Ariel Hyatt
Ariel Hyatt is the founder of Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR a New York based digital firm that connects artists to blogs, podcasts, Internet radio stations and social media sites. Over the past 14 years her firm has represented over 1,500 musicians of all genres.
Ariel Publicity started out as a traditional PR firm and for 9 years Ariel pitched bands to newspapers, magazines TV and radio. Five years ago she noticed a dramatic downturn in effectiveness of traditional PR for her clients. It was harder and harder to even secure a calendar listing in newspapers that once gave her artists cover stories and feature interviews.
At the same time she noticed that online portals were covering her artists extensively and much faster than their traditional media counterparts. 2005 was the year of the podcast and 2006 the year of the blog (The TIME Magazine person of the year was YOU) and 2006 was the year Ariel Publicity abandoned all traditional media pitching and went digital.
Teaching and educating musicians is an integral part of the Cyber PR platform and the philosophy is: combine social networking with Internet marketing to help artists grow their fanbases and increase their income.
Several times a year, Ariel leads sold-out workshops to musicians and music industry professionals looking to learn about Social Media and online promotion and marketing. Her bi-weekly ezine and YouTube series “Sound Advice” has over 20,000 musicians and music professionals as subscribers and the list is steadily growing.
Ariel has written dozens of articles on how to navigate the “new” music business and her book: Music Success in Nine Weeks is available at Amazon. She is a contributing blogger to New Music Ideas, and Music Think Tank, and she has spoken at countless music conferences over the years including SXSW 2009, FMC, ECMAs & OCFF (Canada), A2A (Amsterdam),CMJ, BMI Music Panel Series, ASCAP Music Expo 2009, and NARAS.
Ariel’s History…
Ariel Publicity was founded in Colorado. Beautiful Boulder was the perfect place for a new company to launch due to the amazing talent that live in the area and the incredible Fox Theatre (where Ariel proudly served as the PR director for 5 1/2 years.) Boulder and the Fox were the best place to get a masters degree in touring bands. Ariel worked for several Colorado bands that helped to put Boulder on the map including Leftover Salmon, Sally Taylor, Zuba, and Acoustic Junction. For a few years she had a booking agency and handled a ton of Ska bands including The Toasters, Skinnerbox (both childhood favorites), Skavoovie and the Epitones, The Stubborn All Stars, The Slackers and The Skoidats.
‘95 & ‘96 – Small Axe Concerts
A concert promoter and management company, appointed her vice president and director of publicity. Small Axe regularly promoted small club shows (Spearhead, Barenaked Ladies), stadium tours (The Red Hot Chili Peppers, 311), and summer festivals (Reggae on the Rocks, The American Music Festival), throughout the Rocky Mountain region. The opportunity to publicize countless national acts coupled with the experience of managing some of the hottest bands in the area was the perfect springboard from which to launch her own company.
‘94 & ‘95 – What Are Records? (W.A.R.?)
She spent a year as the assistant to the general manager at What Are Records?, an independent record label that launched the career of The Samples (selling 1,000,00 Samples records). When the label moved its headquarters in 1994 she moved with them from New York City to Boulder, CO.
‘93 & ‘94 – KSA & NYCD
During the days she worked as an assistant at KSA The publicity firm for Sting, Peter Gabriel, Lenny Kravitz, Tina Turner and Bob Dylan. At nights, she worked at NYCD, a record store on her native Upper West Side.
Fresh Out Of College – WNEW FM
Ariel began her career in music as the “associate producer” of the morning show on WNEW FM in New York. There, she earned the impressive salary of $60.08 per week.
The ’80s
One hell of a time to grow up in New York City. Ariel spent 6 long years at The Dwight School (which later would turn out to be great training ground for participating in the music business) She spent days watching Iann Robinson torment the teachers, and Lizzie Grubman torment the students, and she actually has a 7th grade photo of Damon Dash. This was the eighties – way before The Strokes, and The Hilton Sisters passed through the halls of Dwight. The clothes however were very much the same.
On weekends, no one carded at the door and the live music scene in New York involved The Ramones a thriving Ska scene, long Sunday afternoons at CB’s, and plenty of late nights at The Ritz, The Palladium, Nightingales and The New Music Café. It was a great place to fall in love with live music.
Ariel is an obsessive world traveler, a total foodie, and a vintage lunchbox collector.