Entertainment Business

Traveling from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, John Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with novel techniques, and he traces the growth of these contagious hits from their origins in early '90s Sweden to their ubiquity on today's charts. Featuring the stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.

The second edition of Building the Successful Theater Company takes listeners even deeper into the world of theatrical production, examining in great depth the financial realities of establishing - and maintaining - a successful organization. This indispensable reference is updated to include more theater company profiles with expert advice to better reveal the pitfalls, passions, and practicalities of the theater industry.

A riveting saga in the history of rock ‘n’ roll: the decades-long rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound - Leo Fender and Les Paul - and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.

Creativity and innovation are widely recognized as essential to success in business and in so many aspects of our lives. For over two decades, Cirque du Soleil has been a world-renowned laboratory of creativity, enthralling audiences around the world by fusing dazzling acrobatics, staging, choreography, and music, along with beautiful costumes and technical effects, to inspire and create magical, almost otherworldly theatrical experiences.

No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating, exhilarating life. Special forces training is no walk in the park. The rules are strict, and they make sure you learn the hard way, pushing you beyond the limits of what is physically possible. There is no mercy. Even when you are bleeding and broken, to admit defeat is failure.

Mark Devlin is a long-standing DJ and music journalist. Musical Truth is the culmination of his five years of research into the true nature of the industry and its objectives - from dark occult rituals, to mind-controlled artists, and all points in between. The book shows how these agendas fit into the much wider picture of what’s really going on in the world, and - crucially - how the power lies with us to bring it to an end."

Legendary magician Penn Jillette was approaching his 60th birthday. Topping 330 pounds and saddled with a systolic blood pressure reading over 200, he knew he was at a dangerous crossroads: If he wanted to see his small children grow up, he needed to change. And then came Crazy Ray. A former NASA scientist and an unconventional, passionate innovator, Ray Cronise saved Jillette's life with his wild "potato diet". Outspoken, frank, and bitingly clever, Presto is an incisive, rollicking listen.

Edit Better was made for video editors who consider themselves advanced hobbyists or growth-minded professionals, artists who know that the tools of editing matter far less than the knowledge of how to use those tools powerfully. This audiobook does not illuminate the workings of Avid, Final Cut, or Premiere, and is not a meditation on film editing. What it is: a provocative, wide-ranging collection of strategies and tactics for the creative application of TV and video editing, no matter your editing tools.

After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he turned his attention to a little-known graphics art company that he owned called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Silicon Valley executive to whom he had never spoken before, in the hope of persuading Levy to help him get Pixar on the right track. What Levy found in Pixar was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the extraordinary story of what happened next.

We try our best to be consistent, but some days are better than others. Inevitably, we fail when "life happens", because each day we try to hit the same targets regardless of the situations we face. How, then, can we make our habits more resilient to the turbulence of life? By making them elastic. If you’re tired of the repetitive and exhausting grind to develop good habits, it’s time to give your habits the refreshing superpower of elasticity. Listen to Elastic Habits now, and you’ll soon discover the life-changing difference of good habits that adapt to your day.

Now it can be told! The true, behind-the-scenes story of Casablanca Records, from an eyewitness to the excess and insanity. Casablanca was not a product of the 1970s, it was the 1970s. From 1974 to 1980, the landscape of American culture was a banquet of hedonism and self-indulgence, and no person or company in that era was more emblematic of the times than Casablanca Records and its magnetic founder, Neil Bogart.

Today everyone - whether they know it or not - is in the emotional transportation business. More and more, success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move partners, shareholders, customers, and employees to action. Simply put, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it. And this book tells you how to do both. Peter Guber, whose executive and entrepreneurial accomplishments have made him a success in multiple industries, has long relied on purposeful story telling to motivate, win over, shape, engage, and sell.

This heartbreaking, hilarious, and brutally honest memoir shares the deeply personal life story of a girl next door and her transformation into a household name. ​For more than forty years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest, hilarious...

Making Money with Music gives you over 100 revenue streams and the knowledge on how to tap them. Whether you're a solo artist, band, DJ, EDM producer, or other musician, this book gives you strategies to generate revenue, grow your fan base, and thrive in today's technology-driven music environment. Plus, it lists hundreds of services, tools, and critical resources you need to run your business and maximize income.

Act: The Modern Actor’s Handbook is the result of 30 years of one of North America’s most renowned acting teachers teaching some of the world's most talented screen actors. This is a full tour through the concepts at the heart of Rotenberg’s techniques: states of being, primaries and secondaries, images that you elaborate up or distill down, modifiers, actions and beats, and more. Although his methods loosely draw on the great acting teachers like Hagen and Meisner back to Stanislavski, he teaches new techniques suited to the best of today’s screen actors.

Whether he was introducing the latest iPad or delivering a keynote presentation, Steve Jobs electrified audiences with his incomparable style and showmanship. He didn’t just convey information in his presentations; he told a story, painted a picture, and shared a vision. He gave his audience a transformative experience that was unique, inspiring, and unforgettable. Now you can do it too, by learning the specific techniques that made Jobs the most captivating communicator on the world stage.

Down and Dirty Pictures chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers and of the twin engines - the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films - that have powered them. Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse.

Today's world wants to know you and the real story behind why you do what you do. Whether you have a product to sell, a company mission to share or an audience to entertain, people are far more likely to engage if you deliver a well-crafted story with an emotional core. Bobette Buster is a story consultant, lecturer and screenwriter who works with major studios and in top film programmes all over the world. She shares the tools used by some of the world's best storytellers and helps you apply them to your own.

"The figure looking back at me was little more than a skeleton with just a thin layer of tissue paper for skin, drawn over the stick-like bones. I stood staring for a good couple of minutes, considering what I'd become. And my verdict? Brilliant, I thought. It's been worth every moment of all that hard work". Say the name Nikki Grahame and most people will remember the bubbly, highly strung and hugely entertaining Big Brother 7 contestant.

Instructive as it is innovative, Unlabel will empower you to channel your creativity, find the courage to defy convention, and summon the confidence to act and compete in any environment. This blueprint will teach you how to grow both creatively and commercially by testing your personal brand against the principles of the Authenticity Formula. Marc Eckō shares the bruising mistakes and remarkable triumphs that reveal the truth behind his success, growing from a misfit kid airbrushing T-shirts in his parents' garage to the bold creator of two hugely successful branded platforms.