Interview with Ariel Hyatt
Ariel Hyatt is a leading public figure in music marketing. She is generous with the information she shares through her newsletter, website, and online class, concepts that she applies with many clients with her Cyber PR company. The best way to learn more in depth is reading her books Crowd Start, Cyber PR for Musicians, and Music Success in 9 Weeks.
RW: The power of your branding accomplished its purposes in my case. I subscribed to your newsletter years ago, and through repetition I have developed the habit of opening your mailings because I am always rewarded with interesting and useful ideas. Why do you put so much content online for free? Are you just a generous person, or there also a win-win in there for you?
AH: It’s half and half. Part of it was because very early on in my career, which was before the Internet, artists would call me and they wouldn’t even know the difference between and publicity and publishing, and would ask lots of crazy and I realized they didn’t know anything. I started with one article, and told people, “Hey, I’m really busy with a career, but you can read this article. It’s about how you can do PR. I hope it helps.” I wanted to differentiate myself from the other hundreds of other publicists out there, and I thought that there would be no better way than by educating people. I felt so frustrated when I was trying to work in the music business. It was a world of “No.” I had a degree in theatre and wanted to be in the record business. I thought that if I wrote articles I could help people.
RW: Have any of the clients you take on come up through your materials and come in being a little bit savvier?
AH: Very few of them of them. There are two types of people—those who want to learn and read, and others that just want to pay you to do it for them.
RW: How do you divide your time between doing the work of your PR firm, and marketing the service through all your different channels? Do you have a time management system, certain blocks in the day or days of the week where you do one or the other?
AH: I wish I could say that I did. I’m not actually that disciplined.
RW: It’s probably so fluid that it depends on the day.
AH: That’s right. When I’m writing books, I tend to like to go away, lock myself up for a few days at home, the beach, or even a resort and sit in my hotel room and write. Some years I feel more motivated than others to put a lot of content out.
RW: How do you decide what to do when you wake up in the morning? Do you already have a plan in mind from the day before?
AH: One thing I do is to set aside times on certain days for phone calls. Other days, when I’m with my team, I’m concentrating on whatever we’re building.
RW: I liked the automated signup system you use for picking a time on schedule for a phone call. It is very efficient.
Bobby Owsinski told me that one doesn’t make a lot of money writing books, considering all the time and effort it requires. The real reason for doing it is to establish your credibility. Is that the same case with you?
AH: One hundred percent. It’s like music. People think that an electronic book should cost 99 cents in the Kindle Store.
• RW: I’m a teacher with a music creation background. I’d like to be more entrepreneurial and move forward and restart my art, but am always bogged down with work. I read your Music Success in 9 Weeks and started one of your online classes, but never sat down and did the work. Just reading about it doesn’t help much, you have to actually go through the process. Do you think promoting a band is like a chain that is as strong as its weakest link? Do you have to take care of all the different aspects that a record company would handle? Is there one among all the things that you suggest that would be most helpful by itself, or does it depend on where you are and where you want to go?
AH: You’ve answered the question in the question. Unfortunately you do have to do so much. It’s so unfair. This is what I would say to an artist: “Don’t be the only one in your band to do everything.” I’ve seen it happen so often, there’s one guy in the band that tries to handle everything while everyone else just drinks beer or whatever it is they do. It’s better when there are multiple members, and one person takes Instagram, one takes Twitter, one writes the newsletter, another books the show. That’s a much more efficient way of doing it.
RW: Do you think that bands that aren’t signed should give up on going for the big time and set a more reasonable goal, resign themselves to having a regional presence, and doing it 20% of the time while holding down day jobs?
AH: Everyone needs to define what success means to them. Some people don’t feel like the day is a success if they don’t have a guitar in their hands. They don’t care if they’re playing a wedding or covers in a bar. To them that is a good day. There are other people that only want to play their original music. I think they suffer a little more. If you can be happy playing 20% of the time and have a day job that pays you a nice salary and can afford to make music and are not always living hand to mouth, that’s not a bad thing.
RW: It seems to make a good income from music you’d have to do it 100% of the time, and an additional 150% of the time running the business side of things. The math from that shows that you could end up running yourself ragged. A lot of musicians don’t have enough income to hire professionals to handle the parts they can’t cover.
AH: We see that so much. It’s really tough. One approach is to save up, and when it’s time to make an album pay other people to help do it right. Then they go through the next cycle.
RW: We’re in Muncie, Indiana and are trying to figure out what our unfair advantage is—what’s unique and special about the Midwest. There are a number of different aspects that go into it. I think from living in the Rust Belt we’ve seen the collapse of the Industrial Age and are already a ways down the road of accepting a lower standard of living than our parents had. Necessity helps breed an entrepreneurial spirit. We may be less jaded and a friendlier audience since life in our neck of the woods is not as rushed and crowded as major music centers. We invite bands to come and grow their act in front of an audience that is representative of the rest of the country, which they can later extend to any other audience. Frank Sinatra went to New York to prove himself. We say: “If we like you here, they’ll like you everywhere.” Being in the heartland we are proud of Chance the Rapper, and resonate to Dylan and Mellencamp’s Americana genre. The cost of living is also lower, and there are plenty of cities that are closer to one another than in the wide open spaces out West, making it more affordable for bands to tour here. Have does all that square with your observations about the Midwest / Great Lakes region?
AH: I think everything you just said is true. I want to kill every artist that shows up on my door step saying that they want to move to New York. I wouldn’t do that, living in a ghetto and sharing a place for a thousand dollars a month with four other people, it is just off the rails. It’s not a great way to set yourself up for success. That’s why I moved my business to Boulder, Colorado. I was born and raised in New York—when I got there I couldn’t believe how inexpensive things were. The thing that I observed about the musicians in Boulder was that everyone was out every night at the bar or club, and they all collaborated. The bluegrass guys would jam with the hip-hop guys, the rappers were jumping up on stage with the rock guys, everybody knew each other. Everyone had the luxury of coming up together. That’s the reason for living somewhere where the cost of living is low. It helps your creativity. I had a huge house with one housemate, with a swimming pool and a parking space and a giant basement that I converted into an office, all for $400 a month. It was amazing! I didn’t have to work very hard to make that rent. Granted, that was 20 years ago, but it was possible.
RW: It’s important for bands to have the time to collaborate and interact, in order to come up with a new kind of music.
AH: I hate bands that don’t like other bands. You get so much more out of a community, when other people are pulling for you.
RW: Half the people I’ve interviewed for this book say that the music is a cut throat business, the other half says that it’s a big family. How about you?
AH: I see it both ways, but I’ve always had the philosophy that there’s enough work for everyone. There are enough bands in this industry for every single one of us to have our share of work as service providers. There are players that don’t see it that way. They come at you, and it’s very painful to build a business, and then have someone observe what you’ve done and try to undercut you. That just starts a race to the bottom, and music publicity becomes a commodity. The same problem exists everywhere. One of the first jobs I had was in licensing music. At that time you could get $10,000 for a placement of your song, but today you might just get $200. At first people were able to monetize being on YouTube and make a couple grand, then all that went away. Whenever there’s a model that’s been proven that seems to be working for somebody, greedy people will come along and figure a way to take it away. It’s a big nightmare for everyone. When I was a booking agent you could get $500 and some pizza playing music on a Tuesday night, and $1,000 on a weekend. Now it’s like all door deals, or pay-for-play, or “I’ll give you 75 bucks.” Artists can’t survive on that.
RW: We have a project at Ball State called Middletown Music to promote music of the Midwest. We’ve started to build a database of small to mid-sized clubs rated by bands to make it easier for them to find places to play, that are close enough to each other so that they the band can fill up their gas tank and make it to the next music oasis. If we don’t find a way for bands, venues, and audiences to get together the whole thing could collapse. I like Katy Perry, but I get tired hearing the same over-produced pop songs coming out of the radio.
We have a Facebook page, YouTube channel, Spotify playlists, Twitter, and an Internet radio station. The students are reaching out to people and asking them to follow us, but we’d like to find other ways accelerate the process. Students are making 30 City Music Guides about the music scenes of the most populous cities in the Midwest, and trying to help connect customers with service providers. I guess there’s no quick fix, it’s just a matter of continuing to chip away at it.
AH: I think you’re right. When I was in Colorado a lot of what I did was to try to start a database of everything necessary for musicians: venues, people who make merch, record stores. It’s needed because it is hard for people to find the information.
RW: What are some sources of information that you would recommend to learn more ways to promote the music scene in the Midwest?
AH: Martin Atkins wrote Tour Smart. He lives in Chicago and is an academic now, but he used to be with a band called Public Image Ltd. He’s one of the most dynamic individuals on the planet.
RW: I have his book and picked up a lot of good ideas from it about touring. He writes with authority, and he and his contributors help communicate a taste of what life on the road is like. I’m going to be talking with Randy Chertkow in a few days about The Indie Band Survival Guide. I like the way their book is so logically arranged.
AH: Randy and Jason are wonderful, and the book is just brimming with information. I threw their first book party here in New York. Bob Baker in St. Louis would be another good person to talk to. He is the grandfather of how-to books for musicians. He owned a fanzine back in the day, is a huge music enthusiast, and wrote The Guerilla Music Marketing Handbook.
RW: I’ve read his book. It’s been a while, but I remember appreciating his out-of-the-box hi- and low-tech ideas, like putting a sign about your band on the side of your van, and then parking it across the street from a venue where a band is playing a similar style of music. I especially liked his idea of selective cleaning, where you use a stencil to clean a pattern with your message on the sidewalk. Evidently you can’t get arrested for cleaning.
AH: I also know a wonderful entertainment attorney who also lives in St. Louis named Daniel Friedman. He is wonderful and has been at it for as long as me.
RW: I’d like to talk with him. It sounds like the jazz scene in St. Louis is cool, that it’s for locals instead of for tourist like in New Orleans. They seem to be growing a scene that includes contemporary traditional jazz.
AH: Look at Ari Herstand’s book How to Make It in the New Music Business. He is one my best friends until this day. Eric Sivers says that Ari is the younger version of himself. Ari has a column called “Ari’s Take”, a website, and a fabulous book that is a guide musicians. He does write for Digital Music News, but don’t hold that against him, because they can become little bit sensational. Ari is phenomenal. He lives in Los Angeles and is always doing stuff.
RW: For people who want to go into marketing, do you recommend just starting off at any kind of marketing company to get some experience, and then later specialize in music and do your own thing?
AH: That’s one way to do it. I always say to young people who are interning for us “If you want to do it, just go find a band, and if they have to pay you in beer and pizza, so be it. Have them pay you something, even if it’s 50 bucks a month. I don’t think bands appreciate your work if they don’t pay for it, even if it’s just a little something. Just say “I want to do your marketing” and is the band agrees, start doing it. You’ll learn by trial and error. If they don’t have anything going on, there’s absolutely nothing to lose, right?
RW: I’ll let you know how the book comes out, and what headway we make with our project. We think promoting Midwest music gives the students an opportunity to develop some skills while doing something practical, and that it could play a small part in developing the music and entertainment industry in the region. A rising ocean floats all boats.
AH: I think that’s the most wonderful quote ever. I’m delighted to hear about what you’re doing.
RW: Thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you.
AH: Of course, you’re welcome.
©2017 Ariel Hyatt and Robert Willey
RW: The power of your branding accomplished its purposes in my case. I subscribed to your newsletter years ago, and through repetition I have developed the habit of opening your mailings because I am always rewarded with interesting and useful ideas. Why do you put so much content online for free? Are you just a generous person, or there also a win-win in there for you?
AH: It’s half and half. Part of it was because very early on in my career, which was before the Internet, artists would call me and they wouldn’t even know the difference between and publicity and publishing, and would ask lots of crazy and I realized they didn’t know anything. I started with one article, and told people, “Hey, I’m really busy with a career, but you can read this article. It’s about how you can do PR. I hope it helps.” I wanted to differentiate myself from the other hundreds of other publicists out there, and I thought that there would be no better way than by educating people. I felt so frustrated when I was trying to work in the music business. It was a world of “No.” I had a degree in theatre and wanted to be in the record business. I thought that if I wrote articles I could help people.
RW: Have any of the clients you take on come up through your materials and come in being a little bit savvier?
AH: Very few of them of them. There are two types of people—those who want to learn and read, and others that just want to pay you to do it for them.
RW: How do you divide your time between doing the work of your PR firm, and marketing the service through all your different channels? Do you have a time management system, certain blocks in the day or days of the week where you do one or the other?
AH: I wish I could say that I did. I’m not actually that disciplined.
RW: It’s probably so fluid that it depends on the day.
AH: That’s right. When I’m writing books, I tend to like to go away, lock myself up for a few days at home, the beach, or even a resort and sit in my hotel room and write. Some years I feel more motivated than others to put a lot of content out.
RW: How do you decide what to do when you wake up in the morning? Do you already have a plan in mind from the day before?
AH: One thing I do is to set aside times on certain days for phone calls. Other days, when I’m with my team, I’m concentrating on whatever we’re building.
RW: I liked the automated signup system you use for picking a time on schedule for a phone call. It is very efficient.
Bobby Owsinski told me that one doesn’t make a lot of money writing books, considering all the time and effort it requires. The real reason for doing it is to establish your credibility. Is that the same case with you?
AH: One hundred percent. It’s like music. People think that an electronic book should cost 99 cents in the Kindle Store.
• RW: I’m a teacher with a music creation background. I’d like to be more entrepreneurial and move forward and restart my art, but am always bogged down with work. I read your Music Success in 9 Weeks and started one of your online classes, but never sat down and did the work. Just reading about it doesn’t help much, you have to actually go through the process. Do you think promoting a band is like a chain that is as strong as its weakest link? Do you have to take care of all the different aspects that a record company would handle? Is there one among all the things that you suggest that would be most helpful by itself, or does it depend on where you are and where you want to go?
AH: You’ve answered the question in the question. Unfortunately you do have to do so much. It’s so unfair. This is what I would say to an artist: “Don’t be the only one in your band to do everything.” I’ve seen it happen so often, there’s one guy in the band that tries to handle everything while everyone else just drinks beer or whatever it is they do. It’s better when there are multiple members, and one person takes Instagram, one takes Twitter, one writes the newsletter, another books the show. That’s a much more efficient way of doing it.
RW: Do you think that bands that aren’t signed should give up on going for the big time and set a more reasonable goal, resign themselves to having a regional presence, and doing it 20% of the time while holding down day jobs?
AH: Everyone needs to define what success means to them. Some people don’t feel like the day is a success if they don’t have a guitar in their hands. They don’t care if they’re playing a wedding or covers in a bar. To them that is a good day. There are other people that only want to play their original music. I think they suffer a little more. If you can be happy playing 20% of the time and have a day job that pays you a nice salary and can afford to make music and are not always living hand to mouth, that’s not a bad thing.
RW: It seems to make a good income from music you’d have to do it 100% of the time, and an additional 150% of the time running the business side of things. The math from that shows that you could end up running yourself ragged. A lot of musicians don’t have enough income to hire professionals to handle the parts they can’t cover.
AH: We see that so much. It’s really tough. One approach is to save up, and when it’s time to make an album pay other people to help do it right. Then they go through the next cycle.
RW: We’re in Muncie, Indiana and are trying to figure out what our unfair advantage is—what’s unique and special about the Midwest. There are a number of different aspects that go into it. I think from living in the Rust Belt we’ve seen the collapse of the Industrial Age and are already a ways down the road of accepting a lower standard of living than our parents had. Necessity helps breed an entrepreneurial spirit. We may be less jaded and a friendlier audience since life in our neck of the woods is not as rushed and crowded as major music centers. We invite bands to come and grow their act in front of an audience that is representative of the rest of the country, which they can later extend to any other audience. Frank Sinatra went to New York to prove himself. We say: “If we like you here, they’ll like you everywhere.” Being in the heartland we are proud of Chance the Rapper, and resonate to Dylan and Mellencamp’s Americana genre. The cost of living is also lower, and there are plenty of cities that are closer to one another than in the wide open spaces out West, making it more affordable for bands to tour here. Have does all that square with your observations about the Midwest / Great Lakes region?
AH: I think everything you just said is true. I want to kill every artist that shows up on my door step saying that they want to move to New York. I wouldn’t do that, living in a ghetto and sharing a place for a thousand dollars a month with four other people, it is just off the rails. It’s not a great way to set yourself up for success. That’s why I moved my business to Boulder, Colorado. I was born and raised in New York—when I got there I couldn’t believe how inexpensive things were. The thing that I observed about the musicians in Boulder was that everyone was out every night at the bar or club, and they all collaborated. The bluegrass guys would jam with the hip-hop guys, the rappers were jumping up on stage with the rock guys, everybody knew each other. Everyone had the luxury of coming up together. That’s the reason for living somewhere where the cost of living is low. It helps your creativity. I had a huge house with one housemate, with a swimming pool and a parking space and a giant basement that I converted into an office, all for $400 a month. It was amazing! I didn’t have to work very hard to make that rent. Granted, that was 20 years ago, but it was possible.
RW: It’s important for bands to have the time to collaborate and interact, in order to come up with a new kind of music.
AH: I hate bands that don’t like other bands. You get so much more out of a community, when other people are pulling for you.
RW: Half the people I’ve interviewed for this book say that the music is a cut throat business, the other half says that it’s a big family. How about you?
AH: I see it both ways, but I’ve always had the philosophy that there’s enough work for everyone. There are enough bands in this industry for every single one of us to have our share of work as service providers. There are players that don’t see it that way. They come at you, and it’s very painful to build a business, and then have someone observe what you’ve done and try to undercut you. That just starts a race to the bottom, and music publicity becomes a commodity. The same problem exists everywhere. One of the first jobs I had was in licensing music. At that time you could get $10,000 for a placement of your song, but today you might just get $200. At first people were able to monetize being on YouTube and make a couple grand, then all that went away. Whenever there’s a model that’s been proven that seems to be working for somebody, greedy people will come along and figure a way to take it away. It’s a big nightmare for everyone. When I was a booking agent you could get $500 and some pizza playing music on a Tuesday night, and $1,000 on a weekend. Now it’s like all door deals, or pay-for-play, or “I’ll give you 75 bucks.” Artists can’t survive on that.
RW: We have a project at Ball State called Middletown Music to promote music of the Midwest. We’ve started to build a database of small to mid-sized clubs rated by bands to make it easier for them to find places to play, that are close enough to each other so that they the band can fill up their gas tank and make it to the next music oasis. If we don’t find a way for bands, venues, and audiences to get together the whole thing could collapse. I like Katy Perry, but I get tired hearing the same over-produced pop songs coming out of the radio.
We have a Facebook page, YouTube channel, Spotify playlists, Twitter, and an Internet radio station. The students are reaching out to people and asking them to follow us, but we’d like to find other ways accelerate the process. Students are making 30 City Music Guides about the music scenes of the most populous cities in the Midwest, and trying to help connect customers with service providers. I guess there’s no quick fix, it’s just a matter of continuing to chip away at it.
AH: I think you’re right. When I was in Colorado a lot of what I did was to try to start a database of everything necessary for musicians: venues, people who make merch, record stores. It’s needed because it is hard for people to find the information.
RW: What are some sources of information that you would recommend to learn more ways to promote the music scene in the Midwest?
AH: Martin Atkins wrote Tour Smart. He lives in Chicago and is an academic now, but he used to be with a band called Public Image Ltd. He’s one of the most dynamic individuals on the planet.
RW: I have his book and picked up a lot of good ideas from it about touring. He writes with authority, and he and his contributors help communicate a taste of what life on the road is like. I’m going to be talking with Randy Chertkow in a few days about The Indie Band Survival Guide. I like the way their book is so logically arranged.
AH: Randy and Jason are wonderful, and the book is just brimming with information. I threw their first book party here in New York. Bob Baker in St. Louis would be another good person to talk to. He is the grandfather of how-to books for musicians. He owned a fanzine back in the day, is a huge music enthusiast, and wrote The Guerilla Music Marketing Handbook.
RW: I’ve read his book. It’s been a while, but I remember appreciating his out-of-the-box hi- and low-tech ideas, like putting a sign about your band on the side of your van, and then parking it across the street from a venue where a band is playing a similar style of music. I especially liked his idea of selective cleaning, where you use a stencil to clean a pattern with your message on the sidewalk. Evidently you can’t get arrested for cleaning.
AH: I also know a wonderful entertainment attorney who also lives in St. Louis named Daniel Friedman. He is wonderful and has been at it for as long as me.
RW: I’d like to talk with him. It sounds like the jazz scene in St. Louis is cool, that it’s for locals instead of for tourist like in New Orleans. They seem to be growing a scene that includes contemporary traditional jazz.
AH: Look at Ari Herstand’s book How to Make It in the New Music Business. He is one my best friends until this day. Eric Sivers says that Ari is the younger version of himself. Ari has a column called “Ari’s Take”, a website, and a fabulous book that is a guide musicians. He does write for Digital Music News, but don’t hold that against him, because they can become little bit sensational. Ari is phenomenal. He lives in Los Angeles and is always doing stuff.
RW: For people who want to go into marketing, do you recommend just starting off at any kind of marketing company to get some experience, and then later specialize in music and do your own thing?
AH: That’s one way to do it. I always say to young people who are interning for us “If you want to do it, just go find a band, and if they have to pay you in beer and pizza, so be it. Have them pay you something, even if it’s 50 bucks a month. I don’t think bands appreciate your work if they don’t pay for it, even if it’s just a little something. Just say “I want to do your marketing” and is the band agrees, start doing it. You’ll learn by trial and error. If they don’t have anything going on, there’s absolutely nothing to lose, right?
RW: I’ll let you know how the book comes out, and what headway we make with our project. We think promoting Midwest music gives the students an opportunity to develop some skills while doing something practical, and that it could play a small part in developing the music and entertainment industry in the region. A rising ocean floats all boats.
AH: I think that’s the most wonderful quote ever. I’m delighted to hear about what you’re doing.
RW: Thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you.
AH: Of course, you’re welcome.
©2017 Ariel Hyatt and Robert Willey