Awakening your Business Brain: An iCadenza Guide to Launching your Music Career

This is a very special book, not so much about the how of business as about the why — why artists need to know business, how it doesn't contradict their art, but instead expands it. And how the key to doing business is to let it flow from the core of who you are, from your essence, from your deepest self. A deeply useful and inspiring book, with practical exercises to help you get to the best business place,Note that I'm an interested party here, because iCadenza now manages my career. But then this book shows why I'm with them — because they work in the ways the book describes.And also note the other reviews. This book is going deep into so many people who read it. Not many books -- not many practical guides -- can do that.

Nice book

Coupled with the companion website, this is one of the most valuable resources for emerging artists that I have come across.

This is a great resource for musicians.I just bought it for several of my students.

When Awakening your Business Brain first came to my attention, I didn't think it was right for me, because I am a writer and this book is for musicians. But after reading the sample pages I discovered that Awakening your Business Brain is more focused on the psychology of self-promotion than the precise structure and social etiquette of the music business, and as such I found it entirely applicable to my own situation.I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, and I found that Awakening your Business Brain is the perfect companion book to it. Where Big Magic promotes an optimistic approach to the creative process, Awakening your Business Brain shows the reader a creative approach to the business side of the artist's life. I highly recommend this book to anyone who aspires to earn a livelihood as an artist of any kind.

As Mozart once wrote in a lamentation to a cousin: "Sweetest cousin, such is life! One man has got a purse, but another has got the money, and he who has neither has nothing; and nothing is even less than little; while, on the other hand, much is a great deal more than nothing, and nothing can come of nothing. Thus has it been from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."It's hard for excellent music to mean much if the musician or composer can't quite work the market to his advantage. Brilliance encoded on a USB stick or mired in a MIDI file or captured in a rehearsal room is brilliance wasted. In this guide, Rosenfeld and Torgovitskaya have published an essential business curriculum for the musically talented. You'll find methods for brand building, marketing, networking, sales, and more. It's a globalized world. You can either allow yourself to remain daunted by that fact, or embrace an opportunity that no musician before you has ever had: to sell yourself and your music, all around the world, to an audience of billions.This book, which helps you discover just how much you're worth, is priceless.

For those of us – and that’s practically all of us – who struggle to embrace the business, marketing and networking side of our careers and balance these necessary but frequently uncomfortable pursuits with the artistic side of our personalities, this book is an absolute must!The authors are two of the most successful and dynamic young leaders of a new age of entrepreneurs in the arts. This book – a result of many years of experience – encourages the artist to question all of the many misconceptions which they may have, and to jettison all the “baggage” they may be carrying with them on many levels, but especially in regard to how the marketplace works. It proposes thought experiments, exercises and practical guidelines for creating a new view of one’s art, a view that embraces and incorporates self-promotion, marketing, a new perspective on one’s self-worth, etc., and weaves that new view organically into one’s artistic persona.In today’s competitive artistic world, where we are all reminded time and again that we do not live in a meritocracy, this book is absolutely indispensable.I urge you to purchase it, read it, embrace it and internalize it. Get moving, get going – and get successful!Jeffrey Schindler, conductor

Jennifer and Julia have really nailed it with this book.First of all, what they cover in the book is spot on. They start off by discussing assumptions that many people incorrectly make about business and the music business in particular. The wonderful thing is they cover such a wide range of topics including dealing with fear, which in my experience is responsible in its many forms for more music careers ending than any other factor. Both of these accomplished women are wise well beyond their years.Second, their ability to weave an easy-to-digest narrative that puts all of these very huge topics into perfect perspective for the reader makes this a very easy read.I was honored to feature them on The Entrepreneurial Musician Podcast to talk about the book and can recommend it unconditionally. It truly is a must read for anyone in the music business, whether just embarking on a career or well into one.