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"You Better Ask Somebody! Staying On Top Of Your Career in the "Friggin’" Music Business is a music handbook that primarily helps prepare aspiring musicians to create a successful career in the music industry. The handbook, created for high school and college level students, explains how aspiring musicians can create a successful career path and make a name in the industry while maintaining their integrity. It's also a refresher course for veteran artists and a manager’s reference guide to improve their own work ethic.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD!

After 25 short years of being in the music game, only to watch the industry fall so quickly, gone are the label-funded recording studios with their 20-foot sound boards, coffee runners and all night physical tape edits. Over the years, I studied the business and observed those very few Execs sitting at the top of the pyramid scheme, who built their mansions on your shoulders and the sweat of your backbone, blinged you down to your Mercedes feet while pushing their subliminal messages up on the big video screen and at the end of the day, all you were left was a quarterly bill written in red negatives. Believe it or not, back in the day, it was worse! They used to buy your copyright for a dollar and fed their grandchildren off the heels of your ignorance. At least you got the 12 – carat gold necklace.

Maybe Ray Charles couldn’t see, but he had vision and smelled the proverbial rat behind the desk. He cried out, “I want my budget AND my copyright.” He proved to us that at the end of the day, it really was up to the ‘percentile’ to collectively uphold the industry’s original artistic culture and most of all, the moral fiber of the business. Call us, “the 99-Percenters.” Sounds more like America. We were ignored because they thought the game was going so good for them. They even decided to have a mp3 mass-industry giveaway for years……but then they fell asleep at the wheel. They let the Freedom Riders take over (Napster/Kazaa); however, before they were eventually defeated, The Napsters of the world left the industry depleted….kids stopped reading credits, it was all about the dummy download. But now, everything old is new again Oldie this, Oldie that, forget the future, let’s just keep spinning these oldies!

Then Jobs finished the job, with the Big Apple notwithstanding, and the stock was fat while the rest went flat. There was no real counter-punch, every swing was futile, every punch was inefficient and utterly painless. So how and when did this happen? HEY!

Stay out of the rear-view mirror, or you may wreck yourself. Ladies and Gents, time to look ahead, and protect the very thing that is yours, that you worked so hard to make. Your brand, your art, you!

Take a break, come out the trenches for a minute. Come…Let’s take this ride together, collectively devoid ourselves of possible further self-destruction, leap past the land mines….it’s time to arm yourselves with competitive corporate intelligence with knowledge that you are so deserving to have so you can win at the game. You can agree or disagree with what’s written herein, but one thing’s for sure - if you don’t know, “You Better Ask SOMEBODY!”