Entertainment Business

For generations, record companies have dominated the music industry. Artists were unable to get their material to the masses without label backing, meaning that the path to stardom inevitably involved artists having to sign exploitative record contracts. These "record deals" were profoundly one-sided, and usually imposed brutal, predatory terms on artists. Fortunately, times have changed and artists no longer need labels. It is a new music business, and it is time for a new kind of music business book.

Il 27 marzo 1995 Maurizio Gucci, erede della favolosa dinastia dell'alta moda, mentre sta per raggiungere il suo ufficio di Milano viene assassinato a colpi di pistola da uno sconosciuto. Nel 1998, l'ex moglie Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli - soprannominata la "Vedova nera" dalla stampa - viene condannata a 29 anni di prigione come mandante dell'omicidio.

When Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman, News Corporation, blew up more than $870 million buying Star TV from Richard Li in the early 1990s, analysts were dismayed. Why on earth had Murdoch invested in a pan-Asian broadcaster that was neither fish nor fowl? More than twenty-five years later...

The digital revolution poses a mortal threat to the major creative industries - music, publishing, television, and the movies. The ease with which digital files can be copied and distributed has unleashed a wave of piracy with disastrous effects on revenue. Cheap, easy self-publishing is eroding the position of these gatekeepers and guardians of culture. Does this revolution herald the collapse of culture, as some claim? In Digital Renaissance, Joel Waldfogel argues that digital technology is enabling a new golden age of popular culture, a veritable digital renaissance.

From the acclaimed Vanity Fair and GQ journalist–an unprecedented, in-depth portrait of the man whose return to Apple precipitated one of the biggest turnarounds in business history. With a new epilogue on Apple’s future survival in today’s roller-coaster economy, here is the revealing...

A freelance writer learns what it's like to be a single, heterosexual guy in an unsteady world when he's invited to travel cross-country for six months on the "Playboy Bus" in search of the Playmate of the Millennium...

When even his friends refer to him in print as "a balding, bug-eyed opportunist with the looks of a beach ball, the charisma of a glove-puppet, and an ego the size of a Hercules supply plane", the odds of Toby Young scoring, in any sense, appear to be slim. But then How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, his account of the five years he spent trying (and failing) to take Manhattan, improbably catapults Toby to best sellerdom, and his book is translated into 12 languages, including American.

Cowboys and Indies is the definitive record-business bible, chronicling the pioneers who set the stylus on the most important labelsand musical discoveries of the last century. The narrative follows all the musical trends and developments from the phonograph to the Internet age as it delves behind the big business of corporate hit machines and the diligent industry of small, curated labels.

The Best Job in the World is the story of how following your passions can lead to life-changing opportunities. Adventurer Ben Southall shares his experiences and lessons learned as the winner of the inaugural Tourism Queensland's Best Job in the World campaign, and reveals how this has led to ongoing opportunities since. Part autobiography, part insight into the power of a unique marketing campaign, this book follows Ben's journey - from leaving the UK on his own expedition around Africa to his new role as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.

#BYOP leads artists on a journey of introspection and creative analysis through the lens of Broadway actress and award-winning indie film producer Ashley Kate Adams. A new idea, opportunity, collaboration, or creative expression could be the key that unlocks an artist’s future. Ashley Kate believes that the thing an artist is currently afraid of might become their happy place and become pretty important to their future, so it should be explored.

Have you ever been stuck? Creative freedom could be simple...It really is possible to become unstoppable. You can conquer the blank page. You can let your talents shine. You can (really) make money with your gifts. Our culture paints creative people as flaky and confused. Don’t listen to their lies. You are more than a character.

Damian Keyes has written the ultimate guide for musicians to enhance and take control of their music careers! This audiobook is packed full of ideas, tips and stories, alongside a defining 30 Day Challenge, to help you reach your full potential. Stop Selling Music: Career Changing Lessons For Musicians shows you how to build a career you are proud of with foundations that will last a lifetime, whether your goals are to make a living from session playing, songwriting, touring the world or selling out stadiums!

While working together at a Los Angeles boutique, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor became fast and furious friends over the impossibility of finding the perfect T-shirt. Following their vision of comfortable, fitted T-shirts, they set up shop in Gela’s one-bedroom Hollywood apartment with $200 and one rule: Whatever they did, they both had to be obsessed by it. Pam and Gela eventually sold their company to Liz Claiborne for $50 million, but not before they created a whole new genre of casual clothing that came to define California cool.

What songs have made up your life's soundtrack? Which have captured your every mood and deepest sentiments? Pop music, like no other form of entertainment or art, is capable of articulating our feelings, desires, joy, and pain. In a few soul-grabbing minutes, artists from every genre - from Little Richard to Lou Reed, Willie Nelson to Wu-Tang Clan, Sly and the Family Stone to the Rolling Stones - can help us understand our place in our own lives.

With clients ranging from rappers, singers, music producers, authors, and athletes, Lynn Hobson has written a comical yet heart-wrenching account of her career as “the go-to publicist” in the hip-hop community. She keeps it real as she fights to keep her spiritual principlse intact while making it happen in the streets. It is a battle, but she makes it through to see another day, another show, another hit, and another client who has that sparkle in their eyes. This is Diary of a Hip-Hop Publicist.

In her acclaimed AOL.COM, Kara Swisher chronicled the unlikely ascent of a group of underdog entrepreneurs and their influence on American net culture. This book picks up where the previous one left off, investigating AOL's merger with Time Warner and its aftermath. Journalists Swisher and...

A timely manifesto urging us to think critically, form opinions, and then argue them with gusto. Hater begins from a simple premise: that it's good to hate things. Not people or groups or benign belief systems, but things. More to the point, it's good to hate the things everyone seems to like...

Mark Twain's lifetime spans America's era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich-quick scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term "Gilded Age" failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.

Bestselling author A. E. Hotchner's intimate account of his 53-year friendship with his pal Paul Newman. A. E. Hotchner first met Paul Newman in 1955 when the virtually unknown actor assumed the lead role in Hotchner’s first television play, based on an Ernest Hemingway story. The project...

In 1998, when Amazon.com began to recruit employees, they gave temp agencies a simple directive: send us your freaks. Mike Daisey -- slacker, onetime aesthetics major -- fit the bill. His subsequent ascension, over the course of twenty-one dog years, from lowly temp to customer service...