Case Study: How We Built the Ultimate Artist Management Hub for RODA Artists

Discover the custom workspace Mega Labs built for RODA Artists' managers, leveraging AI and automation to save their team time so they can focus on what matters most: growing their artists' careers.

Introduction

RODA Artists is an LA-based artist management company operating on a global scale. The company represents talent in the dance/electronic space, including Yulia Niko, Moullinex, Enamour, HANA, Sam Shure, and more.

Their collective experience spans decades, and their team understands the importance of operating efficiently to stay on track, attract new talent, and deliver the very best service to their roster.

However, like so many in the music business today, the RODA Artists team was burdened by busy work and drowning in complexity. From juggling multiple artist schedules, to coordinating with labels, promoters, and service providers, to manually updating scattered information across emails and spreadsheets, the team was in a constant uphill battle just to keep up. They were spread too thin while working across too many different tools. RODA's core mission of nurturing artists and propelling their careers forward was being overshadowed by operational challenges that prevented them from spending their time and energy on what got them into the business in the first place. They needed a way to focus on what truly matters: fostering relationships with their artists and helping them grow.

Recognizing the need to improve their internal processes, the RODA team brought in Mega Labs to solve some of these issues. After analyzing RODA's workflows and the unique demands of modern artist management, we developed a solution: a custom-built Notion workspace, supercharged with automations and designed specifically for artist management.

RODA's needs were clear: centralize, standardize, and automate. With their new digital hub, RODA Artists now has access to project management tools, templates, and automations that have given them the time and energy to focus on what they love to do.

The Challenge

Navigating the music industry today means you're wearing more hats than ever. Managers and artists are effectively acting as the label, marketer, social media manager, pitching director, publicist, and more. Meanwhile, they’re dealing with more third-party portals, platforms, tools, and interfaces than ever before.

The transition to streaming, social media, and a high-volume, singles-centric model has only intensified these pressures, leaving many teams struggling to keep up. The insatiable demand for content creation has surged beyond manageable limits, burdening artists and their teams with a need to keep feeding the algorithms. This has created an “overwhelming expectation to be plugged in 24-7”, with teams being under-resourced and overworked (see 2022 Music Managers Forum report on digital burnout). 

All this presents clear challenges for getting things done right and on time, but the greater risk of this constant multi-tasking and information overload is the looming threat of artist and manager burnout. By optimizing the way you work, you can take steps towards addressing these issues and taking control. 

The Solution

As an artist and label services agency, we’ve long recognized the need for more efficient workflows in the music industry. So, we took it upon ourselves to build a solution. We created a custom music management system in Notion that has facilitated over 50 releases for Mega Labs clients in the last year, and has significantly reduced the time our team spends managing each release.

The beauty of this system is that it’s fully customizable and adaptive to the needs of the music industry. It brings together day-to-day project management, music releases, meeting notes, templates, automations, intuitive layouts, and more. 

Imagine a world where every new music release is instantly tasked out at the click of a button and reactive to schedule changes, without the need for manual updates when timelines shift. Imagine a world where you don’t have to constantly be jumping between Google Sheets, emails, and makeshift databases just to keep track of releases, tours, and artist goals. This is the world we’re trying to build.

Read on to learn how we implemented this solution inside RODA Artists to streamline their operations and give them back the time and energy they needed.

Notion For Artist Managers

Recognizing the value of the Mega Labs system and RODA's similar needs for more efficient internal operations, we developed a tailored solution that spans across artist management, touring, and music release management. Like our own Mega Labs workspace, the RODA Artists Manager Hub was built in Notion, a versatile productivity tool used by millions, including industry giants like Figma, Nike, and Amazon. 

Let's dive into some of the key components: 

• Artist Hub
• Music Releases
• Touring

Artist Hub

At the core of RODA’s workspace is the Artist Hub. Each artist on the RODA roster has a dedicated homepage that includes key links, meeting notes, upcoming releases, and tour dates. Whether it’s press shots, one sheets, blurbs, social links, or marketing plans, everything a manager needs is easily accessible and in one place. Meanwhile, each release and live show includes a standalone project that managers can use to go deeper on, with template layouts and tasks to manage the work. 

RODA managers can now hop on a call with their artist and easily update them on current projects and plan what’s coming next. They have info on their releases and shows in the same centralized hub. Artist pages can also be published and shared, giving clients real-time access to everything happening with their career.

Music Releases

Releasing music is central to any artist’s career. It demands meticulous planning and execution. Managers are also increasingly the driving force behind their artists’ releases, often taking over from what was traditionally the label's domain. As such, it was crucial for RODA to have an all-in-one tool that could streamline their release management process, including everything from assets to marketing plans to tasks.

Each upcoming release in the RODA workspace has a dedicated project page that centralizes all of these essential elements. Cover art, assets, social and streaming links, marketing drivers, press releases, social calendars, and label copy - everything is in one place. No more frantic searches through emails and drives to find what you’re looking for. And with a project timeline view and automated task list template to manage each step of the release process, you can get an instant snapshot of your progress. 

RODA managers can now coordinate entire campaigns efficiently, from initial planning to release day and beyond. Live release pages can also be shared with artists and third-party team members, ensuring everyone stays aligned on campaign goals and deadlines.

Live Events and Touring

Managing live events remains a cornerstone of artist management. Recognizing this, we equipped RODA Artists with powerful tools to streamline their touring operations. The team now has access to meticulously designed, visually appealing tour and live event templates that automatically populate upon confirmation of each show. From day-of-show contact information to scheduling details and venue info, to ticket links and marketing plans, it’s all there, in one easy-to-manage space that makes advancing shows a breeze.

Project & Task Management

As mentioned above, the RODA Artists workspace is centered around three core pillars: the Artist Hub, Music Releases, and Live Event & Touring. But the core purpose for each of these pillars is to streamline project and task management. Music Releases are projects. Live Events are projects. Each of these projects comes with a set list of tasks that need to be completed. The way to manage those projects and the associated day-to-day work is through the kind of integrated project management system we’ve built for RODA. 

The beauty of this system is that tasks and projects can be connected throughout the workspace, giving users different “views” into the work that needs to be done. Managers can see their personal to-do list and all associated tasks in their My Tasks view. When they want to dive deeper into a given release or show, they can also see every single task associated with that project, and know what needs to be done. 

Alternatively, a manager can see all tasks associated with a specific artist, which comes in handy as you’re preparing to jump on a call with your client. Regardless of how you work, whether it’s looking at the project-level, artist-level, or personal-level, with our custom Notion workspace, you get a flexible task and project management system that meets your needs and works with you in the immediate context of your work.

Beyond basic task management, however, we’ve built some exciting custom automations and integrations into the RODA Artists system that free up time, and speed up the release management process. 

One-Click Campaign Kick-Off

We’ve used our years of experience in music marketing and label operations to develop the ultimate exhaustive list of tasks required for any music release, covering everything from contracts, asset production, marketing releases, pitching, advertising, and more. Task due dates are preset based on “ideal due dates” that align with release timelines. This means that launching a new release campaign or live event project can be initiated at the click of a button, creating a pre-populated marketing plan and exhaustive task list pre-assigned to team members.

The value here is immense: you have an informed, battle-tested list of to-dos instantly tasked out to your team, making project management setup almost instant and ensuring nothing important gets missed.

Auto-magic Timeline Adjustments

But we didn't stop there. If you work at a label, artist management company, or if your work touches marketing campaigns for music releases in any way, you know that a release date can change… and most likely will change. When these changes occur, it often triggers a cascade of adjustments, sending teams into a scramble to update their work timelines and re-assign due dates. 

That's where our Magic Due Date automation comes in. It makes shifting project timelines a breeze by intelligently adjusting your entire project timeline when a release date changes - eliminating any adverse ripple effects to team member task management. Here's how it works:

1. We've mapped out the “ideal” due date for each task in the release process based on the release date. 60 days before release, 30, 15, etc. 
2. When you update the release date, our system automatically recalculates all task due dates based on the new date. 
3. Your marketing plans, promo and pitching tasks, plus other team to-dos, all get re-assigned automatically, with new due dates.

This means no more manual rescheduling, no missed deadlines, and no confusion when plans change. Whether your release moves forward or back, your entire campaign adapts in seconds. It's project management made for the speed of the music industry.

Effortless tasking on-the-go

We all know that the music business runs on mobile. Whether you’re a manager or you work at a label, you’re on the go. You’re in meetings, attending shows, or traveling - but the work doesn’t stop. That’s why we built a custom mobile app for RODA that lets their team add tasks and manage projects on the go. With the ability to leave voice notes and a direct integration with Notion, teams can stay informed and in sync at all times.

The end of meeting notes

Note-taking is essential, but oh so hard to do consistently. AI transcription tools like Otter and Fireflies have promised to make it easier, but far too often these out-of-the-box options make mistakes, misinterpret context, or provide inaccurate analysis. 

Our custom meeting notes automation supercharges these tools using top-performing LLMs like Claude and GPT-4o to generate prompt-engineered, context-informed, impressively detailed meeting summaries and lists of action items. These notes are then automatically delivered to your Notion teamspace, ensuring you always have the full context on your projects. This has been a game-changer for RODA, easing a significant mental burden that might otherwise make a day full of meetings feel overwhelming.

Working With RODA

Expanding on our own Mega Labs project management system, our mandate was to deliver an artist management-ready system for RODA that incorporated new functionalities, new project types, new automations and new workflows. We built their team custom artist hubs, event project types, new task templates, a mobile app, and more. 

To achieve this, we took a systematic approach that started with whiteboard sessions to map out RODA's current workflows, followed by collaborative system design and iterative feature development to arrive at a final project scope and timeline that matched RODA’s needs and expectations. 

We knew adopting a new project management system would be a challenge, so once the project was delivered, we rounded it out with comprehensive training and onboarding, leaving RODA's team with all the resources they needed to hit the ground running. 

Results and Impact

In the fast-paced world of music, half the battle is trying to efficiently manage the tangled mess of tasks, timelines, and communications across labels, promoters, and artists without getting lost in a sea of disconnected information.

With their new workspace, RODA Artists now completes projects and tasks faster, driving better results for their artists while enjoying the benefits of enhanced efficiency and productivity. They’ve managed to save time and energy through:

• Automation of repetitive, routine tasks 
• Smart integrations and an overall reduction of tools
• Centralizing work and documentation

This has allowed their team to expand creative resources and focus on artist development and creative projects, without having to worry if their existing projects and releases are on track. As the company continues to expand and grow, having a centralized system that keeps everyone organized and accountable will become a critical part of how RODA works.

Take control of your music management

If you work in music, whether you’re an artist manager, music marketer, work at a label or distributor, or do something else in the field, we think we can make your life easier by helping you better organize how you work.

If you’re interested in developing your own custom workspace, send us an email at product@mega-labs.io.