Models etc could be their own agent in theory. Some of them are. Im freelance and get some work through agencies and some work through my own methods.

Imagine you have a large service based business. You have the employees that provide the service and you have employees that are in the sales team. It makes sense to have these as two separate departments because the skill sets are different. Agents are basically sales reps. If there’s a problem the client goes to them. When you’re actually working, they’re looking for the next job for you. Agents also have a large set of contacts that they can call upon to look for work. Theyre the ones that are good at networking and talking clients into hiring you. They’re the ones that show up in google first.

If you’re a client looking for a model or actor, you don’t have time to go through endless google pages for independent models. What you want is to go to an agent and describe what you’re looking for, then they utilize their extensive talent pool to get you what you need fast and efficiently. They’ll also probably find a better model for your needs than you could find yourself. That is why clients will be willing to pay more to use an agency.

Time and talent

Just because you're good at acting doesn't mean you're good at business arrangements, negotiation, scheduling, and finding opportunities. And once you start getting jobs you won't have time to look for the next one which could need to be lined up months out

The whole job of the agent is to look for and make arrangements for jobs. They have time dedicated to that task since they aren't trying to shuffle between doing the thing that makes money(acting) and lining up the next job, the thing that makes money for the agent is lining up the next job. They're also going to have the right network for it, again because its what they do. Agencies will also represent multiple people so while Client A isn't the right guy for every job they can still land jobs for Client A and use Clients B-Z for the other openings they're better suited for

Generalists aren't great at any task, this is why we tend towards specialists

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The talent aren't marketing experts. Almost everyone is willing to be spoonfed 3x the deals for a 20% cut.

Well, the agent is the person who brings the work to these artists. They basically look for auditions, openings or any other opportunities. Since most artists are unaware of how the business side of things work they have their agent do that for them and the agent gets paid. This is basically for Artists who aren't fully successful and can't really hire a manager to do all this full time for them.