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Music Business Books: Top 2 Choices for the Serious Musician

If you are a musician concerned with making money in your chosen field, you know that you need to educate yourself on the music business. Of all the great music business books I’ve seen, two stand out as ideal for the musician ready to do some serious study of the music industry.

Donald passman Everything you need to know about the music industry it is a great choice for the performer; In addition to delving into the nitty-gritty of copyrights, royalties, and recording contracts, he guides musicians through the critical process of choosing attorneys, managers, accountants, and other professional managers. The great strength of this dense book is in its detail; Passman takes the common terms of the music business and explains what they are and how they affect artists. Passman’s hideously humorous explanations and illustrations on recovery, the practice of record companies charging all album expenses against artist royalties, are excellent examples of the information musicians need, presented in an easy-to-swallow way. .

Eric Beall’s Make music, make money it is more oriented towards composers, particularly in the fields of pop, urban, rock and contemporary music for adults. Mr. Beall’s book guides you, also with a touch of humor, more irreverent than bleak, through the process of obtaining music from your desktop through the Copyright Office, to executives in the music industry. , above details of the standard recording contracts, to the release party. , in record stores, advertising, movies and money in your bank account. Mr. Beall’s anecdotal-rich explanations and instructions on the art of “connecting songs,” that is, taking your song to people who can use it, are worth the price of the book. So are the lights it casts on the work of musicians who choose to share editorial work more closely with their publishers (that’s called co-publishing) or to handle all the publications themselves (that’s called desktop publishing).

Musicians hoping to have a profitable career should consider purchasing the above two books. Together they offer a comprehensive view of what awaits musicians in the music business. The first book gives artists great details about what they will face and the teams they can build to help and protect them. The second book gives songwriters the knowledge they need to get their music off their desks and earn real money. Don’t think of these books as the end of your study and don’t take them as a speed reading or casual assignment. If you need information at a glance, neither will be entirely correct. On the other hand, the music business is a complicated beast; The time you spend on these two books will pay off throughout your career.

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