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July 15,
2009
Newsletter
#101
Hello from Ariel!
In This Week's Issue:
- THIS WEEK'S FEATURED CLIENT - Glideascope
- THIS WEEK'S FEATURED VIDEO
- THIS WEEK'S FEATURED RESOURCES: A BLOG, A
PODCAST, & A STATION
- New Media Pioneer: Rodrigo De Sa of the
Cowyboy Cantor Podcast
Hello Beach Bunnies!
I have miraculously not gotten on an airplane
in weeks. I am tending to my heirloom tomato
garden here in Brooklyn and deep into writing my
second book which will be all about PR and
marketing in the new music business and revising
my first book – Why is it Geminis can’t just do
just one thing at a time?
Speaking of which I am delighted to announce
that my digital PR firm Cyber PR is now
representing authors and filmmakers. Follow the
links below and join us on Twitter and contact us
if you would like to discuss how we can help you
get the word out about your book or your film!
Authors & Filmmakers - Check it out &
Follow us on Twitter!
Cyber PR For Authors
http://www.cyberprbooks.com
http://www.twitter.com/cyberprbooks
Side Lot Studios - Cyber PR For
Filmmakers
http://www.sidelotstudio.com
http://twitter.com/sidelot
 Glideascope –
London
Genre: Electronica, Chillout,
Downtempo
http://www.arielpublicity.net/clients/2592
Why you should pay attention: Glideascope is a
one man band, armed with a computer, interesting
use of samples but fusing this with orchestral
composition, making music for the digital age.
With sounds as lush as classical composer
Pachelbel on one track and up tempo Jamaican
Patois vocals driving the next, this is a true
kaleidoscope of sound.
 "Life Of A Dboy" by
The Dboyz
Genre: Hip Hop / Rap,
Urban
http://www.arielpublicity.net/clients/2549
With
the composure of a seasoned businessman, "Stone"
is the personification of hard work. Born in New
Orleans, Louisiana to a single parent home, his
hunger for success has propelled him from a street
life, to one of multiple business ventures. While
managing an artist for his colleague Souljah Slim,
Stone found himself facing his own musical fate
during recording sessions.
http://cyberprvideo.blip.tv/#2343951
 Featured
Blog:
Pop Reviews Now
http://popreviewsnow.blogspot.com/
Pop
Reviews Now is a run-of-the-mill music review blog
that posts reviews(duh.), rants, raves and music
news.
 Featured
Podcast:
The Great Unkowns
http://thegreatunknowns.tk/
The
Great Unknowns is a music/talk show dedicated to
spotlighting new music artists in the unsigned and
independent industry. Each artist is interviewed
for the spoken and text material to give you
exclusive information about each music artist,
because the audience deserves to know who they are
listening too.
 Featured
Station:
Indie on Air
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/greenplanetentertainment
Indie
On Air A&R for indie labels. They specialize
in helping indie artists get their careers on
track.
http://cbcantor.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/cowboycantor
Cowboy Cantor is a podcast run by a Portuguese
music teacher. Its the only podcast around the
island of S. Miguel, in the Azores islands,
Portugal. The show's aim is to share the greatest
free mp3s found on the Internet, in the artist's
own sites, their label sites, or in many other mp3
sites that offer free music. It's all done with
love and in the name of independent music.
Q: What has to be done in the technological
sense to monetize music to a greater degree on the
internet? A lot of different things have
been happening on the Internet with music. From
stores with d.r.m. files, to free music. From the
Creative Commons to pay what you want. From file
sharing on chats to illegal peer to peer clients.
Everyday we meet new ways of promoting music and
selling it. It is fact, legal or illegal, Internet
is the most effective way of getting an artist to
be known. Labels and artists should keep that in
mind and work with it. F.M. and A.M. radios,
television, newspapers and magazines still have a
word to say on this process, but Internet is vital
these days for music promotion.
One can not tell what will happen next, but I
believe artists, labels, agencies and all music
companies will keep on working in how to get the
most benefit of the Internet.
Q: Where do you see the next trend in social
media? What else can be done in terms of having an
online conversation? What is the next "What are
you doing?" question? While some artists
only release their music in digital format, some
artists still prefer having hard releases of their
music. There are even artists that are coming back
to the vinyl L.P.’s. It is difficult to know
exactly how the social media trend will be in a
near future. Some artists still ask for a postal
address to send their music on physical formats,
others ask for the e-mail address to send mp3.
Instant messaging software is used in some cases.
While some people start using new ways of trading
music and files over the Internet, others still go
for the traditional. There will always be
different ways of sharing music. Obviously e-mail
and on-line file hosting is the most effective and
fast. But if we want quality, get physical.
With on-line conversation getting easier and
easier, and more common each day, and with the
possibility of having no frontiers in what
concerns distance, some day I will receive an
e-mail from an Australian artist asking “what will
you do tomorrow 6 p.m? Is it a good time for an
interview?â€ð The problem is that 6 p.m. in
Australia is 6 a.m. in the Azores islands. “What
are you doing?â€ð is a question with lots of
possibilities. The easiness of communication will
lead us to have our regular schedules changed, so
that we can follow a friend on the other side of
the world.
 Q: What inspired you
to start broadcasting/blogging? Is that still your
source of motivation?
First of all, the
obvious love for radio and communication. Then,
the wish of discovering and sharing new and
independent sounds. Major label artists have their
own way of promoting their music. They have
contracts that involve money in promoting their
music on mainstream radios and television. Local
radio stations don’t promote new music, only major
label artists. That is not wrong, as there are
lots of major label artists that are my
favourites. But independent music has greater
artists to discover, then some artists that are
played on local radios here. Promoting new music
doesn’t mean only playing seven times a day, for
three of four months, songs from the new album of
Bob Dylan, one of the greatest composers and poem
writers of all time, but playing international new
hits and also new artists.
Because most major label artists don’t write
their own music, and when they write, they have to
submit the music to be reviewed by the label, I
look for artists that compose and sing in the way
they want. I look for artists that don’t have to
write 25 songs in two years. I look for artists
that create music as they feel like creating it,
and not imposed by editors, producers and
managers.
Cowboy Cantor started as a podcast for
independent artists, and still is a place to
listen to good independent music. The quality of
this podcast is not the way I produce each show,
or set the playlist for each week. The quality of
this show depends on independent music that I
found. Each week I found new fantastic artists,
and that gives me more and more motivation for
recording each Sunday night a new show, to be
launched during the evening, and giving my
listeners every Monday the finest 7 track
selection of independent music.
Watching the podcast’s statistics, and the
subscriber’s lists, I am very proud of my little
Internet place. Maybe small numbers, comparing to
the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast on iTunes, but
they are growing. My students also come to me from
time to time and make some nice comments about the
music I play. Also, the recent entry on the
Association of Music Podcasting and on the iTunes
podcast directory, gives me more motivation to
keep on doing Cowboy Cantor as it is.
Q: What are some things bands can do to get
your attention to be featured on your
broadcast/blog? Do you ever cover a band that you
are not particularly fond of musically? I
am listening to M.T.V. at the moment. I stopped
because I was listening to the new song of Franz
Ferdinand. I looked to the television and I saw a
different band name. It is not Franz Ferdinand, is
another band that sounds exactly like them. That
is the problem of the majority of mainstream music
today. Everything sounds like what listened before
and will listen next.
For Cowboy Cantor I search for artists with new
ideas, that don’t sound to similar to what we
listen on mainstream radios and television. The
music I play is the music I like to listen to. I
never play music that I don’t like, even if I know
some of my listeners will.
I play mainly rock and indie rock. If we
consider Cyber P.R. artists that I have been
featuring these last months, we will see that I
play different styles of music. Recently I played
Dare Dukes, 46Bliss, Clara Bellino, Lisa Bianco,
Officer Roseland, Puppetbox, Chrissy McChouglin,
amongst others. I still have to play Omar
Alexander, Doug Cash, Spy For Hire, and recently I
have added to my playlist Jessie Murphy In The
Woods.
Lyrics have an important part on the quality of
the song to be played on my podcast. Take Sorry
Simon, by Jonny Dongel, a pure rock n’ roll song.
It goes “I won’t fall for your ploy, for your sick
and twisted joy, I know I’ not your idol, Sorry
Simonâ€ð. This is about Simon from American Idol,
and the way he talks about the way people sing.
Then there is this song Prime Numbers, by The Two
Gentlemen Band, a mix of country and rag time
music. Some girl has prime numbers on her body
measurements, and the lyrics go “My baby’s got
prime numbers. That means she’s only divisible be
one, and that one is gonna be meâ€ð. A part from the
lyrics, the music must have intensity, suspense,
different parts, changes of sound intensity and
rhythm, and if it holds me for the initial 60
seconds, and makes me want to listen to the song
again, I will play it on my podcast. It doesn’t
matter if the keyboard sounds like Coldplay, or
the guitar like U2. As long as it has energy and
the artist own touch, it is a potential song for
Cowboy Cantor.
I record each show of my podcast sitting on a
chair, but most of the time I feel like recording
it jumping and dancing in the room. The majority
of the music I play, even slow music, makes me
want to be traveling around the room, feeling the
music on each movement of my body. That is one
thing I look for on a song. It has to make me want
to move.
I started my podcast back in January 2006. That
time I played tracks with two or tree years old.
Today I still listen to some songs I played in
2006 and it still feels like a recent song. That
is because the artist was not looking for a song
that sounded like the hits of that time, but was
looking for a unique sound, not found on anywhere
else.
Besides the musical requirements, there are the
legal questions. I only play songs under the
Creative Commons License or podsafe music. Even if
I download a track from a podsafe site, like Ariel
Publicity, I try to contact the artists to let
them know that I intent to play their music.
Before playing the tracks I refer to, I wait for
an answer from the artist, manager or label. I do
everything in the maximum security, just to ensure
that I am playing legal music. Also, having a
small answer, even if it is “yes, go for itâ€ð,
shows some respect for podcasting and interest on
having their music played on podcasts. I have so
many great tracks on my waiting folder that I
haven’t played yet, because I haven’t got any
answer from the artist, label or manager. And of
course, I don’t play major label artists. Only
independent or artists with no label.
If I have enough songs of the artist, on CD or
mp3, and I really like it, this artist is selected
to be the artist of the month on my podcast. That
means at least one, if enough tracks available,
two tracks played on each show during the
month.
My musical horizons are wide open. I listen to
a lot of different style of music, I may play a
song that doesn’t fit the usual style of music
that I play, but I never play a song that I don’t
find anything on it interesting. For example,
because I did an interview to a local heavy-metal
drummer, and we talked about Ahab, a doom metal
band, I contacted the band to see if I could play
the track The Hunt. That is not obviously the
style of music I play on Cowboy Cantor, and not
the kind of music I listen to everyday, but that
song was very intense and dramatic. It was a nice
experience I did.
Q: Will major labels ever be the gatekeepers
again, or have they lost all of their power to the
internet forever? Can they somehow return to
prominence? As long as radio, television,
music magazines keep on preferring major label
artists, instead of promoting some great
independent artists, major labels will always be
in the top. Illegal sharing communities may not
bring any money benefit to labels directly, but
having some tracks on a peer-to-peer community
will certainly help to promote the artists, and of
course the label. As the most Internet users still
log in to illegal sharing applications, instead of
listening to independent podcasts and podsafe
music, major labels will always be the top labels.
I will be very surprised if I log in to a file
sharing application, and after searching for
Puppetbox, I get thousands of files, as if I was
looking for the new Green Day album. Independent
artists and labels still not have a place on the
majority of music communities. However, Internet
radios and podcasts have been helping independent
artists and labels to get noticed. In Portugal,
for example, this year will have some artists that
we can find at IODA Promonet, or Podsafe Music
Network, performing at some major music festivals.
I believe that independent podcasts have a word
to say on promoting independent artists.
Unfortunately some artists don’t recognize the
effort we do. When I ask permission to play a
track, I don’t expect a thank you message. I just
expect a “yesâ€ð. Podcasting a track is good for the
podcast, because it gives quality to the show, and
good for the artist, because the show will add
some more listeners to the artist.
ABOUT US
Ariel Hyatt is the founder of Ariel Publicity
& Cyber PR, a digital public relations firm
that connects clients to the new media including
blogs, podcasts, Internet radio stations and
social networking sites. Over the past 13 years
she has represented over 1,435 musicians and
bands.
Educating musicians is her passion and several
times a year, she leads workshops teaching her
strategy of combining social networking with
Internet marketing to help clients grow larger
fanbases and earn more money.
Her first book Music Success in Nine Weeks was
released in June 2008. "Sound Advice," her
bi-weekly ezine and Internet TV series currently
reaches an audience of over 10,000 music
professionals. She is a contributing blogger for
Music Think Tank, and Know The Music Biz.
Sign Up here:
http://www.arielpublicity.com
CONTACT & INFO
Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR
389 12th
Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215
http://www.arielpublicity.com
http://www.bandletter.com
http://www.myspace.com/ArielPublicityNY
http://www.twitter.com/cyberpr
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