Job responsibilities for an executive/junior executive at a record label?

For an independent/smaller record company, you have some room to play with since job descriptions will often overlap. Smaller companies don't have as many employees, or the same number of resources, or the strict hierarchical structure as the big guys.

For this reason, it's also hard to pinpoint exactly what your junior exec would be doing. But based on what your character has "told" you, s/he is probably going to be in charge of scouting/signing musical acts, and then managing those acts during recording and fulfilling other aspects of their respective contracts.

Here are some responsibilities that s/he could potentially be doing:

- Listening to CDs and scouting talent
- Negotiating and renegotiating contracts
- Being the main link between the band's manager and the record label
- Producing and/or hiring/firing producers
- Approving budgets/spending for certain musical acts
- Approving session musicians and other things producers wants to spend money on
- Hiring/firing recording engineers
- Finding / approving / negotiating recording studio time
- Marketing the musical acts s/he is in charge of
- Making sure the artists are where they are supposed to be at any given time
- Scheduling of just about anything you can think of in respect to all of these other duties
- Reporting back to his senior exec(s)

And a few "unofficial" job tasks might be:

- Keeping the lines of communication flowing between the artists, their management, the record label, the producers, the recording studio, etc...
- Resolving scheduling issues
- Resolving personality conflicts
- Motivating people that want to give up on the project
- Schmoozing radio stations and CD distributors
- Filtering information and constantly reassuring the senior exec(s) that there are no issues, everything is on schedule, under budget, and is in line with the record label's goals

S/he may also have a low-paid assistant or unpaid intern that takes care a lot of the leg work. They may or may never see each other.

Again, in a smaller record company your junior exec could be doing any combination of these things (and more). It is very dependent on the size of your record company, how old it is, how many employees, how many artists are currently under contract, and how much money the company has. One thing for sure, is that your junior exec would be far closer to the front lines than s/he would be at a major record company.

Hopefully that helps.

My only comment would be that there is a world of difference between a "junior" executive and a "senior" executive.

Titles are handed out like candy nowadays. Executive assistant is a fancy way of saying Secretary just as "Junior" executive is a nice way of saying underling.

Moving up the ladder has less to do with someone retiring and more to do with the money you generate for the company.

In my opinion, the above post is what i'd think a senior executive would do as most of those actions have a direct impact on the labels bottom line.

A junior executive would be doing all the "grunt" work such as:
compiling costing data, compiling stats (facts and figures) of artists, researching downloading trends, writing reports, scouting talent, etc. and handing that to the Senior exec who then uses that work to do the above list (like negotiate).

Now, depending on the junior execs drive, he can generate some opportunity for himself and the label by serving up prospects on a silver platter or making himself an integral part of whatever business dealings are going on. However, unless he works for a REALLY big label, I can't see him having the responsibilities highlighted in the above post.

The smaller the company, the more that money decisions are made by the top people.

Mel...