what does that look like? What's that relationship between the two of you? What's your day-to-day?
Maggie: When I first started, I really just went in, because I was just so excited and it was so new and I was just like, "I'm going to do everything." And I ended up picking up nine artists in the first month. And keep in mind that it's only me, I don't have a team, I barely pay myself for this. And so at first it was just like, let me do as much as I can and work as hard as I can to prove myself in this space, as a manager — as a female manager, especially. And that just didn't work. I mean, for one person to have nine clients to work with artists, bands, producers — it was just was too much. Now I've whittled it down, thankfully. I just have three artists, which is way more manageable for one person. Sophie Coran, Trap Rabbit, and then I technically have Patrick [her partner] as well. I have other partnerships that I do with other companies that aren't technically like my clients, but they are people that I work with on a regular basis. Now, the artists that I have, I've known for years.
Like with Sophie, I had met her because I was writing for Jump Magazine and I did a feature on her and we went out one day and just like, got drinks and hung out. We clicked pretty much immediately. And then a year or so later was when I launched PBG and she saw that online and texted me and was like, "Hey, I've been looking for a manager, are you free to grab lunch?" We talked for like three hours, and at the end of it, we both just mutually felt really comfortable and really excited about the whole project. So now I have a contract that I send over and I have just a one-time payment for a full year and then that deal renews every year. I had debated doing a monthly fee, but in certain months there's nothing going on and I don't want to charge people for things if I'm not doing anything or if they have nothing going on. But I do take a commission for anything that I have a hand in securing for them. So if they're getting paid, it's like a 15% commission. If they're getting paid from a show, I get 15% from the show because I'm the one usually doing the booking.
And then with Trap Rabbit again, they're very close friends of mine. Logan just texted me one day and was like, "We need some help. Can you help?" I was like, "Absolutely." So for them, I mostly do booking — I mean they do a lot of their own looking as well, but they had initially brought me on to help them book a tour, but then some life things got in the way that prevented it. Right now I'm helping with their EP and doing a lot of press for that. I've been doing pitching and writing a press release and all that good stuff. And then the same with Patrick. It just is like, he's here, we live together, so it's easy to work together.
I've had artists that I had never met before, but we didn't click the same way. And I don't want to say that I'm not open to working with artists that I don't have a pre-existing relationship with, but there is just an easier transition for both of us if there's already that pre-existing relationship.
Emily: That's one of my questions — because your roster is made up of people that you're close to, and I also prefer to work with people that I have a good thing going with as well. Other label people that I've talked to all say the same thing. You have to be able to have a conversation about anything but music if you want to work with someone in that way. And it definitely can get blurry sometimes, working with friends. But I feel like at least for me, I kind of prefer it as long as there's a clear boundary at some point and we can exist as friends outside of existing as coworkers.
Maggie: I agree. At the end of the day, we are friends, but if we have to get serious and we have to talk about business stuff, we can do that. And we all have mutual respect for each other to know where that line is and not I mean, it is easy to blur the line, especially if they're people you're particularly close with, but at least with my people when it comes down to it, we can get it done.
Emily: Have you ever run into any situations being a female manager where you felt like you weren't being heard? Whether the conversation was with your own artists or otherwise?
Maggie: For sure. I mean, I think when I was first starting, that's why I took on so many clients so I could prove to everybody else that I'm capable of this. There have definitely been times where I have to be the point person or I have to send the stern emails and or be on a conference call. And I definitely feel like I had experiences where I've been talked over or not been taken seriously. It's happened across everything that I've done in music. Certain journalistic projects that I've had where I've done features — I've interviewed certain artists who just thought of me as a groupie. But I think that especially now that I've sort of established myself as a manager for almost three years, it's gotten better. And I think it also helps that I can say that I have nearly six years of experience in other industries like radio and journalism marketing. I have a huge network of people in New York and in London and L.A., even though I've never been to L.A. But it definitely, definitely is improving. And I know it's a shitty answer, but you do build yourself up with time. That's kind of the only way to do it. And I worked my butt off with networking and just showing face even when I didn't want to, like going to a show or going to a bar or driving to New York just for the day to see a show, for a band or for a publicist who had asked me to do it. And I have these really great relationships now that I don't take for granted.
Emily: I remember you were even a presence for me in college before we'd even met in person because I heard about how you were writing and gigging around all the time. I knew you were doing all these things that I wanted to do, too so it was nice to see someone I could relate to actually succeeding at it.
Maggie: It really is just crazy to think that I've been doing this for like six years.
Emily: Let's talk about travel, too. I know that's important to you. You talk about London all the time — how did those experiences shape your career?
Maggie: I mean, personally, it shaped probably half of who I am, if not more. I studied abroad my junior year, the second semester. I always wanted to visit London ever since I was 16, but I did not expect to be so enamored with it the way that I was. There is nowhere else in the world that feels like home the way London feels like home. Philly's close, but London truly is just — it's indescribable honestly.
The thing that I think shifted that feeling for me happened within the first two weeks of being there. David Bowie died 10 days into me living in London, and he's my favorite artist of all time. I was trying to figure out what could I do to celebrate him. He was born in London, there had to be something. And there was this street party basically in the neighborhood in London where he was born and raised, and I couldn't convince any of my housemates to come with me because nobody cared about David Bowie the way I did. And so I was like, fuck it. I went by myself dressed up in glitter and leather with a lightning bolt on my face. I just went down and it was incredible. I made friends with so many people that I kept in touch with the entire time that I was living there. But everything else I had done was with all my housemates or it was school-related. But this street party kind of showed me that I could make London my home because I did that by myself. I went to a bunch of concerts as well so I got to see a lot of really cool venues, meet a lot of really cool people at those shows. I did an interview for Atwood at UMG London that is like in the offices, which was sort of ironic that like a year later I ended up working for UMG. One of those bands, I saw them in Philly in 2015 playing to 12 people. And I met them after they sold me a t-shirt because they were selling their own merch at the time. I still have it. And I saw them in London 10 months later, playing a sold-out, 200 person show. And then they still remembered me from the Philly show. It just felt like some sort of connectivity thing that's kind of serendipitous.
But when I came home, I was just miserable. I didn't want to come home at all, and I had even stayed an extra two weeks from when our program ended. Even still, I did not get the closure that I needed. But when I came home, I started working at Jump, so that was nice to ease my way back into being in Philly and feeling like I can just get right back in and be connected to the city. And I met a lot of really great people that I'm still friends with to this day because of Jump.
And then, I was able to go back to London in 2018 and I stayed with a friend of mine who I actually met because I wrote about him for Atwood. It was just amazing seeing how these things that I do that don't feel significant at the time end up having these incredible after effects.
Emily: A lot of the things that you and I both do are hugely beneficial to other people. We don't immediately see any sort of personal pay-off a lot of the time, especially having done all of these things for so long. How do you make management and writing feel self-fulfilling?
Maggie: Definitely. On the management side, I definitely feel appreciated, especially having people like Sophie and Trap Rabbit and Patrick. They're great people who are grateful that I'm helping them, even if it's me sending an email in two minutes. It's really nothing significant, but it matters to them. And with Fame House, that was weird because it was very thankless unless it was a big project. But the day-to-day of me, just like posting on Alicia Keys' Instagram, that's just putting it up learning how to write in her voice and it was just weird. No one knew it was me because why would they? And with Atwood, it's hit or miss. I think a lot of the smaller artists are really, really grateful. But if you write a piece on a bigger group it doesn't really ever get that much attention or praise from the band themselves, but fans might really enjoy it.
Emily: I hate ever coming off as doing things for the credit or the recognition because I really don't. I do the things that I do because I love working with the people that I get to work with. But at the same time, something's got to give a little bit because it's never self-promotion. It's always promoting other people. I think maybe like two years ago or a year and a half ago I was at a show and I never met the girls in Cherry Veen Zine before and they know me and they were like, "are you Philly Live?" And I was like, "Wait WHAT yes I am." It was so exciting. And with WXPN as well, because I prefer to cover the smaller local bands, they've come to know me super quickly. It feels nice when you've built a community
So — your day-to-day now: you just got a promotion at Ciderworks, which is awesome. And you've got PBG and you have In The Mix. Is that pretty much your typical day today?
Maggie: Yeah. I work at Ciderworks Wednesday through Sunday and that is mostly just me doing managerial tasks instead of outright bartending, which I used to do primarily. In The Mix is sort of like whenever I can schedule something, and then it's me trying to figure out how to work Adobe Premiere for two weeks and getting them up. I was at first trying to do them every two weeks and now I've sort of been like, I can't keep myself that accountable, especially because people aren't always going to be available when you need them. So it's figuring out what works, what doesn't work. It's really fun. I love making cocktails and I love hanging out with my music friends, especially ones that I haven't seen in person in a really long time. My first episode was with my friends Steve and Danielle. Steve is in the band called Young Rising Sons or also Camden Welles. It's like two projects with the same people in both bands. And then Danielle is an artist called Luxtides.
Emily: I think these kinds of "product of quarantine" projects are some of the best that I've seen, because when it's face to face projects like what you're doing, the conversations are so sincere because everybody misses each other right now. If this has been like a normal situation and you're able to hang out anyways, it probably would have just felt more like "we're doing this for work. Here's what we're going to talk about." The same thing happened for me — I was doing an insane amount of Zoom interviews last year and I was on a call with Will Brown for like three hours because it was just like "I miss my friend so much." Really good content has come out of not being able to see people for sure.
Maggie: It's fun because then I get to make up a cocktail specifically for these people and then I send them a rough recipe and it's really fun to make them all together over Zoom.
Emily: One of the last questions — mostly because I need to know that this isn't just me — do you ever struggle with work and life separation because you work in the fields that you're passionate about? Do you ever feel like it kind of overtakes your personality?
Maggie: I do definitely do. I feel like I because the music industry really is my life. Even with Ciderworks, I'm constantly trying to figure out ways that we can get events booked there. And I date a musician, which is really cool but the work life and the home life very much overlap. All my friends are musicians and or they also work in the industry in some other capacity. And it's really cool. I feel like I don't really have much of a personality, otherwise. My personality is music and London and my animals, but I can't change who I am and I wouldn't want it any other way. Up until I started working for Atwood in 2015, I didn't really know what I wanted to do as a career. I was a communications major focusing in journalism and social media but I still didn't really grasp what my thing was, and Atwood came along and then BEN FM came along right around the same time, and it was just this sort of like, an "aha" moment of "why wouldn't you work in music?" It's just a no-brainer and I wouldn't change anything.
Emily: I feel the same. I have to catch myself sometimes when someone's like, "how are you?" And I'm like, "Oh, my God, I'm writing this interview or I'm working with this artist" and just like rattling off work shit that I've been doing. And they're like, "no, how are you?" And that's like the moment of "Oh." Like my personality is just all these things that I do and I can't help it. I only hang out with people in the industry. I only seek out people in the industry. They're the people that I feel the most myself with and that took a lot of hard work to find. I think it's such a good space to be in, but I've definitely struggled with the "log off at five and be a person." It's hard.
Maggie: I still can't. I'm so bad about it. I really am. And that also might be too how Fame House ingrained that in my brain — you really never log off. If somebody needs something you're going to do it. And that's still something that I do.
Emily: I think that is the one downside of being as online as we both are. I'm just the most accessible person and saying no is hard. Saying no is one of the biggest things that I'm trying to nail into my head after burning out so badly last year. I just did whatever anyone needed without taking into account what I needed. I always want to be helpful but I think I can firmly say now that I only agree to things that I want to do and that I know I can handle doing.
Maggie: I'm the same way. And even if it is sometimes thankless, it is still rewarding to know I got something done for this person that they specifically needed my help doing.
Emily: It's the highs and lows of freelancing. But my last question for you is if you could go back to that version of yourself in 2015 that didn't know what her direction was, what would you hope a conversation would look like between the two of you?
Maggie: I would think like that I have enough knowledge now about the industry that I could go back to 2015 Maggie and be like, "Listen, it's going to be worth it." More than anything, I wish I had started networking a lot sooner than I did. I don't think I actually really started putting myself out there until like a year and a half into already working with Atwood and with BEN FM. And so I would tell myself that it might feel awkward. You might have to go alone. You might have to just put yourself in a position that feels strange, but it's worth it. And it's always going to pay off, even if it's not an immediate payoff. Something good can come of it eventually.
Emily: That's advice that I wish I'd have heard too. I used to be so painfully shy and to the point where it would make me anxious and now doing the networking stuff is my favorite part of why we do this.
Maggie: Exactly. I don't feel like I was ever particularly shy, but I do feel like I was anxious, and that anxiety then made me shy. Because once I started actually throwing myself into the scene now, locally and otherwise, everything just took off.
Emily: It's once you kind of have that moment, whatever it is, where you kind of realize that you're not an outsider anymore, that you're very much a person who belongs here, you can't go back to not thinking this way. What do your future goals with these projects look like?
Maggie: I would love for my artists to be successful. I really want to continue working towards that with them and for them. And now, obviously, we're making moves with that, with Sophie especially. Doing tours and festivals and all these things that we had planned, pre-COVID that had to get put on the back burner and hopefully kind of going guns blazing into it when this is over. In The Mix, I do it for fun, so whatever happens with that happens. I enjoy it very much, but I'm not really setting any particular goals for it. And then Atwood just is already getting pretty cool exposure, so just continuing to watch that growth would be really amazing. I don't know — I can't worry about setting goals because I can't predict the future. I have dreams, and maybe that's just me not having the confidence that I should have. But I'd like to call them "dreams" more than "goals" just in case they fail.
Emily: Yeah, I mean with music, it's so easy to get so excited about the promise of something because you have a conversation with someone and then like in a week it falls through.
Maggie: I would love for PBG to be profitable. I would love for that to be a sustainable business.
Emily: I think all of those things are attainable. It's just it's a matter of taking those big planning steps which can be intimidating, but I feel like you and I are both so incredibly similar that nothing is out of the realm of possibility when it comes to how we view our work.
Maggie: Absolutely. I've learned that anything is possible in music.