It’s a music industry story as old as time. Manager works tirelessly with struggling artist to help build said artist’s career. Artist hits global superstardom. Artist and management part ways.
This classic tale appears to have repeated itself again this month, as we learn that Maneskin, the Italian rock band who won the Eurovision Song Contest in May, have split with their manager of four years, Marta Donà.
Maneskin have become global superstars since winning last month’s Eurovision Song Contest with their rock song Zitti e Buoni (“Shut Up and Behave”).
Their win proved to be a major coup for the event, the band and their home nation’s music business.
The latest edition of Eurovision, described by the New York Times in 2019 as an “unapologetically kitschy event”, attracted over 180 million viewers.
Now, Italy’s Maneskin, whose music is exploding on Spotify, have become a new global success story for Eurovision as an artist showcase platform.
Yesterday (June 29), the band had two tracks in the Top 10 of Spotify‘s Global Top 200 chart – a first for an Italian artist – with Four Seasons cover Beggin’ sitting at No.6 with over 6.5m daily streams and their own composition I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE sitting at No.8 with over 3.8m streams.
Maneskin, who are signed to Sony Music Italy and go through Sony labels worldwide, currently have over 29 million monthly Spotify listeners, comfortably more than rock titans such as Foo Fighters and Arctic Monkeys.
Writing for MBW earlier this month, Artist First founder and Italian music biz veteran Claudio Ferrante argued that Maneskin’s sudden-seeming success “really isn’t just down to dumb luck”.
He explained that the band’s debut album Il ballo della vita landed at No.1 in the FIMI/Gfk official Italian chart in 2018 after their single Chosen was premiered during The Italian version of Simon Cowell’s X Factor the previous year.
After the appearance on Italian X Factor, they had already sold out multiple tours across Europe and scored three multi-platinum singles in Italy prior to their Eurovision appearance.
In his op/ed, Ferrante praised Marta Donà – a former Sony Music Italy publicity executive – for her contribution to the band’s career as their manager.
Ferrante suggested Donà could “take a lot of credit for implementing a highly strategic campaign that has seen the band come to the attention of the wider Sony Music hierarchy”.
Donà, who had managed Maneskin for four years before splitting with the band earlier this month, is founder and CEO of LaTarma Management.
The Milan-based company is operated by an all-female team and also works with artists such as Marco Mengoni and Francesca Michielin.
“With Måneskin anything can happen.”
Marta Donà
In a post published on Instagram on June 4, Donà revealed that she and the band have now parted ways.
“We spent 4 unforgettable years full of dreams to fulfill and projects realized,” she wrote (translated). “”I have brought you this far.
‘From now on, you have decided to continue without me. I am heartbroken but I wish you the best in life guys.”
“From now on you have decided to continue without me. I am heartbroken but I wish you the best in life guys.”
Marta Donà
Just two weeks before, things were considerably more united. Writing on Instagram on May 24 following the band’s Eurovision win, (translated from Italian) Donà wrote: “The dedication to work of these guys.
“Professionalism, constancy, perseverance. The mastery of the stage, the attitude, the pure soul and the courage to believe in one’s dreams.
“Four twenty-year-olds brought back to our country, after 31 years, the most important music competition in the world. There is someone who is envious, especially if he had taken victory for granted. But with Maneskin anything can happen.”
In his op/ed for MBW earlier this month, Artist First CEO Claudio Ferrante told us that, in spite of Eurovision being seen as “inconsequential” in the likes of the UK, across the rest of continental Europe, it’s a “deadly serious showcase opportunity” not only for the performing artists, but also for the songwriters behind the music.
This has unequivocally been proven to be the case historically.
The same competition propelled ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad into the global spotlight back in 1974 with their breakthrough hit Waterloo, which won that year’s event.
Maneskin recently made British chart history as the first Italian act to score two Top 10 entries on the Official Singles Chart, and over in the US last week, they topped Billboard‘s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart.
With Maneskin now counting over 29m monthly listeners on Spotify compared to other contemporary rock acts like Arctic Monkeys who have 19m, Tame Impala (14m) and Foo Fighters’ 13m+, it’s no surprise that the New York Times is now asking whether, after Eurovision, the group can “conquer the world”.Music Business Worldwide