We have banned some managers, reps, and PR agents from submitting artists to our web site.

It’s always a last resort. And no, I’m not going to say who they are. My purpose in even bringing it up is to ask you, the independent artist, if you know just how you are being represented. You may not realize it, but the person you’ve hired to open some doors for you may instead be getting them slammed, locked, and boarded up with enough plywood to hold back a category five.

Sounds dramatic, but bear in mind that it takes some pretty annoying behavior to make us tell a manager not to contact us anymore.

Sometimes the problem is simply laziness. A rep sends us a CD without filling out our submission form or providing any contact information. We manage to find the rep’s email address and ask her to go back and follow our guidelines. She doesn’t, but she keeps sending us CDs from all the other bands she’s promoting. We keep asking her to follow the guidelines, she keeps ignoring us. Eventually, we put her email address on our "block" list, and every package with her company logo on it goes right into the trash can next to our box at the post office.

The message being sent by this rep is very clear: I don’t care about these artists or think there’s anything special about them. They’re just a list of names. I’ll just send their CDs out everywhere so I can tell them I’m actually doing something.

Occasionally, we get the bullies. We recently had a PR rep leave belligerent messages on our company voice mail, demanding to know why his artists had not yet been reviewed. I called him a couple of times, explaining that we don’t guarantee reviews and that we ask for at least a couple of months’ lead time. He left more messages over the next several weeks, demanding results for his bands and accusing us of putting his artists on hold because they don’t advertise with us. (For the record, advertising is never a factor in who gets reviewed at Indie-Music.com.)

We eventually banned him from the site, which was necessary but a shame. I visited the web sites of the bands he represented, and they seem to be hardworking, talented artists. I’m pretty sure they have no idea how they are being marketed.

Some artists have found out, often after serious damage has been done to their reputations. I recently interviewed Cincinnati artist Jeff Goins, a studio producer, writer, and member of the Vic Daniels Quartet. Thanks to what he credits as good management early in the band’s career, they had established solid and friendly contacts with venue owners in Cincinnati and had built a reputation as a talented and reliable band.

Then their manager got a divorce and moved to California. So Goins and his bandmates began looking for new management. After some searching, they thought they’d found a winner. (Goins cares enough about professionalism to ask that I not print the manager’s name.)

"At first glance," he explains, "we thought he was an upstanding professional who knew his way around Cincinnati and could help us out. But things started going wrong pretty quickly. At our biggest gig ever, he didn’t show up until the third day of the festival. He brought his assistant along to do most of the work and told us privately that he had thrown her into the mix to see if she would sink or swim. Basically, he was testing a new assistant and using our careers to do it. And we hardly saw her at all."

Over the next six months, the new manager only found the band one paying gig. He told the band they just weren’t marketable. Despite such alleged unpopularity, Goins was able to book several paying gigs for the band on his own. But he didn’t realize how truly damaging the new rep was until the band’s invitation to perform at the 2005 Midpoint Music Festival was abruptly withdrawn. Bypassing his manager, Goins made his own phone calls to find out why. He learned that word of his manager’s unprofessional tactics had spread like wildfire.

"Our management actually went through the offices of venues we were playing and took office supplies like they owned the place," Goins says. "They kept badgering anyone who would listen, just being annoying, and even trying to turn people against each other. Our biggest client in Indianapolis told us that they would not have us back next year if they were still our managers."

Needless to say, they weren’t the managers for much longer. And Goins is trying to find representation that comes as close as possible to the manager who had helped them so much in the beginning.

"I miss him," Goins says. "He got us great gigs, paid us at the gigs, took photos, and made us look great."

And there’s the key to a good manager: Someone who wants to make the artist look great. Period. That very quality is what’s missing from the lazy manager, the bully, and the swaggering backstage loudmouth. They've forgotten that the motivation to get into music management is supposed to be the love of music. They’re supposed to be content to be in the background, doing everything they can to give the artist the spotlight and make them look good in it. When they succeed, they should want to give public credit to the artist while taking personal satisfaction in a job well done.

Goins still laments over the damage done during his band’s six months of bad management. But in many cases, it can be undone. Especially with the press. I have been contacted directly by bands who have apologized for their manager’s tactics and asked if they can submit CDs and deal with me directly. My answer is always yes.

And while good managers may be hard to find, they are out there. Indie-Music.com may have banned three of them, but we have dealt with literally hundreds of reps, from all over the world, who are professional, courteous, and genuinely excited about the bands they represent. They follow submission guidelines, respond promptly to emails, and send thank-you notes when good reviews are published.

When you do take a chance and hire one of them, don’t wait six months to find out if they’re really working for you. Listen to how they sound on the phone. Find out where they're sending press kits, and contact a couple of the editors and venue owners on your own to find out what kind of impression they are making. (If it’s a bad one, don’t worry, you’ll get an earful.)

Look at your schedule. Are they getting you gigs? Are you getting paid? If not, are they telling you that your music just isn’t marketable? If they truly feel that way about your music, why in the world are you paying them?

A little bit of detective work in the beginning can save your band a damaged career in the long run. If you’ve found management that gets you results, you can relax and focus on basking in the spotlight they’re working hard to make you look good in.