All You Need to Know About the Music Business: 10th Edition

build a fan base, and market to them. Since your music has a wide appeal, if you break through, you’ll make far more money by keeping the record company’s share of the pie, not to mention keeping all of your non-record income.

On top of all this, the artist would have to put up the money to manufacture the records. And if the stores didn’t sell them, they’d be returned to the artist, who’d lose the manufacturing costs, plus the freight costs in both directions.

Few things last forever, and an assured stream of earnings at your highest level is not one of them. So even the best business managers can’t help you if you overspend on jets, yachts, houses, cars, and controlled substances.

There are three major record companies in the world today, and each owns a set of labels. They are Universal (Interscope, Republic, Capitol, etc.), Sony (Columbia, RCA, Epic, etc.), and Warner (Atlantic, Warner, Elektra, etc.). In addition to these mainstream labels, all three of the majors own “independent” distribution companies (more about those

No one pays as good attention to your business as you do.

You can get free, basic data from Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, and Spotify Artist Insights. And when you get that data, it can put your booking strategy on steroids—for example, you’ll be able to see where your fans are clustered, so you can strategically target those markets rather than just booking gigs in East Bumbleton and hoping the fa

Remember, you’re hiring people to guide your professional life, not to hang out on the tour bus. It’s nice if you strike up a friendship with your professionals, but it’s not essential. (However, with your personal manager, I think you need at least a solid rapport, if not a true friendship.) I’m not suggesting you hire someone you really dislike,

Even with these folks, I generally do an email outlining the terms. It spells out the percentages, states that the term can be ended by either party at any time, and deals with the post-term earnings (see the above discussion). It never hurts to make sure there are no misunderstandings.

However, some agencies try to commission your soundtrack album royalties if the album is derived from a film in which they got you work as an actor or actress.