This is True®
by Randy Cassingham

Randy Cassingham's Bonzer Web Sites of the Week: Recognizing Interesting Sites that are Beyond the Microsoft/AOL-Time Warner/Media Megalith

Fantasy Music League

You've heard of Fantasy Baseball? This is where you get to be a record producer. The Fantasy Music League puts you in the driver's seat of a multi-million dollar international record label, encompassing artists from all genres of music. Your goal is to create a label that, based on real world chart movements, generates the most income possible. If your 10 artists earn more money than other Labels, you can share in cash and other prizes.

From This is True for 14 November 2004

Suggestions for further reading:

All You Need To Know About the Music Business: 6th Edition
By: Donald S. Passman
List Price: $30.00
Amazon Price: $19.80
Editorial Review:
For fifteen years, All You Need to Know About the Music Business has been universally regarded as the definitive, essential guide to the music industry. Now in its sixth edition, it has been completely revised and updated with crucial, up-to-the-minute information on the industry's major changes in response to today's rapid technological advances and uncertain economy. Veteran music lawyer Donald Passman is in the thick of this transformation and understands that anyone involved in the music business is feeling the deep, far-reaching effects of it. This latest edition of what the Los Angeles Times called "the industry bible" will lead novices and experts alike through the fundamental practices as well as the new, uncharted territory of one of this country's most dynamic industries.

In the music business, the key to success lies in knowing how to protect yourself. To do that, you need the best and most up-to-date advice available. Whether you are -- or aspire to be -- a performer, writer, or executive, Passman's comprehensive guide to the legal and financial aspects of the music world is an indispensable tool. Drawing on his unique professional experience as one of the most trusted advisors in the industry, Passman offers authoritative information on how to:

Select and hire a winning team of advisors -- personal and business managers, agents, and attorneys -- and structure their commissions, percentages, and fees in a way that will protect you and maximize these relationshipsMaster the big picture and the finer points of record dealsNavigate the ins and outs of songwriting, music publishing, and copyrightsMaximize concert, touring, and merchandising deals

This latest edition also includes information on:

Music downloads, webcasting, streaming-on-demand, and podcastingThe new video streaming servicesHow royalties are computed in the digital ageThe latest developments in deals with independent labels, including upstream dealsUpdates on all the traditional industry matters, such as royalties, advances, video budgets, and copyright law

In All You Need to Know About the Music Business, one of the industry's most influential figures shows you how to thrive in the most exciting business in the world. It's a book that no musician, entertainment lawyer, agent, promoter, publisher, manager, record company executive -- anyone who makes their living from music -- can afford to be without.


 
Confessions of a Video Vixen
By: Karrine Steffans
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $10.17
Editorial Review:

Part tell-all, part cautionary tale, this emotionally charged memoir from a former video vixen nicknamed 'Superhead' goes beyond the glamour of celebrity to reveal the inner workings of the hip-hop dancer industry—from the physical and emotional abuse that's rampant in the industry, and which marked her own life—to the excessive use of drugs, sex and bling.

Once the sought-after video girl, this sexy siren has helped multi-platinum artists, such as Jay-Z, R. Kelly and LL Cool J, sell millions of albums with her sensual dancing. In a word, Karrine was H-O-T. So hot that she made as much as $2500 a day in videos and was selected by well-known film director F. Gary Gray to co-star in his film, A Man Apart, starring Vin Diesel. But the film and music video sets, swanky Hollywood and New York restaurants and trysts with the celebrities featured in the pages of People and In Touch magazines only touches the surface of Karrine Steffans' life.

Her journey is filled with physical abuse, rape, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness and single motherhood—all by the age of 26. By sharing her story, Steffans hopes to shed light on an otherwise romanticised industry and help young women avoid the same pitfalls she encountered. If they're already in danger, she hopes to inspire them to find a way to dig themselves out of what she knows first-hand
to be a cycle of hopelessness and despair.


 
Art Therapy Sourcebook (Sourcebooks)
By: Cathy Malchiodi
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $13.57
Editorial Review:

"The most accessible and complete art therapy book ever published. It is a great achievement."
--Shaun McNiff, author of Art Is Medicine and Trust the Process

"Malchiodi's fascinating book shows how modern art therapy is being employed as a potent health-care intervention."
--Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Prayer Is Good Medicine and Healing Words

Newly updated and revised, this authoritative guide shows you how to use art therapy to guide yourself and others on a special path of personal growth, insight, and transformation. Cathy A. Malchiodi, a leading expert in the field, gives you step-by-step instructions for stimulating creativity and interpreting the resulting art pieces. This encouraging and effective method can help you and others recover from pain and become whole again.

The Art Therapy Sourcebook will help you:

Find relief from overwhelming emotions Recover from traumatic losses Reduce their stress levels Discover insights about yourself Experience personal growth
 
Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Bus...
By: Richard Branson
List Price: $16.00
Amazon Price: $11.20
Editorial Review:
In this autobiography, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson says one of his prime business criteria is "fun." Fun made Branson a billionaire, and few business memoirs are one-billionth as fun as Branson's, nor as niftily written. Not only does it relate his side of near-death corporate experiences, it tells how the chairman literally cheated death by gun, shipwreck, and balloon crash.

Branson's empire--now encompassing interests in an airline, pop music, soda pop, e-commerce, and financial services--began when the dyslexic 16-year-old dropped out of school in 1968 to found the British magazine Student. His headmaster said, "I predict that you will either go to prison or become a millionaire." Briefly imprisoned for dodging customs selling records, Branson got his first million by releasing Tubular Bells, a maverick recording all the stuffy executives rejected. (1998's Tubular Bells III puts the series' sales over 20 million.)

Despite wild tales of Branson's wife-swapping and Keith Richards fleeing naked from Branson's studio at gunpoint with another man's woman, the most shocking parts of the memoir concern British Airways' James Bond-like "dirty tricks" campaign against Virgin Atlantic, resulting in the biggest award for damages in English history.

Though it's filled with famous names, witty quotes, and pulse-pounding accounts of lunatic balloon adventures, it is as a business thriller that the book really scores. His instinctive bet-the-ranch tactics could cost him all, or earn another billion. Either way, Branson will likely remain the most entertaining entrepreneur in Europe. --Tim Appelo"Oh, screw it, let's do it."

That's the philosophy that has allowed Richard Branson, in slightly more than twenty-five years, to spawn so many successful ventures. From the airline business (Virgin Atlantic Airways), to music (Virgin Records and V2), to cola (Virgin Cola), to retail (Virgin Megastores), and nearly a hundred others, ranging from financial services to bridal wear, Branson has a track record second to none.

Losing My Virginity is the unusual, frequently outrageous autobiography of one of the great business geniuses of our time. When Richard Branson started his first business, he and his friends decided that "since we're complete virgins at business, let's call it just that: Virgin." Since then, Branson has written his own "rules" for success, creating a group of companies with a global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy, and minimal bureaucracy.

Many of Richard Branson's companies--airlines, retailing, and cola are good examples--were started in the face of entrenched competition. The experts said, "Don't do it." But Branson found golden opportunities in markets in which customers have been ripped off or underserved, where confusion reigns, and the competition is complacent.
And in this stressed-out, overworked age, Richard Branson gives us a new model: a dynamic, hardworking, successful entrepreneur who lives life to the fullest. Family, friends, fun, and adventure are equally important as business in Branson's life. Losing My Virginity is a portrait of a productive, sane, balanced life, filled with rich and colorful stories:

Crash-landing his hot-air balloon in the Algerian desert, yet remaining determined to have another go at being the first to circle the globe

Signing the Sex Pistols, Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Boy George, and Phil Collins

Fighting back when British Airways took on Virgin Atlantic and successfully suing this pillar of the British business establishment

Swimming two miles to safety during a violent storm off the coast of Mexico

Selling Virgin Records to save Virgin Atlantic

Staging a rescue flight into Baghdad before the start of the Gulf War . . .

And much more. Losing My Virginity is the ultimate tale of personal and business survival from a man who combines the business prowess of Bill Gates and the promotional instincts of P. T. Barnum.

Also available in the UK from Virgin Publishing, and in Canada from General Publishing,


From the Hardcover edition.


 
Selling Art Without Galleries: Toward Making a Living from Your Art
By: Daniel Grant
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $13.37
Editorial Review:
The first guide to selling art independently

* Easy-to-follow, in-depth advice on the marketing of art
* Follow-up to The Business of Being an Artist--35,000 copies sold!
* Exclusive information on "thinking outside the gallery" from other artists

This comprehensive resource shows artists how to make a living from their art--without relying on galleries. Through interviews with a range of successful artists, readers will learn how to write about their own work, how to arrange and curate exhibits, how to work in nonprofit arts spaces, how to determine when and if to advertised artwork for sale, and how to exhibit in non-art spaces. Artists will also find useful information for marketing their work, including photographing and framing, selling at art fairs, getting into juried shows, and selling over the Internet. Selling Art Without Galleries empowers artists everywhere to take control over their careers and find a market for their art.


 
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