Cover of All You Need to Know About the Music Business

All You Need to Know About the Music Business

by Donald S. Passman · first published 2000

5mentions
4recommended by
5HN commenters
2008–2026first – last mentioned

80% recommend20% neutral

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Mentions per year

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What Hacker News says

  • radley · Jun 24, 2008 · Recommends

    I won't go into stuff on what's wrong with the industry, etc. But do want to share that there's a really good resource that has been embraced by the industry for many years called "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" by Donald Passman: http://www.amazon.com/Need-Know-About-Music-Business/dp/0684... It has been revised recently (i.e. for the "internet age") but may require another update soon. Nice find on the…

    on “The Problem With Music” ↗
  • dhs · Jun 25, 2008 · Recommends

    …common. Albini isn't even saying much about publishing, and the zillion ways for musicians to get screwed there (never sign away your publishing rights!). For a good introduction, try Donald Passman's "All You Need To Know About The Music Business".

    on “The Problem With Music” ↗
  • tokenrove · Dec 24, 2013 · Recommends

    Passman's "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" is undeniably less slanted than Albini's piece already mentioned, but I think does just as good a job illustrating how crooked label contracts are if one is not careful. I have never seen contracts…

    on “How Iron Maiden found its worst music pirates - then went and played for them” ↗
  • senko · Apr 15, 2026 · Recommends

    …When you read artists' blog posts you can see they see peanuts. Not due to Spotify - due to the recording deals. If you want an exhaustive but eye-opening account of all of the details, I recommend "All you need to know about the music business" by Don Passman.

    on “Anna's Archive Loses $322M Spotify Piracy Case Without a Fight” ↗
  • ModernMech · Mar 18, 2021 · Mentions

    Okay, here's a book called "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" first published in 1991 by a recording industry lawyer (a guy who would have been involved in writing those contracts). It contains the passage: "The word master has two meanings: 1. The original recording…

    on “GitHub, fuck your name change” ↗

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