What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business: the Myths, the Secrets, the Lies (& a Few Truths), revised and updated.(Book review)

[??] What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business: the Myths, the Secrets, the Lies (& a Few Truths), revised and updated, by Peter M. Thall. Watson-Guptill Publications (www. watsonguptill.com; (888) 330-8477), 2006. 340pp. $24.95.

Peter M. Thall, author of What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business, is no music industry pretender offering theories and untested advice. He is a long-established, New York-based attorney with many years of experience advising, counseling and representing numerous and diverse music industry clients, including Simon and Garfunkel, Miles Davis and Anna Moffo, among many others. The man knows whereof he speaks. For that reason alone, this book should garner attention as a highly credible book about the music industry. But, there's much more.

Subtitled The Myths, the Secrets, the Lies (& a Few Truths), Thall's approach cuts through much of the music industry's hyperbole and mystery and, along the way, reveals a good many truths about navigating and negotiating within the music industry. Whether in music education, private teaching, recording, music publishing, movies or any number of other facets, the industry is highly complex, with many potential pitfalls. This book informs, forewarns and educates musicians, and those who represent musicians in any fashion, about these pitfalls. Its 24 tightly packed and densely written chapters tackle an array of topics, including personal management, artist's finances, employment/record agreements, music publishing, the current state of classical music, Internet entrepreneurship, publishing catalog valuations, and ...