{"id":236241,"date":"2025-07-17T18:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T17:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=236241"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:28:12","slug":"a-managers-job-is-to-be-the-last-guard-at-the-gate-for-the-artists-that-they-work-with-in-terms-of-their-art-thats-a-pretty-deep-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/a-managers-job-is-to-be-the-last-guard-at-the-gate-for-the-artists-that-they-work-with-in-terms-of-their-art-thats-a-pretty-deep-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A manager\u2019s job is to be the last guard at the gate for the artists that they work with in terms of their art. That\u2019s a pretty deep responsibility.’"},"content":{"rendered":"

MBW\u2019s World\u2019s Greatest Managers series profiles the best artist managers in the global business. Chris Woltman is the long-serving manager of Twenty One Pilots, one of the biggest alternative rock bands of the last 15 years. He talks about breaking the band, staying at the top, building a roster at his Element1 management company, and launching a new label, ARRO. World\u2019s Greatest Managers is supported by Centtrip<\/a>, a specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange \u2013 created with the music industry and its needs in mind.<\/p>\n

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Chris Woltman takes a call from his artist.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 2015 and Woltman\u2019s management clients, Twenty One Pilots, are the hottest band on the planet, enjoying a massive breakthrough hit with Stressed Out<\/em>, taken from their fourth album, Blurryface<\/em>. The song is No.2 on the US Hot 100, it\u2019s all over the radio, it\u2019s going gangbusters on this new-fangled thing called streaming and it\u2019s a Top 10 hit around the world. Which is why Tyler Joseph, back in his Ohio hometown of Columbus, is calling.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere I go, I hear my voice,\u201d says the somewhat bewildered frontman.<\/p>\n

Some managers might have pushed for the band to squeeze last every drop from this moment. But Woltman \u2013 secure in the knowledge that he had already helped build the band to arena level before Stressed Out<\/em>\u2019s ubiquity \u2013 chose a different path.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was an interesting moment,\u201d says Woltman, with trademark laidback, deadpan cool. \u201cLike, maybe the strategy here is not to push and push and push, but to shut it down. At that point, there was enough music in the market, so the fanbase that was coming in had to dig deeper. It really helped to spread the success of all that music. There might have been a bit of magic in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

And magic moments have been a specialty for Twenty One Pilots \u2013 and Woltman\u2019s Element1 management agency \u2013 ever since. Despite rock\u2019s issues with gaining traction in the streaming age, TOP have consistently remained one of the biggest draws in the genre.<\/p>\n

Their Clancy tour, which concluded its most recent leg with two spectacular sold-out dates at London\u2019s cavernous O2 Arena in May, shifted over 1.1m tickets across a run that included the band\u2019s first stadium headline show in South America, as well as huge gigs across North America, Europe and Australasia. Another tour kicks off in North America in September.<\/p>\n

The Clancy<\/em> album went Top 3 on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, amazing more than one billion streams, while the follow-up, the band\u2019s eighth album Breach<\/em>, is due in September. Lead single, The Contract<\/em>, has already racked up more than 20 million streams on Spotify alone.<\/p>\n

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