The New Music Industries


Book Description

This research-based book outlines career models for artists, methods of creative engagement, artistic options including individuality and branding, production practices, the realities of being a musician in the new industries, and implications for popular music education. Due to the profound effects of the digitisation of music, the music industries have undergone rapid transformation. The former record label dominated industry has been supplanted by new industries, including digital aggregators, strategists and online platforms. These new music industries now facilitate ‘direct’ access to both artists and their music. While such accessibility and the potential for artist exposure have never been greater, the challenge to stand out or to even navigate a musical career pathway is formidable. A useful resource for musicians and educators, this text highlights the ways in which the new music industries facilitate increased opportunities for 21st Century popular musicians to collaborate, communicate and interact with others interested in their music.




The Rest Is Noise


Book Description

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.




The New Blue Music


Book Description

Rhythm & blues emerged from the African American community in the late 1940s to become the driving force in American popular music over the next half-century. Although sometimes called “doo-wop,” “soul,” “funk,” “urban contemporary,” or “hip-hop,” R&B is actually an umbrella category that includes all of these styles and genres. It is in fact a modern-day incarnation of a musical tradition that stretches back to nineteenth-century America, and even further to African beginnings. The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950-1999 traces the development of R&B from 1950 to 1999 by closely analyzing the top twenty-five songs of each decade. The music of artists as wide-ranging as Louis Jordan; John Lee Hooker; Ray Charles; James Brown; Earth, Wind & Fire; Michael Jackson; Public Enemy; Mariah Carey; and Usher takes center stage as the author illustrates how R&B has not only retained its traditional core style, but has also experienced a “re-Africanization” over time. By investigating musical elements of form, style, and content in R&B—and offering numerous musical examples—the book shows the connection between R&B and other forms of American popular and religious music, such as spirituals, ragtime, blues, jazz, country, gospel, and rock 'n' roll. With this evidence in hand, the author hypothesizes the existence of an even larger musical “super-genre” which he labels “The New Blue Music.”




It All Begins with the Music


Book Description

An examination of the various professions in the music business, with examples and interview excerpts of individuals in these fields.




The Future of the Music Business


Book Description

Aimed at songwriters, recording artists, and music entrepreneurs, this text explains the basics of digital music law. Entertainment attorney Gordon offers practical tips for online endeavors such as selling song downloads or creating an Internet radio station. Other topics include (for example) web site building, promoting through peer-to-peer networks, etc.




The New Musician


Book Description

In today’s rapidly changing music landscape, entrepreneurship is an art that is just as vital as creativity—one that all musicians must master for a successful and sustainable career. In The New Musician: The Art of Entrepreneurship in Today’s Music Business, award-winning industry veteran Menzie Pittman provides insights from world-class artists, music business leaders, educators, and professionals who share invaluable reflections on the successes and challenges of their careers, imparting advice to both aspiring and working musicians. Included are vital conversations about topics like leadership and business with an impressive cast of people including record executive Mike Curb, nine-time GRAMMY award-winning record producer Dave Cobb, and singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sierra Hull. By learning from others’ experiences in this book, musicians will discover a range of creative solutions to the problems frequently encountered and will enhance their entrepreneurial skills. These success stories and cautionary tales will help illuminate a road map to success.




Get More Fans: The DIY Guide to the New Music Business


Book Description

How Do I Promote My Music On A Small Budget? How Do I Get My YouTube Videos to Spread? How Do I Turn Casual Fans Into One’s Who Buy From Me? How Do I Get Written About On Blogs? How Do I Increase Turnout At Shows? How Do I Make Fans Using Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr And SoundCloud? With every day that passes, the power the major labels once had dies a little more. The chance to get the same exposure as your favorite musicians gets easier and easier. The hurdles that would only allow you to get popular, if the right people said your music was good enough, are gone. You can now get exposed to thousands of potential fans without investing 1% of what musicians used to by building a fanbase based on listeners love for your music. No more writing letters hoping that A&R writes you back. This book explains how you do it. While many books will tell you obvious information, legal mumbo-jumbo and marketing catchphrases that don’t help you get more fans. Our experience working with real bands - from upstarts like Man Overboard and Transit to legends like The Cure, The Misfits and Animal Collective, has led us to understand the insider tricks and ideas that go into some of the most important groups of our time. We produce records, do licensing deals, negotiate record contracts and get the musicians we work with written about on websites like Pitchfork and Vice. We have worked with bands who started off as nothing and became something. Unlike any other book written on the subject we have compiled the knowledge no one else has been willing to print in fear of obsoleting their own career. We give you thousands of ideas on how to get people to hear your music and turn them into fans who pay to support your music. Whether you are a label owner, musician, manager, booking agent or publicist there is information in this book that will help you do what you do better. Enjoy! For more information see GetMoreFansBook.com




Talking New Orleans Music


Book Description

In New Orleans, music screams. It honks. It blats. It wails. It purrs. It messes with time. It messes with pitch. It messes with your feet. It messes with your head. One musician leads to another; traditions overlap, intertwine, nourish each other; and everyone seems to know everyone else. From traditional jazz through rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll to sissy bounce, in second-line parades, from the streets to clubs and festivals, the music seems unending. In Talking New Orleans Music, author Burt Feintuch has pursued a decades-long fascination with the music of this singular city. Thinking about the devastation—not only material but also cultural—caused by the levees breaking in 2005, he began a series of conversations with master New Orleans musicians, talking about their lives, the cultural contexts of their music, their experiences during and after Katrina, and their city. Photographer Gary Samson joined him, adding a compelling visual dimension to the book. Here you will find intimate and revealing interviews with eleven of the city's most celebrated musicians and culture-bearers—Soul Queen Irma Thomas, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Charmaine Neville, John Boutté, Dr. Michael White, Deacon John Moore, Cajun bandleader Bruce Daigrepont, Zion Harmonizer Brazella Briscoe, producer Scott Billington, as well as Christie Jourdain and Janine Waters of the Original Pinettes, New Orleans's only all-woman brass band. Feintuch's interviews and Samson's sixty-five color photographs create a powerful portrait of an American place like no other and its worlds of music.




The Power of Music


Book Description

The award-winning creator of the documentary The Music Instinct traces the efforts of visionary researchers and musicians to understand the biological foundations of music and its relationship to the brain and the physical world. 35,000 first printing.




Guitar Zero


Book Description

On the eve of his 40th birthday, Gary Marcus, a renowned scientist with no discernible musical talent, learns to play the guitar and investigates how anyone—of any age —can become musical. Do you have to be born musical to become musical? Do you have to start at the age of six? Using the tools of his day job as a cognitive psychologist, Gary Marcus becomes his own guinea pig as he takes up the guitar. In a powerful and incisive look at how both children and adults become musical, Guitar Zero traces Marcus’s journey, what he learned, and how anyone else can learn, too. A groundbreaking peek into the origins of music in the human brain, this musical journey is also an empowering tale of the mind’s enduring plasticity. Marcus investigates the most effective ways to train body and brain to learn to play an instrument, in a quest that takes him from Suzuki classes to guitar gods. From deliberate and efficient practicing techniques to finding the right music teacher, Marcus translates his own experience—as well as reflections from world-renowned musicians—into practical advice for anyone hoping to become musical, or to learn a new skill. Guitar Zero debunks the popular theory of an innate musical instinct while simultaneously challenging the idea that talent is only a myth. While standing the science of music on its head, Marcus brings new insight into humankind’s most basic question: what counts as a life well lived? Does one have to become the next Jimi Hendrix to make a passionate pursuit worthwhile, or can the journey itself bring the brain lasting satisfaction? For all those who have ever set out to play an instrument—or wish that they could—Guitar Zero is an inspiring and fascinating look at the pursuit of music, the mechanics of the mind, and the surprising rewards that come from following one’s dreams.