Music Business Handbook and Career Guide

This powerhouse best-selling text maintains is the most comprehensive, up-to-date guide to the music industry. Music business newcomers and professionals alike will find Baskerville’s handbook an indispensable resource, whatever their specialty is within the field music.

Key Features: 

• Expanded and enhanced coverage of state-of-the-art technology and its implications for the music industry, including digital downloads, changing production technologies, marketing via social networking, and new distribution channels including video games
• Discusses new and emerging business models and their implications including the topics of Internet outlets, the independent musician, the evolving role of producers, and satellite and Internet radio
• Information on careers, especially in the context of a changing business environment
• Discussion of the concert business, once a minor source of revenue but now as robust as the revenue stream of recorded music
• Coverage of alternatives to radio airplay and to incentivising teens to visit local record stores, in light of the weakened format of radio and the disappearance of neighborhood music shops
• Examination of sophisticated marketing research tools for the industry, due to consumer clicks that illuminate customer buying behavior and changes in tastes and desires
• Reflection on the global shift of the music business world as it becomes less centered on American companies and culture.

It is ideal as the core textbook in courses such as Introduction to the Music Business, Music and Media, Music Business Foundations, and survey courses. This book can also be used for more specialized courses on the record industry, music merchandising, music careers, artist management, music and the law, arts administration, and music in popular culture. 

Author David Baskerville (1918–1986) received a PhD in music from UCLA. His background included staff composer-conductor for NBC-Hollywood; arranger for Nelson Riddle, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox; television producer for BBC-London; conductor at Radio City Music Hall; trombonist with the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and NBC-Hollywood orchestra; executive vice president of Ad-Staff, Inc., producer of award-winning broadcast commercials; executive editor of Tor Music Publishing Company; and president of Sherwood Recording Studios, North Hollywood.

He also served as a consultant to companies in the entertainment industry, such as Walt Disney Productions, and to research and marketing firms, such as Vidmar Communications in Los Angeles.

As an educator, Dr. Baskerville created and directed the music management program at the University of Colorado at Denver, where he became professor emeritus. He was a guest lecturer, consultant, or clinician at USC, UCLA, Chicago Musical College, Hartt School of Music, the Ohio State University, University of Miami, and Trebas Institute in Canada.

He was a featured speaker at national conventions of the Music Educators National Conference, College Music Society, National Association of Jazz Educators, and the National Association of Schools of Music.

Author Tim Baskerville has a diverse background in entertainment and media. He began his career in broadcasting after receiving a BA in theater arts from UCLA. Early affiliations included CBS and Cox Broadcasting, where he served as a staff writer-producer. The first TV documentary he created for CBS TV stations was nominated for an Emmy.

As a publisher and entrepreneur, he launched business periodicals on the home video software industry, global film distribution, multinational broadcasting, and mobile communications. He served as president of what is now a division of S&P Global Market Intelligence, the leading provider of financial analysis on the media industry, and CEO of JupiterResearch (acquired by Forrester Research), a key source of consumer research on new media.

As a consultant, Baskerville’s clients have included the Motion Picture Association of America, Variety, Time Warner, IBM, International Data Corp., Young & Rubicam, Apple, and The Rockefeller Foundation. He has been both a strategy consultant and weekly columnist for Billboard.

Baskerville was vice president of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA) and member of the Writers Guild of America, West. He has served on the boards of both public and private companies that produce business information.