Best book on the music industry?

A good safe-sex book. Useful in case you succeed and get groupies or fail and get shafted.

I've read/read through the following and found them all enlightening:

Pennies From Heaven
The Mansion on the Hill
Hit Men
All You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald S. Passman
This Business of Music (as close to a text book as you'll find)

...the KLF guys' no.1-masterminding-manual could be one thing...
as for wot's-been-going-on-behind-the-sheens stuff, Fredric Dannen's 'Hit Men' is absolutely great regarding "music industry" (tho' by now it's also badly in need of a seriously refreshed edition, the last one's from 1991... the book's great nevertheless!)

then again, if you're looking for a book that guides you on how-you-actually-do-it-yerself-from-demos-to-copyright-to-wotnot -- there must be many ppl here who could give you much better ad-vice than me

Hit Men is the bible; a promotion guy I know makes all of his new hires read it before they start working. I also really liked Mansion on the Hill but haven't read the others Aaron W mentioned (thanks for the recommendations). Has anyone read the history of the Warner group, Exploding? I really want to pick this one up.

Sure thing teeny.

Pennies From Heaven is super dry but if you're interested it's a great history of the industry

All You Need to Know About the Music Business is a bit cheesy but great for all the legal stuff and a very quick read

This Business of Music pretty much IS a text book... I certainly haven't read it cover-to-cover but will look stuff up if I have a specific question.

Hit Men is out of date but still good.
The Business of Music is indeed the bible for aspiring musicians.
A book worth searching for, now OP, is something called "Star-Making Machinery," about Commander Cody and that group's struggles to make a commercial record. Good stuff with insights into how taming a group for widespread appeal can kill the very thing the group was good at...

Dreaming Out Loud is a good book on Garth Brooks and Nashville.

Amen to "Hit Men."

Wasn't there one on the creation of Kiss as a marketing phenom recently? supposedly that was great.

Is "Mansion on the Hill" good?

yes, although if you are pro-bruce or anti-neil, you may be put off by the author's anti-bruce/pro-neil stance.

Everyone should read Hit Men before posting to this message board.

And I don't think it is out-of-date in the least. Most of these men still rule the record industry and are very much partly responsible for it's current decline.

Their macho posturing and ruthless tactics turned the business into a cesspool. Their refusal to accept change has kept the business stagnant for decades. Finally, their bland tastes and racist / misogynist tendancies have driven the respectability of music into the ground.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -Hunter S. Thompson

b-b-b-but the "macho posturing and ruthless tactics" were part of the music biz from day one - as Hit Men explains in detail. you can't really blame any "current decline" (if there is one) on something that's always been there.

Yes, Fritz--read "Big Beat Heat," about Freed--it's horrifying.

sounds great! i'll look for it.

I don't think Thompson really said that: there was something on an urban legends site about it.