Customer Reviews

Music Is Your Business: The Musician's FourFront Strategy for Success

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I have not completed the book yet but I have read about half. It is an excellent book for someone who aspires to be part of the music industry. It will give you the WHOLE picture, and a lot of legal information that many people probably don't know about. It also helped me realize some of my options as a musician. I highly recommend this book.

Chris Knab has made his career in all areas of the music business, from record store owner to radio DJ, starting a record label to managing an independent radio station, and music business educator and consultant.

Using what he calls the Four Front strategy to cover Artist and Product Development, Promotion, Publicity and Performance issues, Chris Knab shows independent musicians how to navigate the paths to sucess in the music business.

Let me break these down for you a little bit. In the Artist Development section, he lays out the knowledge and skills that musicians and bands need to reach their goals of getting their music out to an audience, and guides you through the many potential minefields that can hinder you from achieving success. In the Product Development section, he and entertainment lawyer Bartley Day detail the specifics of getting a record released, including CD production and both retail and internet distribution, as well as the many legal issues to be considered. In the Promotion section, he gives detailed information needed to get radio airplay for your songs. In the Publicity section, he shows the ways to get the word about your music out to the print, broadcast and internet media. Finally in the Performance section, he focuses on ways to find and build an audience of customers for your music.

The book is packed with useful information, but is also easy to read, and is a very good reference for any musician or band seeking a successful music career. The book won't do the work for you, but it will give you a detailed insider's view on what you need to do to make it in the music business.

Whether you're thinking about a career in the music industry, curious about the mechanisms behind starting up a record label, or an artist that wants to cover the business side of being a successful performer, this is the book for you.

Christopher Knab's book, "Music Is Your Business: The Musician's ForeFront Strategy for Success", skillfully navigates the reader through the sometimes tumultuous terrain that independent musicians and record labels travel every day. Methodically comprised of what he calls the Four Fronts, namely Artist & Product Development, Promotion, Publicity and Performance, Chris pulls from a body of knowledge that spans from his thirty years in the music industry.

Terms are spelled out in an easy to read format, but with a technical tone for those that want to sharpen skills they already have. Whether you're a beginner or long time veteran, his book is loaded with useful and insightful information that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else. As someone whose starting his own label, this resource has been an invaluable source of inspiration and information. Simply put, this book rocks!

This book is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to start treating their music career as a serious business.

There are a lot of solid books out there that bite off a piece of the music industry - promotion, getting gigs, publicity, website management - but this is the book you need to start with. In it you will find a detailed overview of every aspect of the music business in clear no-nonsense prose. Getting a sense of the big picture is crucial in order to be able to prioritize the work that needs doing.

Unlike many of the music books out there, the reader is treated as an adult, and there are no silver bullets offered. What you get instead is professional advice on all of the tools you need to develop a solid and professional business around music. This is not a book of generic answers, but a book that will help you make sure you are asking all of the right questions, with advice for how to find the answers specific to your career.

Whether it is the proper way to organize a bio, or how to submit your music to magazines, or how to set up house concerts and build a loyal following, there is a ton of great thinking in here.

As a working professional in the Music Industry, I feel this book is a "must" read for any artist or anyone representing an artist who wants to make the Music Industry their career. So many artists just want to play, and ignore the business aspects. As it's stated in the book, The Music Business is just that, a business!

Hands on experiences, with printed examples make this an easy to read and reference guide that you'll come back to time and time again. Before you know it, you'll be sharing this information with other artists.

If you don't read this book, or think you know it all, you are not serious about furthering your career, for it discusses the pitfalls of the industry and warns you how to not fall trap to them.

Take control of your career.. Do it now! Order this book!

Robin Fairbanks, Seattle