The Music Hustle

Skeleton is dancing his way to a Halloween party, but as he grooves across town, he keeps stumbling, tumbling, and falling apart.

In a society where hustle is the expectation, busyness is the norm, and constant information is king, we've forgotten the fundamentals that make us human, anchor our lives, and provide meaning. Jefferson Bethke, New York Times bestselling author and popular YouTuber, has lived the hustle and knows we must stop doing and start becoming. Our culture makes constant demands of us: Do more. Accomplish more. Buy more. Post more. Be more. In following these demands, we have indeed become more: More anxious. More tired. More hurt. More depressed. More frantic. But it doesn't have to be that way. To Hell with the Hustle is your wake-up call to slow down and reclaim your life in an overworked, overspent, and overconnected world. If you're feeling overwhelmed with the demands of work, family and community or if you're tired of being anxious, lonely, and burned out, To Hell with the Hustle will give you the tools you need to: Proactively set boundaries in your life Get comfortable with obscurity Find the best way to push back against the demands of contemporary life Discover the importance of embracing silence and solitude Handle the stressors that life throws at us Join Bethke as he discovers that the very things the world teaches us to avoid at all costs--silence, obscurity, solitude, and vulnerability--are the very things that can give us the meaning, the peace, and the richness we're truly seeking. Praise for To Hell with the Hustle: "Ever feel like you need to work harder, put in more time to get ahead, or do everything in your power to be the best? That's the hustle. It can push you to places you don’t want to go, and I've gone there more than I care to admit. In his latest book, To Hell with the Hustle, Jefferson Bethke will help you understand why the hustle can seem so alluring, show you how to avoid the traps it's created in our culture, and find true joy chasing after Christ instead." --Craig Groeschel, pastor of Life. Church and New York Times bestselling author

Believe in yourself. Believe in your songs. Believe in the music. The Music Hustle: How to Book the Gig is the essential guidebook for budding musicians looking to break into the local music scene; full of valuable anecdotes and savvy advice from several successful gigging musicians, as well as venue owners and record label employees from across the country. This book helps you define yourself as an artist and will answer the questions: What is the best way to get in contact with a booker? How can I use social media to improve my chances of scoring a gig? Why should I bother networking with other musicians? Whether you're a solo cover act, band, original singer-songwriter, or parent of a musically-inclined child, by following The Music Hustle's practical tips and tricks, you'll be practiced, professional, prepared, and prosperous in no time flat.

OUR CULTURE HAS BECOME OBSESSED WITH HUSTLING. As we struggle to keep up in a knowledge economy that never sleeps, we arm ourselves with life hacks, to-do lists, and an inbox-zero mentality, grasping at anything that will help us work faster, push harder, and produce more. There’s just one problem: most of these solutions are making things worse. Creativity isn’t produced on an assembly line, and endless hustle is ruining our mental and physical health while subtracting from our creative performance. Productivity and Creativity are not compatible; we are stuck between them, and like the opposite poles of a magnet, they are tearing us apart. When we’re told to sleep more, meditate, and slow down, we nod our heads in agreement, yet seem incapable of applying this advice in our own lives. Why do we act against our creative best interests? WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO FLOAT. The answer lies in our history, culture, and biology. Instead of focusing on how we work, we must understand why we work—why we believe that what we do determines who we are. Hustle and Float explores how our work culture creates contradictions between what we think we want and what we actually need, and points the way to a more humane, more sustainable, and, yes, more creative, way of working and living.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER For the first time, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson opens up about his amazing comeback—from tragic personal loss to thriving businessman and cable’s highest-paid executive—in this unique self-help guide, his first since his blockbuster New York Times bestseller The 50th Law. In his early twenties Curtis Jackson, known as 50 Cent rose to the heights of fame and power in the cutthroat music business. A decade ago the multi-platinum selling rap artist decided to pivot. His ability to adapt to change was demonstrated when he became the executive producer and star of Power, a high-octane, gripping crime drama centered around a drug kingpin’s family. The series quickly became “appointment” television, leading to Jackson inking a four-year, $150 million contract with the Starz network—the most lucrative deal in premium cable history. Now, in his most personal book, Jackson shakes up the self-help category with his unique, cutting-edge lessons and hard-earned advice on embracing change. Where The 50th Law tells readers “fear nothing and you shall succeed,” Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter builds on this message, combining it with Jackson’s street smarts and hard-learned corporate savvy to help readers successfully achieve their own comeback—and to learn to flow with the changes that disrupt their own lives.

Has a commercial ever brought you to tears? Has a movie ever inspired you so much you change your way of life? Has the series finale of a television show ever broken your heart? Has a video game ever altered your perception of reality? If you're like most consumers, you answered 'yes' to at least one of those questions. Whether you remember it or not, the music of that ad, film, show or game probably played a big role in influencing your emotional response during that experience. In fact, music is included in media specifically for the purpose of connecting with audiences on a deeper level that visuals alone cannot access. A strong music strategy is fundamental to the success of television, film, brands and video games. Because of higher expectations for audiovisual content, it will take more than clever animation or a celebrity cameo to connect with consumers in an authentic, organic way. By providing audiences with a genuine music experience, whether with an exclusive song through an artist partnership or by featuring new music from an emerging band, you can build a bond that extends far beyond product experience. Music touches us emotionally in a way that words seldom do. We feel it – we remember it. In Return of The Hustle, a leading music and marketing industry insider discusses the diverse audio touchpoints for four key industries and shows how marketers, storytellers, and advertisers can use music to effectively guide audiences along the customer journey from passive consumers to brand advocates. Return of The Hustle provides readers with a blueprint for music strategy that professionals at any level in any industry can use to attract consumers, immerse them into the content, and extend relationships between them and the brand long after the commercial ends or the credits roll. With detailed case studies, exhaustive interviews, and thorough research, Return of the Hustle gives readers the playbook to use the marketing power of music to drive business results.

A “profound, sometimes hilarious, often heartbreaking” (The New York Times) view of prison life, as told by currently and formerly incarcerated people, from the co-creators and co-hosts of the Peabody- and Pulitzer-nominated podcast Ear Hustle “A must-read for fans of the legendary podcast and all those who seek to understand crime, punishment, and mass incarceration in America.”—Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black When Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods met, Nigel was a photography professor volunteering with the Prison University Project and Earlonne was serving thirty-one years to life at California’s San Quentin State Prison. Initially drawn to each other by their shared interest in storytelling, neither had podcast production experience when they decided to enter Radiotopia’s contest for new shows . . . and won. Using the prize for seed money, Nigel and Earlonne launched Ear Hustle, named after the prison term for “eavesdropping.” It was the first podcast created and produced entirely within prison and would go on to be heard millions of times worldwide, garner Peabody and Pulitzer award nominations, and help earn Earlonne his freedom when his sentence was commuted in 2018. In This Is Ear Hustle, Nigel and Earlonne share their own stories of how they came to San Quentin, how they created their phenomenally popular podcast amid extreme limitations, and what has kept them collaborating season after season. They present new stories, all with the same insight, balance, and rapport that distinguish the podcast. In an era when more than two million people are incarcerated across the United States—a number that grows by 600,000 annually—Nigel and Earlonne explore the full and often surprising realities of prison life. With characteristic candor and humor, their moving portrayals include unexpected moments of self-discovery, unlikely alliances, inspirational resilience, and ingenious work-arounds. One personal narrative at a time, framed by Nigel’s and Earlonne’s distinct perspectives, This Is Ear Hustle reveals the complexity of life for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people while illuminating the shared experiences of humanity that unite us all.

In the late '70s and early to mid 1980s, San Francisco was a creative incubator, bringing forth all manner of new music acts. Ground zero for the scene was the Mabuhay Gardens, home to huge barrels of popcorn, once-a-week spaghetti nights, colorful emcee Dirk Dirksen, and punk/new wave bands from all over the Bay Area. Concert booker and renegade radio deejay Howie Klein joined with Aquarius Records owner (and fellow deejay) Chris Knab to launch a record label in support of that scene.Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave is Bill Kopp's chronicle of the groundbreaking independent record label founded by Howie Klein & Chris Knab, featuring the stories of Romeo Void, Red Rockers, Translator, Wire Train, Roky Erickson, The Nuns, Pearl Harbor and Explosions, and nearly two dozen other bands.Based on nearly 100 interviews with the artists, industry execs, producers, friends, rivals, onlookers, journalists and hangers-on, Disturbing the Peace also features hundreds of photos and memorabilia from the personal archives of those who were there.

“Sportswriter Sullivan takes readers on a propulsive ride in his tour-de-force debut. . . . Sullivan’s detailed account will intrigue anyone who cares about sports and the role it plays in social justice today.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) "More than a basketball book, this helps explain race relations, celebrity power, and personal choice in a changed world." — Kirkus Reviews "A must-read for its in-depth look at the mental, economic, and political tribulations of NBA players." — Library Journal (starred review) "Only a brilliantly audacious book could begin to make sense of the weirdly brilliant audacity of the new Brooklyn Nets. One writer on Earth could have written this book this way — with the profundity of a sage baller and acuity of a seasoned journalist — and that writer is Matt Sullivan." — Kiese Laymon, New York Times best-selling author of Heavy “With Can't Knock The Hustle, Matt Sullivan correctly positions the basketball games we love as both a prism through which to understand our culture, and a battlefield on which to fight for the better angels of that culture. On the surface, it's a story about the unending march of 2020. But once you finish it, you understand that it's also an essential document about the decades that led us to this moment, and about the future decades yet unspooled." — Wright Thompson, ESPN senior writer and New York Times bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams “In the dueling eras of unprecedented athlete empowerment and the coarse ugliness of 'shut up and dribble,' Matt Sullivan's Can't Knock the Hustle offers a can't-look-away sampling of not merely the NBA's most fascinating franchise, but a frozen period in time that will leave historians both horrified and riveted." — Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Three-Ring Circus and Showtime “Matt Sullivan is one helluva social anthropologist, and as a result, his Can't Knock the Hustle amounts to way more than a journey with the Brooklyn Nets, or an examination of the modern-day athlete. This is an astute, ambitious book about the glory and torment of talent itself. Basketball? That's just the starting point, and what a trip Sullivan's remarkable odyssey turns out to be.” — James Andrew Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Those Guys Have All the Fun, Live From New York, and Powerhouse “Can't Knock the Hustle is a terrific book because it gives us something in woefully short supply: real journalism. Matt Sullivan has discovered the ground zero of a player revolution—and it's in Brooklyn. Is anybody ready for it?" — Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field “The superstar-studded Brooklyn Nets are basketball's most captivating team, and Can't Knock the Hustle delivers a fascinating secret history of their journey to the pantheon of player activism and empowerment. With brilliant reporting and breakneck prose, this is our generation's Moneyball.” — Don Van Natta Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning ESPN investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of First Off the Tee and Wonder Girl “No narrative has captured the dynamics of the ‘player empowerment’ movement quite like Can’t Knock the Hustle. Sullivan has written about as revealing a basketball book as there's been in a long time: an insider’s account with an outsider’s moxie.” — Dave Zirin, The Nation sports editor and author of The Kaepernick Effect

'The BeatTips Manual' (Amir Said) is the definitive study of the art of beatmaking (hip hop production). Brilliantly divided into five major parts - a riveting History part, an extensive Instruction (how-to) part, an insightful Interviews part, which features exclusive interviews with DJ Premier, DJ Toomp, Marley Marl, 9th Wonder and more, an explosive Music Theory part, and a Business part - 'The BeatTips Manual' is robust, detailed, and comprehensive. Containing a sharp analysis of the origins of beatmaking, as well as its key aesthetics, principles, priorities, and predilections, 'The BeatTips Manual' is an incisive look at the art of beatmaking - and an intense read. Not only the most complete examination of the hip hop/rap music process, it's also among the leading studies of hip hop culture itself. Destined to expand and transform traditional ideas about musicians, musicianship, and musical processes, 'The BeatTips Manual' is one of the most important and innovative music studies ever published.