The music business is an exciting, rewarding, confounding, treacherous, and exhilarating way in which to make a living. For those interested in following their dreams to enter this dynamic and ever-changing industry, nothing less than a road map is needed to navigate and strategize the journey. Music Business Essentials will take musicians and beginning business students on a journey which imparts not only vital "nuts and bolts" information about the business of music, but provides inspirational and practical tips from a veteran traveler who has successfully navigated his own music business path to success for over 25 years. This book is the perfect, easy-to-read introduction to the music industry and will be an invaluable handbook for reference time and again.

Plug your music career into the lucrative new income streams of the digital marketplace
Record deals are so twentieth century. Today, music licensing is the fastest route to widespread exposure and a steady income. Creators of films, television shows, commercials, video games, ringtones, podcasts and other digital-age media hunger for music perfectly suited to their projects--providing endless, lucrative opportunities for savvy musicians. Whether you're an unknown composer, an up-and-coming songwriter, an independent-label performer, or a big label star, there's a place for you in this fast-growing field--as long as you learn to master the game.
How does music licensing work? Where are the most abundant and rewarding opportunities? Find the answers in this authoritative, up-to-the-moment overview of one of the most effective ways to market your talent. It's all here:
The key players in the music licensing business and the best ways to make contacts and bring your music to their attentionTypes of licensing agreements and how to understand themAn inside look at the licensing selection process and how to get a jump on music requestsNegotiating payment and protecting your music in the open marketplace, including international venuesGetting music licensed for television shows, films, commercials, digital media, and less obvious markets like colleges and universities, theater companies, corporate training videos, and restaurantsFirsthand advice from top music executives, marketers, music supervisors, lawyers, talent managers, and filmmakers

Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success. "Climbing the Charts" examines how songs rise, or fail to rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear picture of the roles of key players and the gatekeeping mechanisms in the commercial music industry. Along the way, he explores its massive inequalities, debunks many popular misconceptions about radio stations' abilities to dictate hits, and shows how a song diffuses throughout the nation to become a massive success.

Contrary to the common belief that Clear Channel sees every sparrow that falls, Rossman demonstrates that corporate radio chains neither micromanage the routine decision of when to start playing a new single nor make top-down decisions to blacklist such politically inconvenient artists as the Dixie Chicks. Neither do stations imitate either ordinary peers or the so-called kingmaker radio stations who are wrongly believed to be able to make or break a single. Instead, Rossman shows that hits spread rapidly across radio because they clearly conform to an identifiable style or genre. Radio stations respond to these songs, and major labels put their money behind them through extensive marketing and promotion efforts, including the illegal yet time-honored practice of payoffs known within the industry as payola.

"Climbing the Charts" provides a fresh take on the music industry and a model for understanding the diffusion of innovation.

Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they lay the foundation for a black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century. A companion website contains jubilee troupe personnel, recordings, and profiles of 85 jubilee groups. Please go to: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/graham/spirituals/

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy is the first thorough analysis of how policy frames the behavior of audiences, industries, and governments in the production and consumption of popular music. Covering a range of industrial and national contexts, this collection assesses how music policy has become an important arm of government, and a contentious arena of global debate across areas of cultural trade, intellectual property, and mediacultural content. It brings together a diverse range of researchers to reveal how histories of music policy development continue to inform contemporary policy and industry practice. The Handbook maps individual nation case studies with detailed assessment of music industry sectors. Drawing on international experts, the volume offers insight into global debates about popular music within broader social, economic, and geopolitical contexts.

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions we make in our lifetime. Career choice is more than working to earn a living but also an important window into how we identify and feel about ourselves. There are multiple issues involved in every career choice, particularly in the pursuit of a career in music performance. Influenced by her hybrid background in music performance, psychology, and psychoanalysis, Julie Jaffee Nagel addresses the joys and challenges of career choice in music, with a specific focus upon the classical performing musician. She addresses a wide range of pressing topics related to such a career choice at a time when jobs and income for musicians are diminishing and COVID-19 has had a monumental, long-term impact on the arts. This includes feelings of burnout, career change and redirection, the need for self-care, mental health issues related to the lack of jobs and income, and the oftentimes crippling standards of professional performing musicians. In addition, Nagel also points to potential opportunities and advocates new roles for musicians in the wake of a transformed music industry and society. Despite the numerous challenges performing musicians face in their careers, music can play a powerful role in mental life and society, helping us cope with the ravages and losses of the pandemic and other important events, and this can serve as much inspiration and reinvigorate professional musicians questioning the purpose of their career. All of these themes are developed through stories, clinical examples, anecdotes, research data, and personal reflection.

Many young musicians will admit they know little about personal finance. They have trouble budgeting what little money they make from their part-time jobs, carry debt incurred by ringing up credit cards on studio equipment they cannot afford, and get lured into using the latest investment apps that have them putting grandma's birthday card money into investments they may not even understand. Even worse, when that rare musician gains financial and career success, they often go on a mad spending spree only to end up completely broke ten years later. You don't want this to happen to you, right? This is why a simple and easy-to-read book written specifically for musicians about personal finance is so vital to understanding and success. Written by a 30-year expert in the music business together with a 30-year specialist in the investment industry, Personal Finance for Musicians provides a brief overview of everything you should have learned in school but didn't. Topics include: developing the right mind-set, paying-off debt, budgeting and saving, building credit, dealing with banks, paying taxes, insuring your assets, understanding investments, examining music revenue streams, learning the lingo, seeking financial help, avoiding financial noise, and more. This book provides an excellent introduction for musicians whose knowledge is limited or who are new to the critically important subject of personal finance. The objective is to help put you on the right track to better financial health and inspire you to learn more without intimidating you, or even worse-boring you.

This fully updated and complete guide takes you inside the world of creating music for film, television, and-unique to this third edition-video games. It addresses a wide range of topics including musical aesthetics, cutting-edge technology and techniques, and current business aspects of the industry. The Reel World is packed with insider's tips and interviews with some of the most influential film, TV, and video game composers, along with music editors, music supervisors, agents, contractors and studio executives. Rona also advises how to nurture positive relationships with your creative team and professionals in the industry. For the aspiring film, TV or video game composer, this book is a veritable cornucopia of useful information for pursuing scoring to picture as a career. Includes interviews with John Williams, Carter Burwell, James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer, Mark Isham, Basil Poledouris, Ludwig Goeransson, Marc Shaiman, John Powell, Wendy and Lisa, Joseph Trapanese, and Michael Giacchino. This book explores... The Creative Process: Making good musical choices The psychology of a good score Continuity and contrast, economy and musicality The importance of styles Technology: The best gear for film, TV and video game scoring Home studio design Synchronization Mixing for film, TV and video game scoring Career: Getting started Industry politics Demoing and finances

Drawing on interdisciplinary research methods from musicological and legal scholarship, this book maps the historical terrain of forensic musicology. It examines the contributions of musical expert witnesses, their analytical techniques, and the issues they encounter assisting courts in clarifying the blurred lines of music copyright.

The second edition of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the Streaming Era sheds light on the way large corporations appropriate new technology to maintain their market dominance in a capitalist system. To date, scholars have erroneously argued that digital music has diminished the power of major record labels. In iTake-Over, sociologist David Arditi suggests otherwise, adopting a broader perspective on the entire issue by examining how the recording industry strengthened copyright laws for their private ends at the expense of the broader public good. Arditi also challenges the dominant discourse on digital music distribution, which assumes that the recording industry has a legitimate claim to profitability at the expense of a shared culture. Arditi specifically surveys the actual material effects that digital distribution has had on the industry. Most notable among these is how major record labels find themselves in a stronger financial position today in the music industry than they were before the launch of Napster, largely because of reduced production and distribution costs and the steady gain in digital music sales. Moreover, instead of merely trying to counteract the phenomenon of digital distribution, the RIAA and the major record labels embraced and then altered the distribution system.

The Best Jobs in the Music Industry is an essential career guide for those who love music and are exploring different areas of the music industry beyond the obvious performer route. This second edition includes updates and even more interviews, giving a look at how music jobs have changed and the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the industry. Michael Redman boils down the job requirements, skill sets, potential revenue, longevity, benefits, and challenges of a variety of music careers, from performer to label executive to recording engineer and music producer. Each description of a job starts with a short summary, followed by stories of the paths to success and the challenges you may confront-all in the words of real pros. Redman interviews over sixty professionals in the business, including Lee Sklar (session and touring musician), Damon Tedesco (scoring mixer), Brian Felsen (CEO of CD Baby), Mike Boris (worldwide director of music for McCann Advertising), David Newman (composer), Michael Semanick (re-recording mixer), Conrad Pope (orchestrator), Todd Rundgren (musician), Gary Calamar (music supervisor), Mark Bright (producer), and Scott Mathews (producer).

The relationship between popular music and consumer brands has never been so cosy. Product placement abounds in music videos, popular music provides the soundtrack to countless commercials, social media platforms offer musicians tools for perpetual promotion, and corporate-sponsored competitions lure aspiring musicians to vie for exposure. Activities that once attracted charges of 'selling out' are now considered savvy, or even ordinary, strategies for artists to be heard and make a living. What forces have encouraged musicians to become willing partners of consumer brands? At what cost? And how do changes in popular music culture reflect broader trends of commercialization? Selling Out traces the evolution of 'selling out' debates in popular music culture and considers what might be lost when the boundary between culture and commerce is dismissed as a relic.