The book's focus is on successful music entrepreneurship and career development in the global music and entertainment industry. The list of specialized occupations filled by musicians is lengthy, e.g. performer, producer, arranger, composer, songwriter, lyricist, music editor, publicist, recording engineer, conductor, sound technician, manager, entertainment lawyer, promoter, booking agent, tour manager, music educator, vocal coach, private instructor, music supervisor, music programmer, electronic DJ, etc. There are also careers ancillary to music, such as event organizer, music therapist, radio station director, or entertainment director. Music plays an important role in advertising, marketing, video games, film, and digital media as well, and there are tie-ins to tourism, restaurant, and the hospitality industry. Music as an industry is multifaceted, and is a subset of the broader entertainment industry which includes sports, cinema, broadcasting, and creative digital media. The entertainment industry in aggregate is viewed as a potential growth area by governments and by commercial concerns, and often targeted and supported as a tool for sustainable international economic, social, and cultural development. There is even such a thing as music diplomacy, as a component of cultural or "soft power" diplomacy. As with many professions, the set of skills, knowledge, and strategies required to become successfully employed in the music and entertainment-related fields are not the same set of skills needed to do the actual jobs. Young musicians and others with the ambition to work in the music industry are often baffled by the many options available, conflicting information, and the lack of a clear path to success. They are thirsty for balanced and reliable knowledge about and clear direction on how to prepare for a career in the industry. Universities, colleges, and specialty training schools offer programs designed to help individuals prepare for careers in music, leading to certificates, diplomas, or degrees, including at the graduate level. But the focus of the trainings and curricula are most often only on the skills needed to perform the work and not on how to access the work through careful career preparation and entrepreneurial thinking. There is a dearth of relevant information about how to access the opportunities, leverage the training and the networks gained in school, and how to succeed through meeting the true demands of the industry. This book aims to fill this need.

The emergence of social media in the early 21st century promised to facilitate new "DIY" cultural approaches, emphasizing participation and democratization. However, in recent years these platforms have been criticized as domineering and exploitative. For DIY musicians in scenes with lengthy histories of cultural resistance, is social media a powerful emancipatory and democratizing tool, or a new corporate antagonist to be resisted? DIY Music explores the significant challenges faced by artists navigating this fraught cultural landscape. How do anti-commercial musicians operate in the competitive, attention-seeking world of social media? How do they deal with a new abundance of data and metrics? How do they present their activity as "cultural resistance"? This book shows that a platform-enabled DIY approach is now the norm for a wide array of cultural practitioners; this "DIY-as-default" landscape threatens to depoliticize the call to "do-it-yourself."

Howard Bloom-called "the greatest press agent that rock and roll has ever known" by Derek Sutton, the former manager of Styx, Ten Years After, and Jethro Tull-is a science nerd who knew nothing about popular music. But he founded the biggest PR firm in the music industry and helped build or sustain the careers of our biggest rock-and-roll legends, including Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Queen, Kiss, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run DMC, ZZ Top, Joan Jett, Chaka Khan, and one hundred more. What was he after? He was on a hunt for the gods inside of you and me. Einstein, Michael Jackson & Me is Bloom's story-the strange tale of a scientific expedition into the dark underbelly of science and fame where new myths and movements are made.