The Music Managers Forum (MMF) is a professional community of music managers. At present its membership stands at over 500 managers based in the UK with global businesses and a wider network of 1700 managers in the USA. The membership manages over 1,000 artists including Arctic Monkeys, Elton John, Lily Allen, Mumford & Sons, Robbie Williams, Ella Eyre, Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Royal Blood, Kaiser Chiefs and many more.
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History and governance
Founded in 1992 at the In The City conference in Manchester and formally incorporated in January 1993 as The Managers Forum Ltd and known as the IMF (International Managers Forum), it changed its name in 2005 to the Music Managers Forum to avoid ambiguity with other organisations, becoming known as the MMF.
The current co-chairs Diane Wagg and Stephen Budd appointed Annabella Coldrick as CEO in January 2016 with previous CEO Jon Webster becoming president.
Training programmes
The MMF runs training programmes, courses and events designed to educate and inform artist managers.
Courses and events run so far have included the MMF Induction Day course which runs four times a year, the Artist Management Development Programme and the MMF/MPA Music Publishing Programme as well as regular seminars, open meetings, roundtables and workshops.
Advocacy
The MMF website states that:
"We engage, advise and lobby industry associates and wider industry issues relevant to managers... we continue to recruit members and grow our network so we are truly representative of the wider management community."
MMF represents its members views through consultations & submissions to UK/EU/US governments, statements within the media, membership of UK Music, the IMMF and dialogue with collecting societies.
The MMF has spawned affiliated organisations around the world, such as in Australia, Ireland, France and the USA, as well as an international umbrella organisation, the IMMF.
Campaigns the MMF are currently participating in include Dissecting the Digital Dollar, on air on sale, Secondary Ticketing and BUMA.
MMF's work is supported by a network of associates including Warner Music, Universal Music, Google, Spotify and Kobalt Music.