Breanna Price is the manager and creative strategist behind her husband, recent Billboard Canada Indie Issue cover star Connor Price. After Connor’s music started popping off during the pandemic, she left her role as creative director at a pet company to focus full time on his career as an artist. Since then, she has helped transform his independent journey into a globally recognized brand, overseeing operations, branding, content ideation and digital strategy – all while parenting a toddler and a baby. She helped conceive his viral Spin the Globe series, and contributes on a creative level to the TikTok skits that turned him into a social media sensation. This year, she supported him through his Friends & Family Tour, his biggest headlining tour yet.
She’s an open book when it comes to advice for managers looking to break new artists. Her first advice: “Stop chasing what you think will be the key to success i.e. labels, booking agents, deals, etc. Instead, focus on building as much momentum and leverage as possible to find your artist a dedicated fanbase on your own…Focus on the music and the content to push said music, and all that other stuff will follow.”
Her second piece of advice: “No one actually knows what they’re doing half the time.” She got into music management by accident, but has built the tools she needs by watching YouTube videos, forming friendships with other managers and asking lots of questions. She’s also not afraid to use her voice. “I quite literally had an argument with the COO of a major label because he didn't understand the function of an ISRC code, so that should go to show you that even the ‘high ups’ don't know it all.”
Despite so much 21st century conventional wisdom, don’t overfocus on getting on big streaming services’ editorial playlists, she says, because many of those playlists have passive listenerships. Focus instead on organic listeners. (“For reference, Connor is hovering around 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify and only 1% of that comes from editorial support.”) Don’t put too much pressure on first weekend streams, either, because songs – like one of Connor Price's biggest, “Trendsetter” – can pick up steam from synchs or organic social media discovery. “I should probably stop trying to condense all my advice into a couple paragraphs and actually just write a novel about it. BRB lol.”