(Part 2) Best music business books according to redditors
We found 390 Reddit comments discussing the best music business books. We ranked the 144 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
![Six-Figure Musician - How to Sell More Music, Get More People to Your Shows, and Make More Money in the Music Business (Music Marketing [dot] com Presents)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51blniyQOIL.jpg)
Cant reccommend enough the book How Music Works by David Byrne. It provides an excellent foundation for understanding how music fits in nature and how we discovered this.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Works-David-Byrne/dp/1936365537
I’d suggest a book too. Tells the story of Stax Records but parallels a story of Memphis.
Soulsville
How Music Works
Not a book, but also recommend you check out Cherie Hu's blog, water and music
Check out the book Six Figure Musician. Lot's of good advice to be had.
The drummer wrote a book. good read.
The companies have large security for all people going in and out of the facilities and track production very well to ensure all copies are accounted for. Before you enter and leave you go through airport like security detectors to see if you're carrying metal or cds out.
How people would get out copies is pretty cool.
You'd take one off the line and tag it as defective and trash it, as per the process for defective cds. Then after your shift you'd slyly sneak over and take it out of the trash. But now security. How to get it past an airport scanner? Be a redneck! You wear a large metal cowboy belt buckle, secretly hide the cd behind it, and when you go through security, they think it's just the big belt buckle.
A huge amount of CDs that got stolen and released online were actually just from one single guy who worked in a North Carolina cd manufacturing plant named Dell Glover. A lot of this is recounted in what is roughly the seminal book on it right now by Stephan Witt called How Music Got Free. It's a great read and ties back how the trends in music changed from physical to digital and the story of stealing pre-release cds is one of the driving forces
If this is not a joke, you may be intrested in How Music Works by David Byrne
Lots of good theory/terminology in that bad boy.
http://amzn.com/0316225835
Don't forget his whole book about how the Black people communicate through the Raps!
You'd most likely to find more about your topic in papers rather than books. Better off going to your local library. I have a few from my university's library, but that was about the simillarity of traditional poetry and Hip-Hop.
EDIT: Format
There's plenty of research, data and interviews with current musicians and label owners in these books:
https://www.amazon.com/Freeloading-Insatiable-Content-Starves-Creativity/dp/1935928996
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Ride-Parasites-Destroying-Business/dp/0307739775
https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/0143109340
Steely Dan for an example stopped touring in 1974, they broke up in 1980. They were able to sustain themselves and pay studio musicians for 6 years with JUST record sales.
A band like Steely Dan could be viewed as indie imo despite selling millions, they do not have a lot of catchy songs, they never catered to their audience and became less and less catchy as their career progressed.
Bands that are viewed as indie today (St. Vincent, Mac DeMarco, whatever) would have had a lot more money if they had careers in the 70s/80s/90s, they wouldn't have to tour so much. They'd lead more balanced lives and focus on songwriting more and not just endless touring.
In the UK you had a band like 10cc which is similar to Steely Dan, they didn't tour much, just lived in the studio and made records. Not possible anymore.
So, ok, we lost these kind of studio bands. What did we gain exactly? Amateurs being able to upload their bad songs on Soundcloud and get fake likes/comments from bots?
Sure it is cheaper to record today, but since there is little money in music, a musician has to play the role of the songwriter, recording engineer, arranger, mixer, businessman. He can't afford to get help from people who specialize in recording, or writing lyrics, or arranging. People who are amazing at songwriting, lyrics, recording and mixing all at the same time and extremely rare.
Now a guy that just wants to write songs has to waste his time learning how to record cos' there's no music industry to support him anymore. He has to learn about how to connect stuff together, about acoustics, about some electrical stuff related to audio... In the past he could have just focused on his songs, his record label would get him help from audio engineers and producers and pay for the recording of his songs.
I am talking about bands that I personally like the music of, bands that can't exist anymore in today's music climate. How much more indie can you get than that? They were not outliers back when they were in their prime. They often lived from JUST record sales.
I don't know what kind of indie musicians you talk about? Local bands or something? I mean, every artist starts locally and if they have good enough songs and are promoted well, they start making actual money.
I'm saying that even those local bands would have been better off in the past than today, the average payout per gig today is almost the same as it was in the 90s... the money local live musicians earn hasn't even adjusted for inflation. This data is presented in one of these books I think, but there's also data about it on the net.
Michael Beinhorn discusses this at length in his book Unlocking Creativity
Just grabbed a few links from amazon for books on the subject that might benefit you.
Music Marketing Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Here is the basic steps I would take
Yikes. Don't forget ReviewMeta, either.
peep this
https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Jones-Pimp-Trill-Story/dp/0692461272
Even if you aren't a big pimp c fan, totally worth checking out
My 2 cents is:
It's not about trying to even trying to make money off your friend, but like, assuming you guys make a great mixtape at some point another rapper will ask your friend about you and he will say, "Oh he's dope and he's mad cheap" as oppossed to "Oh yeah he's dope and he'll work for free".
Appetite for Self-Desctruction a good read about how the record industry failed to adapt to the digital revolution.
Look at the detail page for the Kindle version (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NLKTA6): "This price was set by the publisher"
Amazon has no control over this pricing. The publisher is the one dictating what, I agree, is an insane, self-destructive policy. :(
Bought the book and read it at the gym. He makes some great points in laying out the problem. I'm not totally convinced by his exact solution.
But you're right, something like this could definitely be built on a blockchain. On Ethereum I could do it myself.
360 means you pay for stuff to get made ( either Everything or joint venture ) and also receive a cut from all revenue sources ( live shows , streaming , digital sales , merch )
It’s mainly just a term to state that u cover all bases
Here’s a good book to get you started:
https://www.amazon.com/Start-Your-Record-Label-Third/dp/0823084639
Hope that helps
I am so happy you posted this. Several years ago, a friend of mine lent me the book Jacob wrote (So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star) and I loved it. He really has a way with words, and as a fellow drummer and music industry scholar, his work really speaks to me. Subscribing and sharing!
Perfecting Sound Forever by Greg Milner
The book details a history of recorded music, and how changes in recording technology, from Edison cylinders to vinyl to tape, to computers, have changed how music is made. It is a really surprising and interesting look at how technology has changed our perception of music, and it's a really great read if you're into that sort of thing.
David Byrne's How Music Works is also an interesting read as he talks about his own process on various albums, and how he took different approaches to the albums, as well as a number of other aspects of music and the music industry in general. If you're a Talking Heads, or just a David Byrne fan, you'll definitely enjoy it, but even if you're not, it's a worthwhile read. Hope this helps!
IANAL. Assuming you're Each song has a composition and a performance copyright. I believe registering the performance through USCO gives you protection over both. Make sure your contracts reflect songwriter/lyricist ownership over publishing, and representation. Make sure you're with ASCAP/BMI, or another PRO if you're not in the US.
I recommend the following:
This is a great place to start, if you're talking about hip hop commercially.
I use it as a benchmark for every record.
Here’s a link to his book. He doesn’t mention any artist by name but context clues give it away. I knew he was talking about Ness since they both have spoken about taking 3 months from demo/preproduction to actually tracking.
Unlocking Creativity
this book, which was written by Rolling Stone contributor Steve Knopper gives a really good account of what was going on amongst the industry power players while the mp3 revolution was happening.
It's really interesting when it gets to Steve Jobs. The record labels knew that Steve Jobs was screwing them, but they also knew at that point that they had waited too long to capitalize on digital music themselves, and that if they didn't work with Jobs, the next person to come along was going to screw them even more.
Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry by Steve Knopper details how Napster totally surprised the industry and how the industry ineffectively tried to catch up and/or ignore Napster (depending on certain industry exec's point of view).
Highly recommend the book on Pimp C for those interested. It details everything from UGK's rise, his prison stint and his bombastic personality.
https://www.amazon.ca/Soulsville-U-S-Story-Stax-Records/dp/0825672848
He should have read Ghost Crime
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
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Start and Run Your Own Record Label By Daylle Deanna Schwartz.
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/0823084639#productDescription_secondary_view_pageState_1413127367038
She has some other good books that get a little more in depth with marketing the music. I think they would all be a valuable read, she also mentions other worthy books by other authors that I plan on picking up.
Sorry to break it to you but this is how the music business works. Take a look at this book, it should give you a better view of the inner workings of the music business.
How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention
This book is about the development and distribution of digital music files. It is a unique look at the true crime of warez and music piracy.
http://www.amazon.com/Musicians-Business-Legal-Guide-Edition/dp/0132281279/ref=pd_sim_b_8
This book would be helpful.
In Spite (Rock or something)[Themed]
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So I just finished reading David Byrne's How Music Works and was inspired by his work with the Bernie Worrell/Adrian Belew version of Talking heads. In the book, Byrne talks about the power of building the band's songs around a central repeating theme and usiing non traditional percussion to enhance the sound of a former post punk band. The ultimate manifestation of this formula is the concert movie Stop Making Sense - which I think is must viewing for any musician.
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I first built the main riff and the solo about 10 days ago mainly as an exercise in creating a backing track to jam to but then left it to work on other stuff.
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When I saw the theme today I wrote the lyrics and constructed the chorus sections. The song is about someone who hangs onto a 'nightlife' lifestyle too long.
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the main part of the beat is created by combining a trip hop sample loop with bongos and the Logic Drummer Jesse.
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What resulted is a the mutant love child of Some Girls era Stones, Santana and ????
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Anyway - I really liked the way the bass riff just builds tension thru the song. And I highly recommend that book for anyone that is interested in hearing one of music's true pioneers explain his philosophy of music.
Thanks for checking it out!
Exactly. You can not copyright a drum beat, but you can copyright a performance of a drum beat (or anything else). Performance basically just means a recording.
Therefore, if I cover a song, I owe the composer of the song, but not the drummer who played on the original recording. And that is why you make much more money as a songwriter than as a session player.
If you're interested in these kinds of legal issues I'd recommend the following books:
I can't say for sure about the mp3-aspect of it, but Jobs didn't want to include DRM as part of the original launch of iTunes. It was probably the one issue he couldn't get the labels to go along with. Steve Knopper's Appetite for Self-Destruction provides a lot of insight into the creation and execution of iTunes.
The labels screwed themselves over by trying to stop digital music completely in the beginning, rather than of capitalizing on it. By the time iTunes came along, they knew they were getting the shit end of the deal, but they also knew they were to blame. They went along with iTunes because the assumption was the next opportunity was only going to be even worse for them.
for anyone who wants a good look into musician/record company life i would suggest reading this book, written by Jacob Slichter the drummer of Semisonic [remember that song Closing Time?] - http://www.amazon.com/Wanna-Rock-Roll-Star-Machine-Gunned/dp/0767914716/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331036965&sr=1-1
I've only read a free sample of this book while I wait for a hardcover to arrive from Amazon but I bet it would be through uniting the hip hop community through technology somehow. This book outlines the power in the hip hop community, culturally and economically.
https://www.amazon.com/Tanning-America-Hip-Hop-Created-Culture/dp/1592407382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465787232&sr=8-1&keywords=tanning+of+america
Here's a famous video of Steve Stout (author of the Tanning in America book), Ben Horowitz (co-founder of Andreseen Horowitz, a venture capital firm), and Kanye West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdSfnuEGHH4
I remember someone saying that if Steve Jobs was alive today and wanted to run for president, it would be an easy win. He would be able to send all iPhones a notification to go out and vote for him. I don't know if Kanye has as big of a platform as that, but who knows.
http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Mistakes-Catastrophes-Landmines/dp/0879308273
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Record-Producer-Anniversary-Revised/dp/0879309482/ref=la_B001JS1FI8_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420927552&sr=1-1
Are both pretty great reads.....
I think you need to understand the business side of things. If you make the wrong deal, like a co-publishing deal, you will get an advance, and backend royalties with will go against the advance until it is paid off. check out what an Administration deal. Get an entertainment lawyer. Check these resources out:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1480354627/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_WCY0Bb2MZXCMA
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ1RVDuSiJncq6VQYiqpzLA
https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialBeatStars
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https://www.amazon.com/Signifying-Rappers-Mark-Costello/dp/0316225835
Here is the link
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Record-Producer-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0879309482