In the music industry, the days of deals in smoke-filled back rooms are all but over. Artist development happens on the streets, not at major labels. And the old-school "professional" managers are stepping down, one by one, to cozy retirements funded by decades of commissions from successful clients. With fewer and fewer "lifers" available to take on new clients, what's an emerging artist to do? Likewise, how does an aspiring artist manager get a start without the connections and influence required of their predecessors? Music business manager and consultant Joe Taylor Jr. set out to answer these questions for a member of his staff. The result? Over 160 pages of nuts-and-bolts advice for the novice music manager, or for any musician looking to boost their success team by adding homegrown management to the mix.

“A guide that introduces system thinking, thereby demystifying the management process and helping you see your entire situation and a clear path forward.” —Eric Dean, CEO, Whereoware Every manager knows a business is a system, yet very few have studied systems thinking or system dynamics. This is a critical oversight, one which Simple_Complexity remedies. Simple_Complexity reveals the fundamental system archetype at work in your enterprise and prescribes new and exciting ways to re-invigorate your management thinking. Picking up where the greats in management thought leave off, Simple_Complexity provides a systems context that powerfully enriches traditional management thought and practice. “Willy takes the powerful but complex discipline of systems thinking, lays it bare for everyone to see and comprehend through real and practical examples. He helps readers understand that systems invariably comprise and touch every activity and part of the enterprise and not understanding them can lead to devastating results.” —Lance Drummond, Executive in Residence Christopher Newport University, Luter School of Business, Board Member Freddie Mac “Simple_Complexity will push your thinking about organizations and the people who manage and populate them to a new level. You will never view organizations in the same way again.” —Michael Fraser, President & CEO, National Technologies Associates, Inc. “[A] practical little book on leadership. Here is someone with (a) real-world experience, (b) advanced academic credentials, and (c) a humble spirit, and he is willing to do one thing: he translates fresh ideas from systems thinking into language that anyone with a lick of ambition can understand and use.” —Nathan Harter, author of Cultural Dynamics and Leadership

Allen prepares you for the realities of successfully directing the careers of talented performers in the high-risk, high-reward music business. You will learn to prepare yourself for a career in artist management - and then learn the tools to coach, lead, organize time, manage finances, market an artist, and carve out a successful career path for both yourself and your clients. The book features profiles of artist managers, an exclusive and detailed template for an artist career plan, and samples of major contract sections for artist management and record deals. Updated information including a directory of artist management companies is available at the book's companion website. A peer reviewer for Artist Management for the Music Business proclaimed ".this is going to be an excellent text. It contains many unique insights and lots of valuable information. This is essential reading for managers, students, and artists in the music business.

(Berklee Press). Get organized, and take charge of your music projects! This book will help you harness your creativity into clear visions and effective work plans. Whether you are producing a recording, going on tour, developing a studio, launching a business, running a marketing campaign, creating a music curriculum, or any other project in the music industry, these road-tested strategies will help you to succeed. Music projects come in all sizes, budgets, and levels of complexity, but for any project, setting up a process for planning, executing, and monitoring your work is crucial in achieving your goals. This book will help you clarify your vision and understand the work required to complete it on time, within budget, and to your highest possible quality standard. It is a comprehensive approach, with hundreds of music industry-specific tools for keeping your work on track, mitigating risk, and reducing stress, so that you can complete your project successfully. You will learn to: develop work strategies; delegate tasks; build and manage teams; organize your project office; develop production schedules; understand and organize contracts; analyze risk; and much more.

The New York Times bestseller "Blinder's book deserves its likely place near the top of reading lists about the crisis. It is the best comprehensive history of the episode... A riveting tale." - Financial Times One of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the crisis and its lessons. Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history—books written to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and to think his way through to a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here—mired as we still are in its wreckage. With bracing clarity, Blinder shows us how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good—and too unregulated for the public good—experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Things started unraveling when the much-chronicled housing bubble burst, but the ensuing implosion of what Blinder calls the “bond bubble” was larger and more devastating. Some people think of the financial industry as a sideshow with little relevance to the real economy—where the jobs, factories, and shops are. But finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body: if the blood stops flowing, the body goes into cardiac arrest. When America’s financial structure crumbled, the damage proved to be not only deep, but wide. It took the crisis for the world to discover, to its horror, just how truly interconnected—and fragile—the global financial system is. Some observers argue that large global forces were the major culprits of the crisis. Blinder disagrees, arguing that the problem started in the U.S. and was pushed abroad, as complex, opaque, and overrated investment products were exported to a hungry world, which was nearly poisoned by them. The second part of the story explains how American and international government intervention kept us from a total meltdown. Many of the U.S. government’s actions, particularly the Fed’s, were previously unimaginable. And to an amazing—and certainly misunderstood—extent, they worked. The worst did not happen. Blinder offers clear-eyed answers to the questions still before us, even if some of the choices ahead are as divisive as they are unavoidable. After the Music Stopped is an essential history that we cannot afford to forget, because one thing history teaches is that it will happen again.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

What can the top of the charts in the world's biggest music market tell us about management? This book analyses pop music successes to understand the role of managers and management. A critical study of management in the pop music industry, the book illuminates the key trends in music management and how these have changed significantly in the last sixty years. The author shows how those changes have influenced the music we hear and how it is represented. Featuring insights into equality, diversity and inclusion, the book also highlights how pop music management has contributed to consolidation in the global music industry. The book examines the management behind acts including Taylor Swift, the Beatles, K-Pop icons, hip-hip pioneers, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Carole King and many others. By providing clear and concise examples of the management behind Number 1 albums in the US charts, the book invites the reader not only to think about real-world management, but to consider getting involved with management themselves. This practical and accessible book will prove valuable reading for students and scholars of the music business, as well as a providing insightful lessons for music managers around the world.

This book is your guide to the study and practice of music management and the fast-moving music business of the 21st century. Covering a range of careers, organisations, and practices, this expert introduction will help aspiring artists, managers, and executives to understand and succeed in this exciting sector. Featuring exclusive interviews with industry experts and discussions of well-known artists, it covers key areas such as artist development, the live music sector, fan engagement, and copyright. Other topics include: Managing contracts and assembling teams. Using data audits of platforms to adapt campaigns. Shaping opinions about music, musicians, events. How the music industry can be more diverse, inclusive, and equitable for the benefit of all. Working with venues, promoters, booking agents, and tour managers. Branding, sponsorship, and endorsement. Funding, crowdsourcing and royalty collection. Ongoing digital developments such as streaming income and algorithmic recommendation. Balancing the creative and the commercial, it is essential reading for students of music management, music business, and music promotion – and anybody looking to build their career in the music industries. Dr Chris Anderton, Johnny Hopkins, and James Hannam all teach on the BA Music Business at the Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies at Solent University, Southampton, UK.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

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.