Representation Index methodology

What "represented" means here

A record asserts one thing: a named public document states that a named agency represents a named artist, and the record reproduces what that document says. It does not assert that a contract is in force, that the agency books every date the artist plays, or that the relationship is exclusive. Where a source describes representation in all areas, the record says so rather than narrowing the claim to touring, because narrowing would be an inference.

Representation is distinct from three relationships it is routinely confused with. Management directs an artist's career and is a different company in most cases. Promotion is the assumption of financial risk on a specific show, and is the promoter's function, not the agent's. Label and publishing relationships concern recordings and compositions and have no bearing on who sells a live date. None of the three is recorded here.

Inclusion rules

• A record requires at least one cited public document with a URL, a publisher and a date on which a Live Index editor read it. There are no rows sourced to memory, aggregation sites or unattributed knowledge.
• Every field is populated only from the cited document. Territory, agent, department and scope are absent when the source is silent, and a silent source is never read as worldwide.
• An artist enters the register because evidence exists, not because the artist is prominent. The sample is therefore shaped by what the trade press announces and what agencies publish, which is itself a bias and is stated as one.
• Corporate history is respected: an agency that acquired another agency's live-music business does not inherit its relationships in this register without a source naming the artist.
• No record is created for a deceased artist's representation, and no record is retained where its only purpose would be to document a personal circumstance rather than a market relationship.

Territory and co-representation

Representation is frequently split by territory, and the split is the analytically interesting part. Where a source names two agencies for one artist in different territories, the register stores two records rather than one, each carrying its own territory string as the source words it. Neither record is a worldwide claim, and no record is promoted to worldwide because the other territories are unaccounted for.

Where a source explicitly excludes a territory but names no agency for it, the exclusion is recorded on the row and no second row is created. An unnamed agency is not a record.

Territory is not a required field, and most records do not carry one. A roster listing establishes that an agency publishes an act on its own roster without stating where it represents the act; that row records the relationship and leaves territory empty rather than assuming worldwide scope. Of 137 records, 19 state a territory. The same rule governs agent, department and representation scope: each is stored only when a source states it.

Touring tier

The schema carries a touring tier field, and at this version every record leaves it null. A tier is only defensible when it is assigned by a stated rule applied to observed data — for example, the modal capacity band of an artist's announced dates over a defined window. Live Index has not yet collected that data at the artist level, so no tier is assigned. The field is not a judgement about an artist's standing and will not be used as one.

Change, history and supersession

A record is never edited to reflect a change. When an artist moves, the earlier record keeps its identifier, its evidence and its dates, and its status becomes historical; a new record is created naming the record it supersedes. The register therefore accumulates history instead of replacing it, and a reader can see what was true, when, and on what basis. Where a departure is known only from the announcement of the arrival, the historical record says so and leaves the start date unknown rather than estimating one.

Agency-level change is handled the same way. A merger or acquisition creates a new agency record with its own evidence, and pre-merger relationships are not transferred to the successor without a source naming the artist.

Publication thresholds

Not every record in the register produces a page. An agency profile publishes once the register holds at least 3 current relationships for that agency. A standalone artist page publishes once the register holds at least 2 records for the artist, corroborated by at least 2 independent publishers. Agencies and artists below those thresholds remain fully visible inside the register, and their names, records and sources are readable on this site — they simply do not get a page of their own, because a page built on one announcement would be a page about nothing.

Update cadence

The register is reviewed end to end and versioned by the date of that review; the current version is 2026.08, reviewed 2026-08-20. Individual records carry their own last-verified date, which is the date an editor last read the underlying source. Between reviews, new records are added as evidence is found. A record that has not been re-read since its trade announcement stays at reported status however old it is; age is visible on the row rather than hidden behind a refresh.

Collection follows the Live Index data collection standard, and corrections follow the corrections policy.

What the register cannot support

• Market share. The register counts documents, not artists, and the denominator — every represented touring act in the United States — is unknown.
• Roster size. An agency's roster is far larger than the rows here, and the difference between agencies in this sample reflects announcement practice as much as anything else.
• Concentration or trend. A sample assembled from what was announced cannot be differenced over time to produce a movement.
• Exclusivity. No source in the register states that an agency is an artist's only representative in a territory unless the row says so.