Welcome To The Music Biz

Like most days, today I received an email from Twitter notifying me of a new follower. So, I went to this person's page and saw that their most recent post was the following:

Looking at switching to the music industry, and bringing innovation there. Does anyone know of people in that business?

I wrote to him saying I could provide a blogroll and some tweeple to follow and he said he would really appreciate that. After sending off the email, I realized that it would make a decent blog post. So here's the info I gave to this guy:

My favorite company is Topspin Media. Their CEO blogs here and tweets @iancr.

Ethan Kaplan is the VP of technology at Warner Bros. I think he is one of their greatest assets.

Blog: blackrimglasses
Twitter: @ethank

Andrew Dubber is from the UK and blogs here: New Music Strategies
and here: New Music Ideas
and tweets here: @dubber

the Lefsetz letter by Bob Lefsetz is an industry must-read. I'm not really sure why, but everyone reads this guy. He's overly opinionated and kind of annoying sometimes. Other times though, he is brilliant.
Lefsetz Letter

Gerd Leonhard is the self-proclaimed media futurist. If innovation is what you are looking for, start here:
Media Futurist
Twitter: @gleonhard

You can't be in the music business and not be in the marketing business. For this, there's one blog to read: Seth Godin

Read his latest book: Tribes.

Derek Sivers founded CD Baby. He sold it to DiscMakers this year and his new venture is going to be Muckwork. Read over his site to see all the stuff he's got going on. He is a very impressive man (and a Berklee grad!).
Sivers.org
@sivers
@muckwork

Industry news can be found at Billboard (if all you care about is what happened yesterday). For what is going to happen tomorrow:
Hypbot
Coolfer (not a fan, but a lot of people are)
Tech Crunch (the tech world in general, but a focus on the music biz, too)

For news, be sure to also check out Artists House, which not only reports on what is happening, but has excellent analysis: something missing from many sites. (@artistshouse) 

TuneCore's CEO (and guests) have great posts at the company blog:
Tune Corner

And then there is the alltop music site, which is probably the most overwhelming page you can visit as it simply lists some of what I've mentioned above and countless other sites.

So! Hope this is helpful.

I wonder what others would say to someone trying to enter the music business right now. I'm sure everyone's email would be different from this, but I'd hope there are a lot of things that would overlap.