Explains how to form a rock band, work with other musicians, obtain bookings, promote the band, and handle recording and other contracts.

Readers will gain vital and accurate knowledge about the music business, how musicians get paid, the legal framework for business, and will learn to recognize and leverage opportunities through overcoming the inevitable obstacles to success in a rapidly-changing industry. The author offers valuable insights into the niche readers might fill with their career, and discover their unique path to success. Readers will come away with a greater understanding of the scope and demands of the music and entertainment industry.

This electrifying book covers all the requirements for starting a band.

This hands-on volume gives young adults practical guidance to turn their dream of being in a band into a reality. Specific steps from what songs to play to touring are clearly described. Aspiring musicians learn every aspect of the process: where to look for band members, advertising, working as a unit, keeping costs down, playing gigs, recording demos, making a press kit, building an online presence, creating a Web site, getting on the radio, obtaining a manager, selling CDs, getting signed by a record company, and publishing music.

Everything kids need to know to make their rock star dreams come true! From writing cool songs and getting a group together to putting on shows and shooting music videos, this is all aspiring rockers need to take the world by stage—just like the Kidz Bop kids do! Plus! As an added bonus, these enthusiastic song lovers will be able to participate online with Kidz Bop and vote on storylines, upload original videos for e-book inclusion, and access special bonus content.

A lot can happen with 10 minutes of musical practice a day. Self-disciplined, compassionate, responsible, collaborative, confidant, and proud. These are all characteristics of children who play musical instruments. What's more, the benefits of music education reach far beyond the lesson and well into all aspects of adulthood.This book will help your child reap the rewards of opening that case; together, you will learn what music can teach:* Every child is naturally talented.* Consistent practice is the key to success.* Parents and music educators are partners in the learning process.* How to remove barriers to successful practice.* The importance of giving your child ownership of their learning.With the right approach, your child will do much more than grow in musical proficiency, they will become the person they were meant to be.

For decades, Jesse Cannon has been pushing creative ideas in music. You may know him from writing one of the most popular books on the music business, Get More Fans, or from his recording credits on records with the most varied set of bands you've ever seen, including The Cure, The Misfits, Animal Collective, Brand New, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Menzingers, Limp Bizkit, Basement, Leftover Crack, Saves The Day, Senses Fail, Weird Al Yankovich, Lifetime, Say Anything, NOFX, Flatsound, Man Overboard, Bad Books, Transit, Somos, Cavetown, and over a thousand others. You may also know his work as the host of the podcasts Atlantic Records Inside The Album, Noise Creators, and Off The Record, his popular YouTube channel Musformation, as a producer for popular podcasts at Rolling Stone & The Daily Beast or from his writing at outlets like Alternative Press, Tape Op, & Hypebot. In Processing Creativity: How To Write Songs People Love he chronicles the lessons learned working on all those records and writing about music's most progressive ideas, taking on the subject he knows the most about; helping musicians fulfill their creative vision. The book is the culmination of four years of poring over scientific studies, books, and thoughts from top creators as well as his own experience to write a book every musician should listen to about what goes into making great music versus what bands do when they make the innumerable bad songs we hear each day. Covering the pitfalls of creating music, the book thoroughly explores the hidden reasons we actually like music, how to get along with our collaborators, and patterns that help creativity flourish. While every musician says that being creative is the most important part of their life, they barely explore what's holding them back from making music they are happy with. When trying to navigate the ways our creative endeavors fail there's no YouTube tutorial, listicle, or college course that can help navigate the countless creative pitfalls that can ruin your music but after reading this book you will have the knowledge to guide you to make songs the world loves. The essential ideas on creating music are detailed in a simple, fun language that’s littered with quotes and insight from the most innovative creators of our time including: • How to make highly emotional music that compels listeners to listen again and again. • Effectively dealing with collaborative problems like “too many chefs in the kitchen,” giving helpful criticism or dealing with stubborn collaborators. • Finding inspiration when you have writer's block. • How to draft your songs while avoiding the common pitfalls of losing perspective and giving up. • Examining the unexpected reasons we enjoy music. • Calming your thoughts so they don’t sabotage your music and other helpful tools to help execute your music as best as possible.

• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.

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

This book describes the emergence of DIY punk record labels in the early 1980s. Based on interviews with sixty-one labels, including four in Spain and four in Canada, it describes the social background of those who run these labels. Using the ideas of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this book shows how the field of record labels operates. The choice of independent or corporate distribution is a major dilemma. Other tensions are about signing bands to contracts, expectations of extensive touring, and use of professional promotion. There are often rivalries between big and small labels over bands that have become popular and have to decide whether to move to a more commercial record label. Unlike approaches to punk that consider it a subcultural style, this book breaks new ground by describing punk as a social activity. One of the surprising findings is how many parents actually support their children's participation in the scene. Rather than attempting to define punk as resistance or commercial culture, this book shows the dilemmas that actual punks struggle with as they attempt to live up to what the scene means for them. Book jacket.