All You Need to Know About the Music Business: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Our band is about to get beyond the local scene and start wrestling with the industry for record deals and national tours, so I practically jumped out of my skin when I finally found this book. It completely demystifies the workings of the entire music industry--in a musician-friendly way. A tiny, selfish neuron in me hesitated for a moment about telling the world of this book--but hey, we musicians are all in this together. If everyone negotiating with record companies read and used this book, we'd collectively be better able to get the sort of financial rewards our art deserves.

Just so you know this isn't a load of hype, here are the section and chapter titles.

• Your Team of Advisors
  • How to Pick a Team; Personal Managers; Business Managers; Attorneys; Agents
• Record Deals
  • Broad-Strokes Overview of the Record Business; Advances and Recoupments; Real-Life Numbers; Other Major Deal Points; Producer Deals; Advanced Record Deal Points; Advanced Royalty Computations; Loan-out, Independent Production, Label, and Distribution Deals
• Songwriting and Music Publishing
  • Copyright Basics; Publishing Companies and Major Income Sources; Secondary Publishing Income; Songwriter Deals; Copublishing and Administration Deals; Advanced Copyright Concepts; Even More Advanced Copyright Concepts
• Group Issues
• Touring
• Merchandising
  • Tour Merchandising; Retail Merchandising
• Motion Picture Music
  • Overview of Motion Picture Music; Performer Deals; Film Songwriting Deals; Composer Agreements; Licensing Existing Recordings and Existing Songs for Motion Pictures; Music Supervisors; Soundtrack Album Deals

Each and every chapter is full of wisdom, humor, and support, written by an actively practicing Harvard Law grad who has also been teaching music law at UCLA (a stone's throw from the heart of darkness) since 1978.