Talent Agents in the Digital World

In the past, I’ve written about talent agents in many different capacities including music and video games.  Some music industry pundits would say that the most promising position to have in the upcoming years is on the “agent” side, and for the competitive video game space, major talent houses such as CAA & UTA are creating divisions to rep extremely talented gamers.

Steve Rubel blogs about three Internet Careers that Won’t Soon Exist and one of his three are digital talent agents.  Excerpted below:

Digital Talent Agents

During the AdAge Digital Conference last week, a Digital Agent with a major talent agency talked about how they have a group of people who crawl the web in search of undiscovered musicians, artists, etc. These agents then pair promising amateurs with Hollywood or branded entertainment projects. I last wrote about this three years ago. Then it was emerging business. Now, however, it is becoming the norm.

Rubel further makes the point that the digital talent agent will not exist in the future because there really is no difference between a digital agent and traditional (offline) agent.   Digital/traditional lines are blurring and there should be no seperation.  He raises an extremely good point here.

For the foreseeable future, digital talent agents aren’t going anywhere, IMHO.  There are too many people at the top of the pyramid that still do not understand the digital space and will want dedicated teams to oversee it.  Not everyone loves integration…. just look at the advertising world.

I sat through presentation recently by John Battelle as he spoke on behalf of Federated Media (his company).  After listening to him speak about the position of his company, I can see them as the next UTA or CAA… he’s got many of the top celebs of the digital world under representation agreements.  I’m not sure what his contracts state, but he’s able to help generate revenue on their behalf through integrated marketing opportunities.  I’d like to see him go beyond (or maybe it’s already done) the traditional marketing arrangements and do a “management” division and really step on the toes of the big guys.

The talent agency world is fascinating…

Darren Herman is a digital media enthusiast and serial entrepreneur. Herman writes about technology, entrepreneurship and digital media at his blog, http://www.darrenherman.com.