Get Best Sellers Audiobooks in Arts & Entertainment, Music

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: How Music Got Free

Subtitle: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy

Author: Stephen Witt

Narrator: Stephen Witt

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-16-15

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 366 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

"What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime?"

How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It's about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention, and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes music store.

Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3 to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly 2,000 albums over the course of a decade to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap and finally into the darkest recesses of the Internet.

Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling audiobook that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online - when suddenly all the music ever recorded was available for free. In the pause-resisting tradition of writers like Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright, Witt's deeply reported first book introduces the unforgettable characters - inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers - who revolutionized an entire art form and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.

An irresistible, never-before-told story of greed, cunning, genius, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn't just a story of the music industry - it's a must-listen history of the Internet itself.

Members Reviews:

A history of the MP3 and Online Music

A well researched book that stays objective. I was worried this would be one of those books that only looks at the subject from one point of view, but Mr. Witt tells both sides here.

The book focuses on a few of the major players to tell the story. There's the cooperate side, the pirates, and then there's the men that created the means for one to devastate the other...the MP3.

The whole thing is told in plain enough speak for anyone to understand, no need to be a geek to follow along.

Read by the author, and he does OK narrating his own work.

Compelling Story about Technology and the Recording Industry

This book interleaves the technology, the business "machine," the intellectual property issues, and the illegal downloading so seamlessly that you don't want to stop listening. You'll come away understanding how digital compression works so well. From the first chapter you will want to find out more about the main actors; the story unfolds like a good detective novel. You'll learn about how the music industry has evolved over several decades. I liked the irony.

Absolutely outstanding

This story should be, will be, must be, made into a movie. So good! Bravo.

Great Story Read By Its Author

A great read for anyone interested in music industry or technology. How Music Got Free is a marriage of the technology genre with the music history genre.

Thoroughly Researched

This is a gripping and engaging book about a subject that everyone is familiar with.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business (2nd edition)

Subtitle: The Who, What, When, Where, Why & How of the Steps That Musicians & Bands Have to Take to Succeed in Music

Author: Loren Weisman

Narrator: Loren Weisman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-01-15

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 90 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business, 2nd Edition is a detailed analysis of the subjects that all musicians should understand and apply to pursue successful and sustainable careers in music today. Full of practical advice, this music-industry audiobook provides comprehensive details on how to achieve self-empowerment and optimize your success in today's music business. From production and performance tips to marketing and career-building advice, this music-business book instructs and empowers artists on how to take the hard-earned lessons of a fellow musician and put them to work in their own careers.

Take your music from passion to profession. From promotion and performance tips to marketing and career-building advice, Loren Weisman serves up lessons culled from his 20 years as a working musician and a music-business consultant. Get straight talk from the road and the studio in areas such as:

Members Reviews:

a necessity for anyone in any part of music biz

Even if your just thinking about doing music full time. This book tells you everything you need to know to get going, and stay comfortable within the industry.

Very passionatlly read

I really enjoyed this book.

The detail and length are encyclopedic. In my opinion this just shows the author's love for the subject and his caring for those that will read this book.

There are passion and experience in his voice that turn a potentially dry and dusty topic into an interessting chat with a long time and trusted friend.

Easily worth twice the number of stars.

Fantastic perspective on the music industry

I want every artist I work with to read/listen to this book. If you plan on a career in music this book sets the stage on what must be done to make a living at it.

Excellent resource!!

I'm probably older than the target audience but this is an absolute treasure trove! Recommended!!!

Calling this book a "must read" is an understatement

Jam packed with information for any musician planning on making steady income with music. Loren Weisman makes sense of it all in away that honest but not overwhelming.

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: So Many Roads

Subtitle: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead

Author: David Browne

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-28-15

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 103 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anticorporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll both sonically and psychically, So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

Author: Greil Marcus

Narrator: Henry Rollins

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs

Language: English

Release date: 01-27-15

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 331 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out - a new language, something new under the sun.

"Transmission" by Joy Division. "All I Could Do Was Cry" by Etta James and then Beyoncé. "To Know Him Is to Love Him", first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus' hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This audiobook, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism - and its most gifted and incisive practitioner - is destined to become an enduring classic.

Critic Reviews:

"Reading Marcus's words with the intensity and focus of a performance artist, Rollins describes how songs such as 'Crying, Waiting, Hoping' by Buddy Holly, 'Sweet Home Chicago' by Robert Johnson, and 'Money Changes Everything' sung by Cyndi Lauper changed music and changed lives." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

An ecstatic, inspiring read

Seemingly random choices by the writer have a beautifully inevitable and comprehensive quality that references nature's infinite organizing power. Rollins' unhurried, reverential performance is spot on, and I always felt I was in good hands on this journey. Marcus made me want to write my own history. Thanks to both the reader and the author for the love you poured into this project.

Don't just read the title!

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The title isn't accurate. This isn't really a "history of rock". It's more of an impressionistic word painting of rock. The writer is trying really hard to be unique and interesting in both the selections and the way they're described. If that's what you're expecting, cool. For me, I couldn't finish it. Read the description, decide whether that's what you're into, and then go from there.

Would you be willing to try another book from Greil Marcus? Why or why not?

Probably not...I'm interested in the subject, but not THIS interested.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Rollins is good for the subject matter and this writing, but not overall. He. Speaks. Too. Slowly.

Was The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs worth the listening time?

Not for me. For someone who was really into the subject and a conaisseur of the genre, sure. I simply found it obscure and pretentious.

Fresh treatment of Rock history!

Original and thought-provoking history of this music genre that has surrounded my life for decades.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business (2nd edition)

Subtitle: In the Recording Studio (Chapter 7)

Author: Loren Weisman

Narrator: Loren Weisman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-16-15

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

Chapter 7 focuses on the aspects of the recording studio and the recording process from booking the right studio to working in the studio and how to get the most out of every session.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Beatleness

Subtitle: How the Beatles and Their Fans Remade the World

Author: Candy Leonard

Narrator: Tamara Marston

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-31-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

The Beatles arrived in the United States on February 7, 1964, and immediately became a constant, compelling presence in fans lives. For the next six years, the band presented a nonstop deluge of sounds, words, images, and ideas, transforming the childhood and adolescence of millions of baby boomers. Beatleness explains how the band became a source of emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual nurturance in fans lives, creating a relationship that was historically unique. Looking at that relationship against the backdrop of the sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and other events of those tumultuous years, the audiobook critically examines the often-heard assertion that the Beatles changed everything, and shows how through the interplay between the group, the fans, and the culture that change came about. A generational memoir and cultural history based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with first-generation fans, Beatleness allows listeners to experience or re-experience what it was like to be a young person during those eventful and transformative years. Its fresh approach offers many new insights into the entire Beatle phenomenon and explains why the group still means so much to so many.

Critic Reviews:

"I love this book! beautifully written. It's an incredibly hip and astute account of all the Beatles' major happenings that affected so many people around the world who were riveted to their every move (Will Lee, Grammy Award-winning bass player and studio musician, Late Show with David Letterman and Fab Faux)

"Candy Leonard was 'possessed' when she first heard the Beatles, and Beatleness is her story and ours. It's breezy, smart, and open-hearted, and everyone who grew up with the band - or wants to know what that was like - will appreciate its insights and feel its emotional impact." (Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor, Rolling Stone )

"A fascinating study of the Beatles' resounding impact upon late-twentieth-century American culture... While hundreds of Beatles books stake claims about being the definitive work, Leonard's Beatleness finally gets to the heart of the matter, offering readers new insights into the unusual and lasting nature of Beatles fandom." (Kenneth Womack, author of Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles and The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four )

"Portraying both historian and interviewees can be a challenge for any narrator. Tamara Marston does an admirable job of seamlessly delivering both the narrative and quotes throughout this production." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

Important But A Bit Tedious

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

OK, this book fills an interesting niche - interviews with original teenage Beatles fans. But Leonard manages to make the whole thing sound like a very long term paper. Each point is interesting and well-documented. But there's a difference between documenting the Beatles experience versus conveying the thrill of being there.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business (2nd edition)

Subtitle: Chapter 6: The Music Business Plan

Author: Loren Weisman

Narrator: Loren Weisman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-27-14

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 25 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

The Artists Guide to Success in the Music Business, 2nd Edition, is a detailed analysis of the subjects that all musicians should understand and apply to pursue a successful and sustainable career in music today.

Full of practical advice, this music industry book provides comprehensive details on how to achieve self-empowerment and optimize your success in todays music business. From production and performance tips to marketing and career-building advice, this music business book instructs and empowers artists on how to take the hard-earned lessons of a fellow musician and put them to work in their own careers. Take your music from passion to profession. Loren Weisman serves up lessons culled from his 20 years as a working musician and a music business consultant. Get straight-talk from the road and the studio in areas such as:

Members Reviews:

Good Material But only one chapter.

What did you like best about The Artist's Guide to Success in the Music Business (2nd edition)? What did you like least?

Straight to the point. Good information for musician's.

Would you be willing to try another book from Loren Weisman? Why or why not?

If it was the whole book and not just one chapter at a time.

Any additional comments?

Release the whole book at once. It seems unfair that you only receive a single 45 minute chapter when you get other books that are average between 4-8 hours long.

Great!

Valuable insight on constructing a well-established business plan.

Informative, descriptive, and easy to follow.

This is a great start for those looking to get into the music business.

FULL of info

I loved this, made tons of notes. Extremely concise. Thank you! A dollar well spent

information that is hard to get.

very valuable information that will help anybody who'd serious about the music business to 60

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Music, Healing and Harmony

Author: Sally Fletcher

Narrator: Becky Parker

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-13-14

Publisher: Heavenly Music

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

Sally Fletcher, expert harpist, explains how to choose specific music for a wide variety of conditions and states of mind. The right music can aid healing, change your mood, reduce pain, help you sleep, improve your love life, increase your intelligence, help you relax, and lift you up spiritually. Music, Healing and Harmony is filled with research and fascinating stories.

Members Reviews:

Awesome book.

I have always intuitively used music to change my mood. In this unique book, Sally Fletcher explains how music changes mood, and how it is also a powerful healing and balancing force. I now choose my music in a different way, both for enjoyment and for my health. Her harp CD's are also beautiful and therapeutic. Highly recommend. I look forward to checking out all of her cd's.

Awesome book

I bought the paperback version of this book before I purchased the Kindle edition. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and educational book about the magic healing properties of music. I highly recommend this book and Sally Flether's music cd's. Thank you Sally for providing such quality input to the music world.

Excellent information!

I got Sally Fletcher's book, Music, Healing and Harmony, along with the CD of her harp music, Healing from the Harp. Just listening to the beautiful music was healing and relaxing, but the book expanded my understanding. The connection between music and our well-being is amazing.

very well written

Non-fiction is not my genre of choice. Music, however is a big part of my life. Growing up my parents turned music on when they got up in the morning and it stayed on until they went to bed. All four of us children had music lessons in a variety of instruments and Christmas Eve would find us jammin' the Christmas carols. Now I enjoy listening to my kids sing and play. Music makes me happy. And now I have a better idea of why.

Sally Fletcher has written an interesting and easily read little book that explains some of the applications, theories and studies that relate to how music can influence our moods, minds and health. The book reads as if the reader were sitting in a room with the author discussing how music might be better utilized in life. Sure we've always known music is fun but did you know that the type of music you listen to can help you learn? heal? relax?

The facts and figures in the book are pulled together with experience and history which keeps the book from reading like a lecture. The author has also broken the subject into thirteen sections and added musical quotes which helps with readability. After reading the book, there were a ton of musical experiments I wanted to try at home. I was motivated and enlightened by the content of Ms Fletcher's book.

If you are not fond of a litany of study results, you might want to skip reading 'Music: Healing and Harmony' (I happen to love study results) But that's about all the negative I can come up with. If this subject interests you at all, you should find this book interesting, readable and short enough to hold your attention.

Great read and lots of practical advice

I read Music, Healing and Harmony while I was working with Sally to publish the book. The author has an appealing and conversational style, and communicates a lot of information while keeping the reader entertained. This is a huge subject, and this is one of the few books I know of that treats the healing power of music so well.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Respect Yourself

Subtitle: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

Author: Robert Gordon

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-13-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 67 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a record company that becomes a monument to racial harmony in 1960s segregated south Memphis. Their success is startling, and Stax soon defines an international sound. Then, after losses both business and personal, the siblings part, and the brother allies with a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, they fall from great heights to a tragic demise. Everything is lost, and the sanctuary that flourished is ripped from the ground. A generation later, Stax is rebuilt brick by brick to once again bring music and opportunity to the people of Memphis.

Set in the world of 1960s and '70s soul music, Respect Yourself is a story of epic heroes in a shady industry. Its about music and musicians - Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and Booker T. and the M.G.s, Staxs interracial house band. Its about a small independent companys struggle to survive in a business world of burgeoning conglomerates. And always at the center of the story is Memphis, Tennessee, an explosive city struggling through heated, divisive years.

Told by one of our leading music chroniclers, Respect Yourself brings to life this treasured cultural institution and the city that created it.

Members Reviews:

Great narration

Any additional comments?

I would have preferred a little less of the financial details of the seamy underbelly of the recording industry and lot more musical detail and analysis of the grooves vis a vis the other music of the period - there have been some interviews with Cropper and Art Jackson that could have provided source material for this. That said, the book is well researched and very compelling. It's not trying to be for musicians - it's trying to tell a great story and extrapolate it outward to the history of the civil rights movement and at this it succeeds brilliantly, so I can't ding it down to 4 stars just because I'm a music geek. It does exactly what it sets out to do. It's two concurrent stories - the Stax company and the civil rights movement, seen first through the prism of Memphis (a truly despicable racist disgrace of a city) and then through the personal prism of the many Stax personalities.

Both the author and narrator give the book the feel of a novel although it's non-fiction. The narrator is off the hook - she gives each character a voice and personality and makes the characters 3-dimensional. It's subtle and low-key and it takes a little while for her to ease you into the world of each character but by the end you really what a tremendous performance it is.

Really good listen

What did you love best about Respect Yourself?

The behind the scenes view of the record business back in the day, so to speak.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Beatles' Second Album

Subtitle: Rock of Ages

Author: Dave Marsh

Narrator: LJ Ganser

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-01-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Music

Publisher's Summary:

The Beatles' Second Album runs only 22 minutes, with just 11 songs - many of which the group didn't write. Despite all that, the album personifies the Beatles: the world's greatest rock'n'roll band, according to well-known rock'n'roll critic and author Dave Marsh. With its overload of rock'n'roll, R&B, and early soul influence, including "Roll Over Beethoven," and "Long Tall Sally", The Beatles' Second Album - the audiobook and the album - offers a great vantage point from which to see the group's enormous impact on pop music and culture. Marsh breaks new ground by focusing on the Beatles' US recordings and how they evolved from British releases at a time when the two nations' approaches to rock'n'roll production were vastly different.

Members Reviews:

A rant for the Fan-boys

Buy this if Beatlemania was the highlight of your entire life. But if what you are after is an enthusiastic appreciation of the Fab Four there are better books (and podcasts, too).