Inside the Record Industry

­Producer-engineer Moses Avalon cautions anyone thinking of entering the music business to beware: the vultures are everywhere. The title of the new, 4th edition of his Confessions of a Record Producer (published by Backbeat Books, an imprint of Milwaukee's Hal Leonard), is actually a misnomer. Avalon admits to no wrongdoing but has a few trenchant observations about unnamed members of his profession. "Many producers have somehow mastered the knack of supervising several projects at once without attending a single recording session" and "producers rarely have anything positive to say about recordings they didn't make."

Confessions is an anti-how-to-book, a compendium of dirty tricks to guard against and a primer on how everything from song royalties to record contracts actually works. "Until recently most books on the music industry have been written by attorneys," Avalon writes. "As a result, these books tend to overlook the lawyers' contribution to certain problems in this business ... So for the lawyers out there reading this, consider what follows as equal time."

If Al Pacino played a disgruntled record producer in a movie, his tone might be similar to Avalon's. The chapter titled "Sneaky Lawyer Stuff" is especially rye. He even makes funny swipes at web designers peddling their services to bands. "Most are PC, not Mac, and this tells you a lot. They love the power computers have given them over everyone else and the way the Internet has allowed them to survive well while having virtually no human contact."

Confessions of a Record Producer is one book every aspiring professional musician ought to read.