What percentage should a manager take (15% vs 20%)?

Fifteen or twenty. It sounds like a small gap, and that is exactly why it gets decided badly. A manager picks the number they took last time, or the one they heard was standard, and the artist agrees without running it. But a manager's cut comes off gross, not profit, so five points is not five points of what is left over. It is five points of everything that comes in, before touring costs, studio time, or travel get paid (Sonicbids, 2025). Across a career that is real money, and most people sign without ever doing that math.

Both sides feel the mistake differently. Price yourself at 15 percent while doing full-service work for a developing artist and you will quietly resent the hours. Ask for 20 percent from an artist who already has revenue and momentum, and you look like you are reaching for more than the job is worth. New managers guess high because they fear being underpaid, and artists agree low because they fear losing the manager. Neither number was decided. It was defaulted.

And there is a leak underneath the argument. Whatever percentage you settle on comes out of a gross figure, and that figure is usually not clean. By the time a feature, a booking, or a session lands in the artist's gross, a marketplace has often already taken its own service fee first. So both sides debate fifteen versus twenty over a number a platform already shaved. The percentage matters far less than the base it is calculated on.

The fix is not to argue harder about the percentage. It is to fix the number the percentage is taken from. A good manager earns their 15 to 20 percent by building something the artist could not build alone, and no one should want that cut to vanish. What both sides can control is everything that gets skimmed before the manager reaches for their share, because a clean base is what makes a fair percentage actually fair.

That is the part iKonX is built to fix. On iKonX the artist keeps 100 percent of the price they set and iKonX takes 0 percent platform commission, with the buyer paying a flat 10 percent on top. When the artist sells a feature, takes a booking, or runs a session on iKonX, no marketplace shaves the deal before it reaches gross. So when the manager takes 15 or 20 percent, they take it from the full price the artist set, not from a number a platform already thinned.

Because iKonX connects every side of the industry on one platform, that clean base follows the artist from a feature to a booking to a sponsorship, so the same percentage means the same real pay everywhere. iKonX is free to download and free to explore, full access to paid features is a flat 9.99 dollars a month, and the only payout deduction is a low, sub-5 percent withdrawal fee, below the industry standard. Managers as a built-in feature is on the iKonX roadmap and is not live yet, but the deal economics a future manager will commission against are live today, and they are clean.

1. Anchor to the standard band first. Most artist managers take 15 to 20 percent of gross, with developing acts at the higher end and established artists negotiating toward 10 to 15 percent (Cordero Law, 2025). Anything above 20 percent is outside the norm and needs a real reason, so treat 15 to 20 as your working range.
2. Set the number by the artist's stage and your workload. This is the real 15-versus-20 call. Lean to 20 percent when you are full-service and hands-on for a developing artist, because you carry more risk for a smaller gross. Lean to 15 percent when the artist already has momentum, income, or a team and you are one part of a bigger machine. Match the job, not your nerves.
3. Put gross or net in writing before anyone signs. Gross is the industry default, meaning the percentage comes off income before expenses (Sonicbids, 2025). Twenty percent of gross is not 20 percent of profit, so if you agree to net, define exactly which expenses come off first. A vague base quietly turns a fair-looking percentage unfair.
4. Name every income stream the percentage covers. Commissionable income usually spans recorded music, live shows, merchandise, sponsorships, and brand deals (Orphiq, 2026). A broad base justifies a lower percentage; a narrow base with carve-outs often needs a higher one. Write the list of what counts before you argue about the number.
5. Add a sunset clause, and protect the base it comes out of. A sunset clause steps the commission down after the relationship ends, commonly from 15 to 10 to 5 to zero over roughly two to three years, limited to deals from the management period (Romano Law, 2025). Then protect the gross itself: on iKonX the artist keeps 100 percent of the price they set and iKonX takes 0 percent platform commission, so whichever percentage you pick is calculated on the full price, not a number a marketplace already shaved.