In what has to be one of the longer titles I've ever reviewed, Justin Goldberg's The Ultimate Survival Guide To The New Music Industry (Handbook For Hell) weighs in on a more than a few topics.
The book is primarily structured around a number interviews with noted people from all walks of the music business. There are some good nuggets of information buried in the text for those who might be thinking of trying to make some headway in the industry.
I'm not sure who it was that first pointed out the analogy, but somewhere along the path of my first year of experience in the music business someone said to me, "The music business is high school with money." An odd thing to say, I thought at the time, but eventually, a revelation — the gossip, the cliques, the In Crowd on the fast track, the backstabbing, the egos and the pettiness...it really is high school with money.
p. 152
But I don't know if the value of the information is worth the read. I would probably characterize this work as a second tier resource. It's good to read when you've been through the A list, but not so good that I would drop everything just to finish it.
A closing quote from the book, though, that does bear repeating:
...if you want to get paid for maing music, you are going to have to start compromising immediately. It doesn't matter if you are standing on the street corner singing "The Times They Area a Changin'" for quarters — someone's going to come along and say, "Can't you play 'Maggie's Farm'?" It depends how bad you want that quarter.
p. 344
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