Music Industry Glossary: Part 1

I’m really bad with jargon…I hate it…jargon is by its very nature exclusive…if you don’t know the language, don’t know the codes, don’t know the usage rules, then you’re locked out of the discussion…

I remember one financial guy who wanted to talk to me about a retirement savings plan…and his schpiel went something like this:

“When it comes to diversification of your asset classes, consider taking out some warrants on pink sheet stocks on the vix, backing them up with shorts on fang stocks for a few months before rebalancing your portfolio through dollar-cost averaging”…I have no idea what I just said…

Now let’s switch to music…if you do any exploring of how the music business works, you inevitably run into words that seem important, but you don’t know what they mean…you could ask, but then it might show that you’re, err, lacking in knowledge…

“Newbie!...ignoramus!...rookie!”…no one wants that, so you just keep it to yourself…no one wants to be made fun of…and if someone does deign to explain things to you, there’s always the risk that they’ll be condescending…so you say to yourself “I’ll figure it out…eventually…I hope”…

But that’s not right…music should be for everyone…if you’re interested in how things work with the recorded music industry, your curiosity should be rewarded…and that’s what we’re going to do right now…this is an audio glossary of music industry terms…and once we’re done, you’ll be able to converse with the best of them…