WORDS: LILY NGUYEN
IMAGES: BLED CELHYKA / ARTS & CRAFTS PRODUCTIONS
Bled Celhyka is an Artist Manager at Arts & Crafts Productions, one of Canada's most influential independent music companies. He works closely with a roster that includes Dan Mangan, Jason Collett, Lowell and Julianna Riolino, helping guide touring, release strategy and long-term career development.
In this Behind The Music interview, Celhyka discusses the realities of modern artist management, from coordinating album campaigns and navigating industry change to helping artists build sustainable careers over the long term.
Hey Bled! You manage a roster of long-term artists at Arts & Crafts - what does your role actually look like week-to-week across releases, touring and planning?
It’s a hard thing to specifically define since it all depends on the cycle the artists are on. Week to week, it’s all about how things are looking one-to-three months out (specifically for tour dates or festival performances), or 12-18 months out if we’re looking at an album recording and release campaign. For example, summer is always kind of busy for managers of touring artists who are flying to festivals or international tour dates, and there are a lot of logistics for those performances, even if there’s a tour manager on the shows or not.
If I’m on an album campaign for an artist there’s regular calls and check-ins with label teams, promo teams, the artist themselves for their content strategy, and any other external team members that are working the album. On top of that any small fires that come up, or new business opportunities that come our way are pushed into the forefront of the planning and communications.
There’s some sense of a cyclical nature to things, with constant adjustments to industry trends, artist’s lives, and the state of the world or touring landscapes.
How involved are you in the key decisions that shape a release, from creative direction through to how it’s ultimately rolled out?
Usually quite involved, but as involved as an artist or band needs and wants. It’s not the same for any client I’ve worked with. Some artists I’ve had moments where I’ve suggested ideas for the music, but they have such a strong vision for it that the suggestions aren’t necessary. I often find, with the artists I work with, it’s the visual components of the project - whether that’s album art, merch designs, music videos, or short-form video content - where the advice and support are most necessary. Most musicians I’ve worked with have a strong sense of how they want their music to sound and come across, but it’s the extra elements like the visual approach and branding that takes on a collaborative nature.
Then when it comes to the actual roll out or how to use those elements to market the album or music that further is collaborative with our marketing and promo teams.
What does sustaining long-term careers look like from a management perspective?
This is really the key to the role in my mind. It’s what I got into management for, supporting and helping artists achieve their goals and sustain a career in music for themselves. For long term careers, I see it as each artist regularly working on understanding what they bring to the table, artistically, and what part of the music industry they can work the most in, and have the most success in.
This is a business, so artists switching their creative brains into their career brains takes time and effort, but knowing where they can make money for themselves, and others, is how a career is sustained.
So, for example, many clients of mine have been, and are, touring artists. But with the current state of the touring world, and what has been coined blue dot fever, or just honestly audiences’ reluctance to spend a lot on concert tickets (whether far in advance or at all), many artists have had to rethink how they tour, how often, what markets, and if they focus on touring at all. If that was a big part of their revenue year to year, how can they make up that difference? Thinking about what artists excel at outside of touring then becomes the conversation – recording other people in a studio they control, focusing on writing for others or co-writing or scoring film and TV, recording more frequently and putting more focus on the digital release of music than an album every 3 years between touring cycles that gets rinsed and repeated. These are the elements of a career that can have longevity if explored right and early, and in conjunction with an artist’s core pillars of their career.
As a manager, I’d then be part of those conversations with the artists, finding the right external team members to achieve those goals, and then working on that part of the client’s career as needed.
At what stage do you feel an artist really benefits from having management involved?
Any time I’ve talked to prospective artists that are either looking for management or that I’m chasing, I often go to the business case for this question. Does an artist need management – that really depends on how much they’re really doing themselves, building their systems and career up to a point where they honestly believe they’re leaving money on the table by not having a manager to connect the dots and find more people to join the team, or at least do some of that work in the early stages. As a pure business decision, that’s the key. But I’ve also taken on artists from their very first releases, in the absolute early days, where they didn’t quite know what a manager is and what they do, so by doing it, I’ve shown those artists how they benefit by having someone in their corner, supporting them and putting the campaign pieces in place. If the potential for the artist’s career is incredibly high, I would consider taking that chance in the very early stages.
Management is a labour of love most of the time, and a manager has to absolutely love the work an artist is putting out, and they have to get along. Managers need to be someone you can have dinner with, and not talk about music or career development the whole time. If I love the music and feel I can have dinner with an artist and talk about all kinds of other things, then I’ll see if there’s a business case for the project, in its current form or in the future.
Is there a recent moment, decision or release from your roster that you felt really captured what good artist management looks like?
Last year we did a release with AWAL for Julianna Riolino’s sophomore album, Echo in the Dust. We did it ourselves, Julianna and I, doing the bulk of the heavy lifting marketing and promoting the album, hiring the relevant teams, with an elevated distribution deal with AWAL.
We had some success capturing the attention of fans from her first album, but when we were heading into a tour in early 2026, we realized we needed to recapture people’s attention. With a few songs that were left off the album, we rethought the approach. Speaking regularly, the artist and I determined it was necessary for her music to go more traditional in our approach on the campaign, and not relying solely on the modern digital advertising or hoping and praying for a viral moment.
As a manager, you have to try things, and test the waters, but ultimately when the evidence shows you need to rethink and iterate your plan, you do. It was one of those moments where, afterwards, once we hired the right promo teams (in this case, a publicist and AAA non-comm radio pluggers in the touring market), we saw the proof in the excitement from the audience and greater industry. Those moves set us up for further promo activities on a future release.
Learning and iterating are the only ways to continue working in this business, seeing how fast things change around us.
Learn more about Arts & Crafts Productions at https://arts-crafts.ca.
About Behind The Music
Behind The Music is an interview series from Hype-Index exploring the people behind today's music industry. Through conversations with artist managers, publishers, marketers, publicists, label executives and other industry professionals, the series aims to shed light on how artists are developed, supported and discovered behind the scenes.
Each interview offers a practical look at the roles, decisions and day-to-day work that help shape modern music careers.
About The Author
Lily Nguyen is Editor-in-Chief at Hype-Index, where she covers artist development, music marketing and the wider music industry ecosystem. Through the Behind The Music series, she speaks with the professionals helping shape the careers of emerging and established artists across the industry.