Talent Agents and the California "Act"
Between Talent Agencies and Personal Managers

©1987, 1996 Green & Green and Beverly Robin Green All Rights Reserved

In part to avoid the growing confusion of terms between artists' "personal managers" and artist's employment or "talent" the "Artists' Managers Act" became the "Talent Agency Act" in 1978, and "Artists' Managers" within the meaning of the act, became "Talent Agencies". Meanwhile, the legislature was struggling with the distinction between a "talent agency", then defined as "a person or corporation who engages in the occupation of procuring, offering, promising or attempting to procure employment or engagements for an artist or artists" and who "may, in addition, counsel or direct artists in the development of their professional careers", and those elusive "personal managers" who may counsel and direct artists and do a lot of other things for the development of the artist's career but who are not supposed to deal with employment, unless they become a licensed "talent agent", subjecting themselves to the licensing and bonding requirements and contract approval regulations of the Labor Commissioner of the State of California.

There is still a confusion of terms, and a tendency to fall back on tradition, whereby licensed "talent agents" are known as merely "agents" or "booking agents", and unlicensed "personal managers" as just "managers" or "artists' managers." The 1978 act originally would have required a separate "personal manager" license but those provisions were deleted before the act was passed. The growing issue of the distinction between a talent agent and a personal manager had been avoided but not resolved.

THE 1982 AMENDMENTS: two significant amendments were added to the act, but only on a trial basis, with built in expiration or "sunset" provisions. There was the addition of language to Section 1700.44 which would allow an unlicensed person (presumably aimed specifically at personal managers) to act in conjunction with and at the request of a licensed talent agency in the negotiation of an employment contract. Another significant 1982 amendment was the addition of language to Section 1700.4 excepting that "the activities of procuring, offering, or promising to procure recording contracts (emphasis added) for an artist or artists shall not of itself subject the person or corporation to regulation and licensing".

The last part of this story is: Talent Agents- Part 3- The Present State of Affairs