Are You a DJ? This Book Might Help

From the people at DJ Lounge:

At DJ-Lounge we believe that successful promotion is just as important as the quality of the work you're sharing. Because of that, we want to help young professionals by giving them the necessary tools to have an upper hand in their careers.

Our writers over here in the lounge have been hard at work developing a free comprehensive resource to help DJ's, labels, producers, and managers get the most out of their promotion online, on the street, and on the stage.  

We share our new ebook with you because we think you (and your artists) could benefit greatly from the variety of enlightening information within. The PDF can be downloaded on our website for free, but If you would like to support it, we ask that you to please let us know what you think about the ebook.

Email us with a review or opinion at hello@dj-lounge.com, and help us spread the word about good marketing practices by sharing the ebook on your social streams. 

Free Download Link

Long Weekend Reading About the Modern Music Industry

I've got a long flight to the Music Matters conference in Singapore ahead of me on Sunday so I'll have plenty of time to catch up on worth and reading.  

One of the things I'm defintely going to look at this this new free ebook called Divergent Streams: Reflections and Explorations of the Modern Music Industry.  A preview can be found here.

New Book on the History of Metal

It's called Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal.  Senior writer at Revolver, Jon Wiederhorn and radio producer Katherine Turman spend 746 pages going through what makes metal metal.

Here are a few highlights:

--Tommy Iommi of Black Sabbath talks about the sheet metal accident that cost him his fingertipes.

--The story behind the original (and censored) artwork for GnR's Appetite for Destruction.

--Why Ozzy ate a bat.

More at USA Today.  Thanks to John for the tip.

New Bowie Book Focuses Just on the Ziggy Stardust Era

There's no question that Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character is one of the most influential things ever invented for rock'n'roll.  The impact Bowie had in the year he portrayed Ziggy reverberated through musical, theatrical, cultural and social spheres so much that some people have even done PhD dissertations on the Ziggy effect.

If you want to get deeper into the whole story, there's a new book called Ziggyology: A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust by Simon Goddard.  It's a fascinating bit of rock'n'roll archeology that digs into where Ziggy came from, how he was created and what he meant to history.  

It's a good read for both longtime Bowie fans and relative newbies want to understand why everyone speaks of Bowie with such reverence.

Winners in the Last Shop Standing Record Store Day/Newsletter Contest

We have a couple of winners in the latest newsletter subcriber contest.  John McKeogh and Vincent Regalado both received a copy of the book Last Shop Standing and the DVD documentary based on the book.  Thanks to everyone who entered--and thanks to everyone who subscribes to my daily newsletter.

And keep subscribing.  The plan is to have more giveaways like this and if you're part of the newsletter subscriber base, you're automatically in every draw.  (In other words, don't unsubscribe just because the contest is over.)

If you're not a subscriber, what are you waiting for?  It's free.  You get 10 cool music news stories in your inbox by 10am ET every day.  And you're privacy will always be protected.