The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and Music Managers Forum (MMF) will honour Pet Shop Boys and long-term manager Angela Becker at the 2024 Artist & Manager Awards.
The duo and their manager will be recognised for their shared pioneering impact on music and culture. Their Artist Manager Partnership Award is sponsored by PPL.
The ceremony, which celebrates creative artists and the entrepreneurial partners who help them build businesses, returns to London’s Bloomsbury Big Top on the evening of Thursday, November 21. It will be hosted by BBC Radio 1Xtra’s Remi Burgz.
Pet Shop Boys have just headlined BBC Radio 2’s annual In The Park festival. They reached No.2 in the UK album chart in April with Nonetheless, their highest-charting studio album since 1993. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe also completed the final UK and European leg of their Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live tour, culminating in a sold-out residency at London’s Royal Opera House.
Pet Shop Boys have sold more than 50 million records, released 60 singles spanning five decades and are listed in The Guinness Book of Records as the most successful UK duo of all time. 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of their debut album and its landmark hit, West End Girls.
Behind the scenes, former Madonna manager, Angela Becker at Becker Brown, started working with Pet Shop Boys in 2009. In the 15 years since, Becker has helped maintain their influence and reputation through a period of industry disruption by growing their live business and embracing new business models, such as the duo’s x2 record label, launched initially with Kobalt Label Services.
The Becker Brown team have also helped expand PSB’s diversity of creative partnerships, including opera, ballet, theatre, fashion, design and film. In 2024, Angela Becker reunited the duo with their spiritual home at Parlophone Records.
Annabella Coldrick, chief executive, Music Managers Forum, said: “The MMF and FAC are delighted that Pet Shop Boys and Angela Becker will join us on November 21 to receive their Artist Manager Partnership Award. The award is testament to their extraordinary impact on music and culture, and how they have deftly navigated such a radically changing business – embracing innovation, pushing boundaries, and always with charisma and panache. Forty years since the release of West End Girls, Neil, Chris and Angela remain a true inspiration to the artist and management communities.”
Peter Leathem OBE, CEO of PPL, said: “PPL is proud to sponsor this year’s FAC and MMF Artist and Manager Partnership Award to celebrate not just one, but two of the most successful partnerships in the history of popular music. Congratulations to Angela, Neil and Chris whose ultimate artist-manager partnership reaches great new heights with everything they do. Congratulations also to Neil and Chris on 40 years of recording some of the most memorable and most loved songs in British music history."
The award is testament to their extraordinary impact on music and culture
Annabella Coldrick
The FAC and MMF also announced that Yungblud (aka Dom Harrison), Tommas Arnby, Adam Wood and the management team at Special Projects Music will receive the Fan Champion Award in recognition of their hands-on approach to building and nurturing a fanbase. The Music Week cover star’s one-day festival, Bludfest, addressed the cost of living crisis and presented an 11-act line-up for less than £50.
The MMF and FAC are involved in multiple campaigns around live music, including 100% Venues that seeks to end onerous commissions on the sale of artist’s merchandise; FanFair Alliance and the fight against industrial scale ticket touting; and the ongoing industry-wide discussions to support the grassroots sector.
David Martin, CEO, Featured Artists Coalition, said: “Building a fanbase is one thing, building a community - a genuine community - is quite another. For those reasons, we are so happy to recognise Yungblud and his management team at Special Projects Music with our Fan Champion Award. The past few years have been extraordinarily challenging for artists and audiences alike, but Dom and team have provided a genuine beacon for younger audiences to connect with music, epitomised by the ideals and ambitions behind Bludfest and his recent book, You Need To Exist. Those ideals are prized highly by the FAC and MMF in all our campaigning work, particularly around live music.“
Tickets for the 2024 Artist & Manager Awards are available now.
2023’s sell-out event saw Duran Duran and Wendy Laister recognised for their long-term partnership.
Other awards went to Central Cee’s manager Bello, Nia Archives, Tinie Tempah, Forever Living Originals, The Cookie Crew, Hard Life (formerly Easy Life), Jorja Smith, Louise Latimer (manager of Self Esteem & The Big Moon), The Flight Club and the Culture Media & Sport Select Committee.
PHOTOS: Vita Spalding/Tom Pallant
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