ADVICE ABOUT MUSIC BUSINESS BOOKS

["Rick Walker \(loop.pool\)" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

WARNING:  the following contains incredibly opinionated (though, hopefully
well informed, advice about your future dealings with the music industry).
It is gratuitous advice so don't waste your breath flaming me if you
disagree (although, please disagree if you DO disagree.......the dialectic
is what makes this list so great).  It is sent out with a lot of heart, but
you don't have to take the advice
nor will I take offence if you don't.



About finding the right music business books, I have this to say:


I've been involved in the music business for 25 years.  In that time I have
been a music business consultant, a manager, a publicist, a band leader, a
producer, a performing and recording artist and a sideman.   I read every
book I could get my hands on about the music business.

After all that time, I have one salient piece of advice:   Be your own
recording label!!!   Buy a good PC or Mac computer and invest in enough
equipment to make the music that you need to make in your own home.  It can
be done on a surprisingly small amount of capital investment.  Think
small!!!!   not Big!!!    You don't have to have the best monitor speakers:
you just need to know how the ones you have sound on many systems.  You
don't have to have the best microphones:  there are several on the market
under $350 that are on the biggest selling records on the planet (this 
might
make a really excellent thread: What Are The Great Budget Microphones for
both Live Looping and Live Recording).

Buy a CD burner and a Scanner and a Printer.   Burn your own CDs in small
quantities and use them when you need to.  Learn how to do simple artwork 
in
the computer environment or, better yet, wrangle some very young, extremely
talented computer savvy visual artist who is really inexperienced and let
them design your artwork for you.   You will be serving them by giving them
an opportunity to get their artwork out into the world and they will serve
you by providing artwork that doesn't suck extremely inexpensively.  Then
print it out and color Xerox it. It isn't a fiery print and it isn't state
of the art printed artwork but it can look fabulous. Your artwork will only
cost a dollar or so per unit and you won't have to make absurd runs of 
1,000
copies which most first artists never come close to selling on their first
CD.  (Another potential thread here:  What are some good recommendations 
for
a workable privately owned and inexpensive recording studio set up).

Then, burn,print and hand stamp your labels (a $20 kit available at any
computer store)onto your CDs, one at a time.   You will probably sell from 
5
to 10 copies per gig if you did a good job of it and have something
compelling to say to an audience

This may sound extremely ambitious but in the long run, you will thank me
for this advice.

There are no lawyers, no A&R people, no record label, no distributor, no
extensive manufacturing costs, no studio fees, nada!!!!

Trust me, if you sell a couple of thousand copies of your own CD in a grass
roots way, you will have record industry people crawling all over you
(because it is difficult to do and if you have accomplished it, they will
know that they have something worth investing in).

Also, take some time and research the keynote speech given to the Digital
Music Conference a year or so ago in New York City by the notorious 
Courtney
Love.  In it she lays out the financial details of  how a freshman pop band
can sell 2,000,000 copies of their first CD with a big budget video and 
make
NO MONEY WHATSOEVER!!!!

When I sell a CD for $15 I have a profit of between $13 and $14 dollars PER
UNIT.
The first 350 copies I sold of my Loop.pooL debut CD PAID for my recording
studio with change left over and, guess what, the next record will have no
overhead at all except the time I spend recording it and the blank CDs and
Xeroxed artwork and stick on labels.

The good news is that having the CD out there will generate all kinds of
income, potentially just because it is out there.  I've made about $5,000
off of CD sales
(extremely modest, but do you know how many CDs you have to sell to make
that kind of profit if you are on an independent label or, god forbid, a
major label) but I've made an additional $15,000 from the live
gigs/production gigs/soundtrack work and dance commissions that came as a
direct result of it's being out there and being reviewed favorably.

Whatever you do,  be creative and don't pull any punches.   Do what is
uniquely YOU and don't worry about the market...............there IS NO
MARKET!!!!
There is however, a burgeoning creative, underground and community oriented
group of artists who are starting to subvert the dominant paradigm by doing
things themselves;working together to create shows (including, blasphemy of
blasphemies, free shows) and house concerts to get new art out to the
people.

I think this decade is going to be incredibly fertile.  I just have a very
strong
intuition about it.

If none of this seems to make sense to you,  go buy KASHIF's book.  It's
pretty good
;-)


best of luck in your artistic career,

let me hear your CD when it comes out..........we can trade!!!

yours, Rick Walker (loop.pool)