Bob Lefsetz is an American music industry figure and author of the email newsletter and blog, the Lefsetz Letter. Based in Santa Monica, California, Lefsetz worked previously as an entertainment business attorney, majordomo of Sanctuary Music's American division and as a consultant to major record labels. Lefsetz has received criticism from industry peers as someone who furthers himself by tearing others down.

Themes explored in the Lefsetz Letter:

Lefsetz was publicly dressed down by singer Kid Rock in an email exchange that Lefsetz forwarded to readers on November 8, 2007, but has apparently chosen not to post to his online letter archive. In the exchange, Rock reacts to Lefsetz's cavalier "F**k Kid Rock" comment by threatening the industry gadfly with bodily harm and calling him "bitch boy," although Rock later appeared to transcend the incident.

Lefsetz exchanged insults via e-mail with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons in March 2009. Simmons and Lefsetz were both keynote speakers at the Canadian Music Week conference. Lefsetz criticized Simmons' appearance as only self-promotional; Simmons launched Simmons Records with Universal Music Canada earlier in the year. Simmons responded by calling Lefsetz a "moron", and wrote, "I won’t stop telling you how great I am. Find someone else for that." The two debated in-person at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto.

Peter "Pete" Tong (born July 30, 1960) is an English DJ who works for BBC Radio 1. He is the host of programmes such as Essential Mix and Essential Selection on the radio service, which can be heard through Internet radio streams, for his record label FFRR Records, and for his own performances at nightclubs and music festivals. Tong has worked as a record producer and is known by the nickname of Lord of the Dance.

The phrase "It's all gone Pete Tong", where the name is used as rhyming slang for "wrong", was reputedly first coined by Paul Oakenfold in late 1987 in an article about acid house called "Bermondsey Goes Balearic" for Terry Farley and Pete Heller's Boys Own fanzine. It's All Gone Pete Tong is also the title of a 2004 film which portrays a fictional DJ's experiences as he realizes he is becoming deaf. Tong appears briefly in the film. It is also the name Tong has adopted for his club night at the nightclub Pacha in Ibiza.

In 2008 he was involved with the founding of the International Music Summit in Ibiza.

Gene Simmons (born Chaim Weitz Hebrew: חיים ויץ‎; August 25, 1949) is an Israeli-American rock bassist, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur and actor. Known as "The Demon", he is the bassist/co-vocalist of Kiss, a hard rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s. Kiss has sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Chaim Weitz (later Gene Simmons) was born at the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel in 1949. Mother and child emigrated to Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City when he was eight years old. His mother Flóra "Florence" Klein (formerly Kovács) was born in Jánd, Hungary. The German name Klein (means: small) is sometimes used informally in Hungarian as Kis, this however, did not give the band its name. Florence and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust. Simmons' father, Feri Witz, also Hungarian-born, remained in Israel, where he had one other son and three daughters. Simmons says the family was "dirt poor," scraping by on bread and milk. In the United States, Simmons changed his name to Eugene Klein (later Gene Klein), adopting his mother's maiden name. He was a part of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as a child, from 7 am to 9:30 pm

George Mark Paul Stroumboulopoulos (pronounced /strɒmbəˈlɒpələs/; born August 16, 1972) is a Canadian television and radio personality, best known as the host of CBC Television's George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight (formerly The Hour; a talk show about the world's current events) and being a VJ for Canadian music television channel MuchMusic. Stroumboulopoulos studied Radio Broadcasting at Toronto's Humber College.

He was born in Malton, Ontario, Canada, to a Greek father from Egypt and a Ukrainian mother who was also part Indian. He was raised in Toronto primarily by his mother, and a close-knit extended family.

In the second quarter of 1993, Stroumboulopoulos worked for a rock radio station in Kelowna, B.C., for a few months before getting a job offer at the Toronto radio station Fan 590 AM, working in talk radio for about four years before moving to MuchMusic.

From 2000–2004, Stroumboulopoulos worked at MuchMusic as producer and host of The Punk Show, then host of The NewMusic, MuchLOUD and MuchNews.

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of fourteen to pursue a career in country music. She signed to the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift's self-titled debut album in 2006 established her as a country music star. "Our Song", her third single, made her the youngest sole writer and singer of a number one song on the country chart. She received a Best New Artist nomination at the 50th Grammy Awards.

Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in late 2008. Buoyed by the chart success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", Fearless attracted a crossover audience and became the top-selling album of 2009. The record won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest ever Album of the Year winner. Fearless also received Album of the Year plaudits at the American Music Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards and Country Music Association Awards, making it the most awarded album in country music history. In 2010, Swift released her third album, Speak Now, which sold over one million copies in its first week. She then embarked on the 111-date Speak Now World Tour, which was attended by over 1.6 million fans and has become one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time. The album's third single, "Mean", won two Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. Swift is currently recording her fourth studio album, due for release in the fall of 2012.