De Azeredo and Alem (2025). Negócios da música: um guia descomplicado para artistas e bandas. Dialética

There are very few Brazilian books that provide an introductory overview of the music business for interested readers or people directly involved in it. Although Brazilian music has been extensively researched by many scholars from different academic disciplines, its commercial and industrial dynamics are often presented in a scattered and diffuse manner. The book concisely reviewed here, whose title can be loosely translated into English as “Music Business: a straightforward guide for artists and bands,” stems directly from concerns about a lack of recent Brazilian publications on the subject.

Written by music producer Alexandre Rebouças de Azeredo and entertainment law attorney Nichollas de Miranda Alem, it was published in 2025 by Dialética in Belo Horizonte, only in Portuguese. The division outlined in the table of contents is centered on “ways to make money in music.” Doing a segmentation of seven topics (“performance & show business,” “songwriting,” “recording,” “merchandising & publicity,” “acquired knowledge,” “sponsorship & grants,” and “other ideas and ways”), thirty-five non-exhaustive ways were listed among them; each “way” stated as a chapter.

The authors explain that this division does not come from a “scientific criteria” (rectius, a methodological criterion), but only from the empirical feeling of suitability to what has been described, to ease the natural complexity of the market in a didactic style. It is worth pointing out here a quote from the book's afterword, written by Arthur Fitzgibbon, who is currently an executive at ONErpm: “It is by no means easy to write about, document, record and, above all, standardize the Brazilian music market.”

The book's content is up-to-date—to the extent that it might be considered up-to-date, since the dynamics of the music business often trifle with the barriers of time—in tune with the practices that are widespread in Brazil, as well as indicating the excellent know-how of the authors. Their concern with addressing a number of issues with legal repercussions, such as revenue split from show box-office (Chapter 2), public performance and collective management (Chapter 6), and public funding mechanisms (Chapter 28), is remarkable.

However, from my perspective as a lawyer, I missed the approach to specific situations based on classic and recent caselaw handed down by the Brazilian courts. I believe that the authors did not want to bring any complexity that might undermine the book's purpose (to be, first and foremost, a straightforward guide for artists and bands, as already pointed out) or take the risk of making it boring to read, since many people in Brazil shy away from reading about legal aspects in more detail due to the frequent wordiness of many legal professionals. But a structured adoption of the “case method” in some chapters, mainly emphasising the modularity of business risks, with open and accessible language, would be of considerable value.

By way of curiosity, Brazil presents a range of curious cases related to the music business, ranging from master recording ownership (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, 2022), unlicensed music synchronisation in broadcast TV (Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo, 2021) and video games (Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo, 2010; Superior Tribunal de Justiça, 2015), bamboozled allegations about synch in streaming series (Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo, 2024), up to complex allegations about plagiarism (Tribunal de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro, 2021).

All in all, readings from this work provide an excellent oversight, which can be complemented very well by studying introductory textbooks on the music business published by companies such as Taylor & Francis and Sage.