The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business. This item is unavailable.The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business

A companion to the successful "Guerilla Film Maker's Handbook", this book deals with every aspect of professional music making in today's popular music industry on both sides of the Atlantic. In creating music and developing a career, almost everyone starts out "independently", that is without the support of a large company. However, independent music making can be defined in a broad sense as a particular attitude towards creating and distribution of music held by professional people. The attitude involves a commitment to retaining control over your work as far as it is practically comaptible with getting it to the larget possible relevant audience. This does not necessarily mean that the independent musician does everything him or herself. One of the most important dimensions of the book will be the checklists of questions musicians need to ask themselves in order to decide whether they need outside help from a manager, lawyer, accountant, record company, music publisher, agent, press officer, plugger etc. The book is divided into six sections, each of which includes brief interviews with key experts. The first two deal with the main areas of musical activity - live performance and recording. Section three explains other aspects of musical activity while section four gets down to the nitty-gritty of the business aspects of making music. Section five summarizes the whole area through some well-chosen real life examples of independent musical activity. Finally, a toolkit section will provide examples of key documents (recording contracts, PRS membership agreements, etc) and other relevant data.

Sarah Davis has worked in most areas of the music business over the past decade - as a gigging and recording musician, as a partner in a independent record label, in public relations, and as a journalist contributing to Melody Maker, Music Week, Songplugger and Future Music. Dave Laing is a Research Fellow at the University of Westminster where he conducts research on the music industry. He is on the editorial board of the forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Popular Music of the World and is the author of several books on popular music and a former editor of Music Week. Matthew Moore has been Music Programmer for the radio station WSPN 91.1 FM and a local representative for American major labels Elektra and Thrive (representing, for example, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and John Digweed, The Cure, Stereolab, Metallica and Bjork). His experience in sound engineering has brought him from the studio to dance music clubs and rock venues, to the radio and back again, lending some insight into the gigging experience in America. Simon Keliman has worked at WKCO 91.9 FM in Ohio as a hiphop music director, assistant engineer and disk jockey. He contacted labels, reviewed new releases and helped with programming and had weekly and bi-weekly radio shows featuring hiphop, electronica and funk music. He hosted a monthly series of 'live-mix' shows featuring both US and UK disk jockeys and helped organise and promote several hiphop and rock music concerts. Murdoch McBride has written about the music business since 1984 and has contributed to Cash Box, Music Connection, Performance, BAM, Back Stage, Hits, MBI and the Hollywood Reporter. He has also edited Song Talk for the National Academy of Songwriters and ASCAP PlayBack and published his own trade magazine, Songwriter's Weekly. He currently writes and edits business news for Playbill On-Line.