The engrossing, insightful, and personal musical odyssey of Peter Shapiro, perhaps the most notable independent concert promoter since Bill Graham Peter Shapiro is the best known and most influential concert promoter of his generation. He owned the legendary Wetlands in Tribeca and has gone on to much bigger things, including Brooklyn Bowl (NYC, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Nashville), the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, producing U2 3D, and promoting the Grateful Dead's fiftieth-anniversary tour ("Fare Thee Well") featuring the Core Four and Trey Anastasio . . . and so much more. In The Music Never Stops, Shapiro shares the inside story of how he became a power-house in the music industry-an island in an increasingly consolidated landscape of venues, ticketing, and touring-through the lens of fifty iconic concerts. Along the way, readers gain insight into what it was like to work with some of the most celebrated bands in modern music, including not just the Grateful Dead and U2, but also Bob Dylan, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Al Green, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Jason Isbell, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Roots, Robert Plant, Leonard Cohen, and many more. Featuring never-before-published back-stage anecdotes, insights, and photographs of the biggest bands in the business and the concerts that later became legendary, The Music Never Stops is a perfect guide for any-one who wants to understand the modern live music industry.

"A clear, comprehensive look at a murky business." --"The Wall Street Journal"

Your favorite band has just announced their nationwide tour. Should you pay to join their fan club and get in on the pre-sale? No, you decide to wait. But the on-sale date arrives, and the site is jammed. You can't get on--and the concert is sold out in six minutes. What happened? What now?

Music journalists Dean Budnick and Josh Baron chronicle the behind-the-scenes history of the modern concert industry. Filled with entertaining rock-and-roll anecdotes about The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, and more--and charting the emergence of players like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Live Nation, and Outbox--"Ticket Masters" will transfix every concertgoer who wonders just where the price of admission really goes. This edition has an updated epilogue that covers recent industry developments.

?In the spring of 1975 a trio of neophyte businessmen backed an old Chrysler onto a sun-baked Arizona driveway and convened in their new office. The garage start-up, dubbed Ticketmaster, would come to achieve such market dominance over the following decades some critics would denounce the company as an unlawful monopoly. Yet its path to the top was far from inevitable and Ticket Masters analyzes the legality and ethics behind the actions of Ticketmaster, including its recent merger with Live Nation. Ticket Masters, based on first-person interivews with the key players, is a character-driven story that explores the actions and impact of the iconoclasts guiding Clear Channel, Ticketmaster, Live Nation, SFX, MusicToday, and StubHub, while folding in related tales of trustafarians, scalping syndicates, old-school music promoters, and would-be Internet tycoons. Ticket Masters answers such questions as: Just what is included in a service fee and why does it vary with the price of a ticket? Why am I forced to pay for parking when I'm taking public transportation to the concert? and Who really pockets all of that money? This guide to the concert industry looks into cubicles, conference rooms, and booking agencies and includes interviews with promoters, musicians, and corporate executives with connections to both Ticketmaster and the bands. Special attention is paid to the touring activities and ticket-selling practices of the Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, U2, Dave Matthews Band, and the Rolling Stones.

Jam Bands is a comprehensive, critical exploration of the bands and music of the genre. It provides commentaries on more than 150 groups with evaluative discographies, web guides and a look at some of the groups' celebrated live performances. It will enhance readers' appreciation of certain artists while introducing dozens of other notable bands. In addition the book digs deeper into the scene through a series of complementary essays. Budnick explores the origins and development of the genre and the term itself, and traces its genealogy through a family tree. The work provides a detailed behind-the-scenes essay on the history of the Jammy Awards. The author also elaborates on the emergence of Jambands.com and the resuscitation of Relix Magazine, selects top releases, collects some essential quotes from his conversations with all of the jam band principals over the years, and in the case of certain performers, explains, "where they are now."