"The Musician's Handbook" |
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Bobby Borg is best known as the drummer for the ‘80’s band Warrant. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of music; has written for Music Biz magazine, Singer, Score Music, and Music Connection magazines. The Musician's Handbook is his current of six instructional/business books for musicians. He is also an artist consultant and guest speaker at music industry events. Forget all those drummer jokes, Borg knows his stuff. The Handbook is well crafted and easily holds its own with other books of this type. Broken into four parts the book covers pursuing your career, types of business relationships, key players in your career, and sources of revenue. Each part has several chapters and at the end of some of them are interviews with music business professionals. Q&A’s include Jeff Cohen and Henry Rollins. Throughout the book the reader will find tons of sideline style stories, helpful “quick” hints, and real-life examples. The Musician’s Handbook manages to cover just about every facet of the music business. In fact, there is too much here for me to list everything. Topics include band membership and agreements, musician’s unions, taxes, and worker’s comp issues. The part on Key Players gives good coverage on how to find, and what to look for, in an attorney. There are some good chapters on maintaining your relationship with your attorney and the same gets covered for personal managers, business managers, talent agencies, and record producers. Part IV of the Handbook covers anything a reader would need to know on Sources of Revenue. Royalties (and how they get calculated), advances, self-publication, copyrights, and the many types of publishing deals all get full treatment. The chapter on Live Performance and Touring goes into deep detail on subjects such as how to get paid, performance deals, and budgeting. The last chapter covers Merchandising and gives a good overall picture of rights and contracting. The Musician’s Handbook really delivers on its name. The publisher might want to consider making the book a little smaller so readers can carry it around with them. The book is an excellent “all-in-one” reference for the music business. Borg’s site is an example of everything a musician’s site should be. The graphics all blend together with the entire promo package. You can learn more about Borg and his professional history. There is an excellent Music Biz Glossary of terms. He has a good message board with forums on the book, drumming, songwriting, and of course contact info. In addition to being a great drummer, Bobby Borg is a great writer and businessman to boot. I highly recommend this book! |
Book Review |