One surprise for people not in music is how, at the top end, big DJs and producers can start to sound like the more absurd end of Hollywood - tantrums about "minor" issues like billing, set length, riders. Equally, the amount of money thrown around makes less and less sense to outsiders.

But while there isn't a book on why music is like this, there is one on the similar excesses of the art world: "the $12m stuffed shark: the curious economics of contemporary art".

Worth reading, especially for the section on "signalling" - why art dealers can't afford to let the prices of their acts head downward (among other problems, it reduces the price of all the artist's art, not just the individual pieces).

It's easy to extrapolate from this a neat explaination of why agents and DJs kick up such a stink about billing, riders, hotels, despite it looking insane to any outsider, or why promoters fight to pay too much to be associated with the right headline act...

And if you're interested in how to sell in a market where your "product" is worth "as much as you can get for it" (art, music, selling the performances of actors - anything where your buying decision is about reducing the risk of losing further money on the art collection, club night or film you hope to create as much as it is about considering the "product" in front of you), then this book on one of the world's most successful art dealers is recommended: "Duveen: The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time".