Radio and Television personality Jay Foley is well known for his many years of hard work and experience in artiste management. However, he has revealed that he chose to walk away from the job for various reasons, including artistes’ ego and shortsightedness.

Jay made the revelation in a one-on-one conversation with George Quaye on Joy FM’s Showbiz A – Z, where he detailed reasons for taking a break from a job that he once loved.

“Some [artistes] have disappointed me, as a result of ego, vision…trust. A lot of these talents are shortsighted and want things overnight, in 24 hours, which doesn’t work”, he revealed.

Jay Foley maintains that it is imperative for artistes to obtain deep understanding of the music terrain, including its associated dynamics. He likened artiste-manager relations to practices in the corporate world where businesses “engage professionals to do the work for them, and trust these professionals to get the job done. Trust, which is key”.

Unfortunately, “a lot of these talents are shortsighted”, he lamented.

According to Jay Foley, his wealth of knowledge and experiences, which some artistes haven’t yet accumulated, have taught him that artiste management revolves around human relations and thus require time to generate expected results. It seems almost impossible to turn things around within a very short time. In other words, ‘Jay is not a magician!’

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Failure to meet the demands of these music talents largely contribute to the fallout between artistes and their managers. “Artistes, after 10, 20 retweets on their Twitter…they feel they’re on top of the world, some of them, feel like they’re there. And then the ego plays in”, Jay mentioned.

Money seems to never leave the equation. In this regard, the experienced former artiste manager revealed that some artistes eventually get complacent due to the structure of payments that are received from their works. “Of course the money comes in the artiste’ name, so if he checks his balance and he’s got a $100,000 in there and he feels you have just 15% of that, he feels like ‘I have the money so I call the shots’, and it’s always the case”.

Jay Foley revealed that these are some of the reasons why he took a step back from managing artistes, and rather went into consultancy in an attempt to continue working in the music space and still preserve his good name.