I'm a music publicist & artist manager. Here's a day in the life

and no, I don't get to hang out with Taylor Swift all day

I’ve been noodling around with this idea for a while, and inspired by

Ellen

’s post last week, I thought, why not? Part of me was terrified of pulling back the curtain and you realizing how very unglamorous this really is. How ordinary it can be.

But then I thought you know what, let’s try anyway. Maybe someone will care or maybe it will inspire them to chase their dreams like I did when I started this company ten years ago. Maybe they’ll like how my day looks and think, “hu, I’d like to do that too.”

Note: A music publicist and artist manager are very much not the same job, no matter how much my clients sometimes think they are. I happen to offer both services within my company (as well as marketing) so for the sake of this post, I’m covering all aspects.

Here we go.

7:30am: I don't have an alarm. It's one of the things I love most about working for myself and yeah, I know it sounds a little pretentious. But I have such an erratic sleep schedule that the one thing I won't compromise on is waking up before my body is ready. That said, I'm a naturally early riser and most mornings I'm up by 7:30.

8am: After doing…I don’t even know what for 30 minutes (brush my teeth? Get dressed? Read Substack? This is honestly a black hole of time) I have my coffee and do my best to start the day on a happy note. If it’s a running day I’ll throw in my headphones and get that over with. Then I try to catch up on Substacks over coffee but 9/10 I start to panic about the day and use this time to “get a head start on work” so that I can “end early to focus on my creative interests.”

8:45am: The first thing I do is put together my list for the day and hop on Slack. I do all my client communication here, and I love that it lets me ignore my inbox a little longer. I do a quick scan to make sure there are no emergencies. There aren’t; this is the music industry. But as creatives, everything feels like an emergency, so I try to remove those inevitable fires quickly. Someone has forgotten to send me album art, another person is worried about a looming release date that they didn’t take my advice on moving, and someone else wants me to do twenty things before noon.

It is exhausting and sometimes my clients are little terrors, but I know I’m lucky. Mostly, I love them.

10am: Somehow, it’s 10am, and I realize I haven’t eaten yet. I don’t mind because my latte is like a pseudo-breakfast (right? right?!), but I’m desperate for something to distract me from what I know comes next, so I get up and make avocado toast or, if I’ve really prepared, overnight oats. I sit back down at my desk, which is actually just our dining room table, and pump myself up with some kind of pop-punk playlist. The real work is about to begin.

10:15am: Pitching. Emails. The dreaded inbox. This is where the headache starts. The first thing I do is see who responded to my pitches overnight. Pitches are what publicists send to the media to try and convince them to feature our clients. In my line of work this is blogs, influencers, podcasters, and playlisters. I want to get my artists interviews in blogs like American Songwriter for instance, or on a popular playlist (maybe you’re even listening to it?) or get a micro-influencer to use a clip from the artist’s song in a Reel or TikTok to give it more exposure.

Anything for the exposure.

If you’ve ever wondered what a publicist does, it’s this. They sit behind their computer and bother people all day long, hoping and praying someone gets back to them with good news.

Mostly they don’t.

But I have to say, this makes us an incredibly resilient people. We know how to get things done.

12:30pm: Hurrah!! Did someone say lunch time?! If it’s Monday I’m underestimating how long it will take me to meal prep and spending the next hour in the kitchen. If it’s any other day, I’m grabbing my lunch and heading back to my desk where I resume work while eating. Sometimes I browse Substack. I should browse Substack. But the truth is the day is half over, I’m still panicking about everything that needs to get done, and I’m definitely going to work through lunch. The music industry goes in cycles and while November through February are fairly quiet, May through October are madness.

That said, if it’s a Tuesday in the Fall/Winter I usually take off mid-morning to practice figure skating at the local rink, and if it’s a Friday you can find me at horseback riding lessons in the late afternoon. Freedom of time and schedule wasn’t something I thought of when I started my business a decade ago, but now, it’s essential. I know it’s a privilege. But it took a long time to get here, and I’m proud of it. It took me a long time to even be able to say that.

1pm: By now I’m done pitching and have lost the will to live.

Just kidding.

But seriously, now is when I need to reset myself. Sometimes, I walk or put away the dishes while I listen to a podcast. (You know it’s bad when the dishes are your escape). I need to shake out all the stress of sending 500 emails and get back into a creative headspace.

I love getting to create strategies for my artists and see their vision come to life. I love showing them a really good quote, or a glowing review, or watching them get excited about someone picking their song up. It’s everything to me to be a part of that growth and excitement. And I know, pitching is a necessary part of that. It’s sort of the entire job. But it’s not fun. It’s just not.

1:15pm: Now that the pitching is done I can move on to other tasks! This changes depending on the day, the stage the campaign is in, and everyone’s moods.

Things like bio writing, press release edits, brainstorming marketing strategy for upcoming releases, release rollout plans, booking research for festivals, merch planning, all fall under this umbrella. This is my time to do one of the 800 tasks that is constantly on my to-do list.

If it’s a Monday I’m usually focused on growing the business through content creation and finding new clients, whereas Tuesday/Thursday are pretty heavy client centric days. For Mondays, this means creating a blog post (which I like) and then creating social media content from that same post (which I hate) and posting in twenty different places.

It’s perhaps ironic that I spend so much time telling my clients to post to socials and yet I hate doing it myself. Then again, I do practice what I preach. I usually get at least three posts out on IG per week, and get in Stories daily with a mix of educational content and client wins. This takes up a huge chunk of the day and sometimes, I need to pause and revisit it the next day. This might be even worse than pitching, actually.

4:15pm: Final Slack check-in. I answer a few questions, talk someone down from a ledge, promise things will be ok even if I don’t know they will be. Probably someone is annoyed at me. Most likely they’ve confused “publicist” for magician and don’t understand why they aren’t in Pitchfork yet or why this influencer they insisted I reach out to with 1M followers is charging 1k for a feature.

Before signing off I send a set of silly emojis and inside jokes to my favorite client and remember why I do this. I know you’re not supposed to have favorites but come on. We’re all adults here.

If I have it in me, I check emails again. Probably I just ignore them until tomorrow.

4:45pm: This is when I start thinking that maybe I have time to check in on this one last thing very quickly. If I do it now I can avoid doing it tomorrow and then I’ll have more time for working on my book…

5:45: Oh god how has it been an hour?! I’m supposed to be exercising right now and I’m not going to have any time to read and wind down before dinner whyyyyy do I do this to myself?????

5:55: Ok THIS is the last Slack check in. Just have to send this feature that just came in because I’m genuinely SO excited for the client to see it.

5:57pm: Client sees it. They are not as excited as I am.

6:15pm: Ok, actually shutting down work now. I guess I’ll just exercise for 20 minutes less than I want to. It’s fine, I can do better tomorrow. And sure, I can only read for twenty minutes instead of the hour I wanted at this point. But it’s fine. Really.

6:45: Whew, exercise DONE. This is a crucial part of my evening because it helps me shake out the day (again.) The last few months I’ve been doing strength training and while 7lbs (each!) feels very very sad compared to my friends, I can see the difference in my body and my back hurts less and truthfully, I’m very proud of sticking to this routine and working my way up to those 7lbs. I remember when I could barely do 3lbs.

Anyway. There’s still plenty of time to read before dinner. I’ll just go shower really quickly to wash the day away, and then I can settle down.

7:05: The hot water is my happy place. Somehow, the shower temporarily cures every ailment, heartbreak, and stress I have ever had. I am never leaving the shower.

7:10: Welp, there goes my reading time.

7:15pm: Aaaand it’s time to start making dinner. At this point I’m showered, slightly less wired, and ready to be DONE.

We have a routine for our dinners. We are very food driven people and we both love knowing what to look forward to. I’m not going to tell you what each day is, but it’s essentially the menu of teenagers.

Ok, fine, I’ll tell you!! It’s a rotation of vegetarian buffalo chicken quesadillas, nachos, pizza, and takeout. The quesadillas are our healthy food night.

7:40pm: We don’t kid ourselves by pretending we’re going to talk to each other while we eat. My husband My h I have been home with each other all day. There’s nothing left to say. What we want is to veg out and make fun of our favorite shows together. Currently, Southern Charm and The Perfect Couple.

10pm: Ah, finally. Sweet, sweet sleepy time. A quick jog upstairs to brush my teeth, cuddle into my husband, and probably fall asleep to Lego Masters. Maybe I’ll read when this episode is over…

About Coffee and Nostalgia:

Coming of age reflections on love, friendship, and career from a 36-year-old still desperately trying to relive her 20s through her writings. I’m so glad you’ve decided to spend some time in my cozy, nostalgic corner of the internet. <3

What you can expect if you subscribe:

• Exploration of friendship and loves lost through my To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before series

• Weekly round-ups that include book recommendations, Substacks I’m enjoying, cute things from around the internet, and other fun goodies via my Coffee Grinds weekly Sunday series.

• The occasional book review, usually in Women’s Fiction or Contemporary Romance, but sometimes horror, like this one on Bunny by Mona Awad.

• Writing updates as I work towards completing and querying my debut novel for traditional publishing.

• Personal essays on all of the above.

Read More: