A friend of mine is a very talented singer-songwriter who is interested in a career as a performing musician. She has produced and published four albums on her own, and has been fairly successful on the local coffeehouse circuit and local indie radio stations. She would like to find a larger audience for her music, but she doesn’t have connections in the music industry, so she is looking for information about how the industry works and how to break through to the next level. Are there references that I can point her to that would be helpful? I would be interested either in how-to guides for breaking into the music industry, or biographies of other musicians who have moved up from the coffeehouse circuit. (In case it matters, her genre is folk – I would compare her to Nanci Griffith or Joni Mitchell.)
Thanks!