Kyra Reed

The Roxy featured in iProng Magazine talking Social Media

Kyra — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:32:38 +0000

Nic Adler, owner of The Roxy Theatre, talks Social Media in this month's issue of iProng Magazine. It is an excellent article on how he has used the concepts and tools of the medium to keep his business thriving and rebuild the music community on the Sunset Strip.

Congratulations on another great article Nic. And thank you for the mention. I guess I will forever be "the blog lady."

"After taking over the club, Nic’s first order of business was to redefine what The Roxy was supposed to be in the face of the rise of competing music scenes in other LA neighborhoods. At the same time he began finding his way into social media after his girlfriend chided him over the sorry state of not only his MySpace page, but The Roxy’s official website as well.

“In the next couple days I met this girl Kyra Reed, and she was introduced to me as Blog Woman, ‘this Blog Woman is going to come and talk to you.’ And I was in an open place where I was kind of looking for the next way for The Roxy to excel, and she comes in and sits down and says ‘Do you know about community?’ And I’m like yeah, I guess I know about community, where I live, my neighbors. Then she started explaining to me the importance of community and paying it forward and doing things to help your neighbors, but in an online networking space.”

To read the article in full go here.

SXSW 09 Day One

Kyra — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:31:54 +0000

Yesterday was transition day…the backpacks and pocket protectors of Interactive faded away and has been replaced with skinny jeans and cigarettes. Hallelujah! Music is here at last. Interactive was a great time. Made some new friends, saw a chilling film about a war photographer called "The Blood Trail" and went to some fun parties.

But today through Saturday is all about the music. It actually started last night with The Upsidedown at Elysium. I love those guys. Piper and I are staying at the Super 8, aka, SX Shangri-la. She is shooting for MoJo this year. Its going to be a fun trip. Will update tomorrow with video and photos of fave new bands.

Music Xray: How to PULL industry attention to your songs

Kyra — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:58:38 +0000

The brilliant minds of Platinum Blue Music have taken their Xray machine and turned it into a new service for musicians and music industry professionals.

Music Xray Introduction

From the website: “Music Xray will use music information retrieval science to enable Music Industry Professionals to create dynamic, high-speed music filters where quality metrics, success potential and sounds-alike search criteria are defined by the individual needs of each Music Industry Professional. You could say that Music Xray is the first fully customizable music filter for Music Industry Professionals.”

Music Xray provides artists with a customizable module that contains a song, lyrics, video, market share info, blog mentions and artist bio. These modules are then matched up with music industry professionals based on requests such as types of songs, tags, hit ratios, etc. The basic modules are FREE for musicians with options for an up sell on premium services.

Music Xray did a great job on the design of the modules. They are sleek and intuitive to use. Simply click on the information you want and it expands the window. Since the modules contain all the information an artists needs for press, labels, etc. it will also be a useful tool for artists to add to their press kits and blogs or websites.

Congratulations to Mike McCready and the folks at Platinum Blue…Music Xray is a compelling product and I hope it does well. Please let me know what you think of Music Xray.

Tags: music, technology, platinum blue music, mike mccready, xray, musicians, artists

The Roxy Theatre on cover of Nightclub and Bar

Kyra — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:50:41 +0000

I am very excited to share with you the latest news from the Roxy Theatre's social media success story! Nic Adler, owner of the Roxy Theatre, made the cover of Nightclub and Bar, the leading trade rag for venue and bar owners. "How The Roxy Regained Relevance by Listening and Communicating" features an in-depth look at Nic's reinvention of the Roxy's image by ditching his website for a blog and opening his doors to the community. And thanks for the name check Nic! Nic is a true pioneer in the music and social media space. I wish him and the Roxy staff the best of luck in the coming year and look forward to seeing what's next!

Entertainment industry made up $250 billion/750,000 jobs losses due to piracy

Kyra — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:23:18 +0000

This story from Boing Boing:

“Ars Technica’s Julian Sanchez takes a long, investigative look at the entertainment industry’s claim that piracy costs the American economy 750,000 jobs and $250 billion and discovers the truth: they made it up and repeated it until they forgot they had made it up.” Read More…

Is anyone surprised by this revelation?

Fire on Laguna

Kyra — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:17:48 +0000

Yesterday around 4:30 I was working at home with Marjorie and my sister Alex. We heard a popping and a bang coming from upstairs. We weren't sure what it was and almost chose to ignore it. I walked to the back door and saw water coming into my place and smoke off the porch above me. Outside I saw huge orange flames shooting from the laundry room. I ran back into the apartment, screaming, "FIRE!!!, get out!!" I called 911 and ran upstairs to my neighbor's place. I heard her leave a few minutes before the fire started so I knew she was safe, but there were animals in the house. I bolted up the stairs and didn't see any fire, thought for a minute I was overreacting and had called the fire dept for no reason. Then I saw the smoke and flames in the kitchen. The dogs were gone, so I grabbed her turtle from his tank and flew down the stairs to help Marjorie and Alex. I had no idea what to take, where anything valuable was or what to do until the fire dept arrived. My brain shut down, I could hardly move. The fire dept. arrived in minutes. Five engines, and dozens of firemen poured out of the red trucks and went to work. I have never seen anything like it. They were heroic in their yellow uniforms with oxygen tanks strapped to their back, dragging hoses up the massive flight of stairs to our house. I love firemen. I love firemen. I love firemen. I had my phone in hand so I began trying to locate my neighbors and my landlord. Before too long the street was a sea of red fire trucks, seven engines and two SUV's. The neighbors were lining the street, photographers were taking pictures…and a "public adjuster" was on scene freaking us all out. My phone kept buzzing and ringing, I couldn't understand why the hell everyone was choosing that minute to call and send emails. When I had a minute to check, I found emails like "Are you okay? Twitter is blowing up about the fire at your place" so I checked twitter and could not believe the number of tweets about the fire! I tried not to be alarmist about it. But the medium is all about the moment. It was a strange feeling to be standing across the street from my house, watching the firemen tear away the roof, and tweeting about it. But it was also somewhat comforting, I felt less helpless and vulnerable in the experience. In a tragedy - thinking about where you are going to sleep or eat are the hardest decisions to make. Knowing that so many people made themselves and their homes available to me and my dog - it made the experience so much easier. I didn't have to think, I knew we would be okay. Those amazing fire fighters (did I mention that I LOVE firemen) escorted me to my apartment and told me there was going to be water damage and they wanted to cover my apartment with plastic. They pulled shelves away from the walls, took all my pictures and paintings and put them on the table, placed anything that looked valuable away from the leak and covered my furniture, computer, bed and photos with plastic. There wasn't much to do after that, but watch as piles of burned wood cascading from the roof. Marjorie took us to get some food and a change of scenery. By the time we got back to my place it was dark and there was no electricity. Black foam and burned wood covered the backyard. My apartment was a disaster. The entire ceiling was on the floor, puddles of water, plants on their side, furniture turned over. Its a mess, but nothing compared to upstairs. Walls and roof, gone. My Janey is not my neighbor anymore. This makes me very sad and my heart goes out to her. Alex, Sophia and I stayed at Marjorie's last night. I'm dreading going home today. I'm not sure what the day or next few weeks will bring. My biggest concern is not having a place to work while they re-build the house. Do I move or find temporary office space? Please let me know if you have either a place on the West side for rent or an office I can crash for a few weeks. The LAist picked up on the Twitter fire story. What more could a Social Media Consultant want? A story about using Social Media in a tragedy…. Thank you to all who expressed concern and offered help. The emails, tweets and calls meant so much. Thank you to the spectacular LA Fire Dept. and the firemen who did an amazing job of saving the house and protecting my apartment. Los Angeles is truly a great city, I'm lucky to be here.

Fire

Kyra — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:02:00 +0000

Earlier today an electrical fire started in the apartment above mine. 7 fire trucks and 30 firemen put the fire out and an enormous hole in the roof. My apartment is intact, but the extent of the water damage has yet to be determined.

I’m not sure yet, what I’m going to be dealing with, so if we had plans this week - they may be postponed.

Thank you for all the tweets, calls and emails with offers to help. My furniture and clothes are in good shape, however - I may need to find a place to work for a few weeks while the apartment is being worked on.

UPDATE:

This morning the LAist published a story about yesterday’s events as they played out on twitter.

*the fire was not started by a dryer as I assumed, but by faulty wiring in a porch light that was not even on.

Marjorie took these photos just after the fire was put out.

Web 2.0 Expo: Schwaggin’ Wagon Day Two

Kyra — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:05:26 +0000

I could hardly wait to see Tim O’Reilly, the man who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, give his keynote on Wednesday. I expected to hear about cutting edge innovations in business models, groundbreaking developments in software, and the effect that Web 2.0 is having on the world offline; there was just so much to talk about! I’m sad to say it was a disappointing speech. He talked about a narrow version of Enterprise 2.0, data mash-ups. He mentioned Wesabe a company of which he happens to be a Board Member.

I walked out half way through, bored and wanting more. So I headed down to the Expo floor with my partner in crime, David Preciado, where I was met with more disappointment. It was a typical expo set-up. Rows of booths with huge displays staffed with personnel in branded t-shirts reciting memorized pitches. And, of course, TONS of brochures, hand-out, pens, foam balls, stuffed animals and other useless crap with company logos splattered all over them. Much of this stuff would end up in the collection cans outside the Schwaggin’ Wagon.

It was very disheartening, while O’Reilly was calling for Silicon Valley to take on bigger challenges (a part of the keynote I admittedly missed); the companies represented at his conference were anything but innovative. Now, I’m not a tech expert by any means, my specialty is marketing and from that perspective – there was no innovation or revolution or new standards setting happening, except in the white van parked in the loading zone outside the Mascone Center.

Web 2.0 Expo: The Schwaggin’ Wagon and Day One of the Expo

Kyra — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:58:02 +0000

Two weeks ago I was invited to participate in a PR stunt called the “Schwaggin’ Wagon” at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I was more than happy to accept, the conference has been on my radar for three years now and the opportunity to attend was more exciting than free tickets to Coachella.

The Schwaggin’ Wagon was an idea conceived by Social Media Consultants, like myself, with the intention of collecting all the schwag from the conference that no one wants and donating it to charity. Sponsors like Heavy Bag Media and Mashable jumped on immediately and the van was decked out and ready to roll 6 days later.

The Schwaggin’ Wagon departed Los Angeles on Tuesday and before we even hit San Francisco, Jon Gordon from NPR’s Future Tense was interviewing Idea Meister and wagon driver Mike Liskin.

We stopped off in Turlock for some of Anna’s award-winning Pomegranate Martinis and some wireless Internet access. The laptops were fired up, Twitter was tweeting and the blog posts were rolling. Our Facebook friends had doubled and the Twitter and Britekite accounts were blowing up since pulling out of Los Angeles just four hours earlier.

We finally arrived in San Francisco, too late for any parties, but just in time for a good night’s rest. Thanks to the amazing work of Get It Done Queen, Marjorie Kase, the next day was packed with media interviews and the buzz about the wagon was all over the expo floor, all before we had even set out the first collection can! It became apparent quickly that the Schwaggin Wagon was going to be well received at the Expo.

Kyrareed.com in the blogosphere

Kyra — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:51:21 +0000

Reputation Management is a crucial element in online branding. A Google search of your name or product can tell you quite a bit about what is being said about you, who is saying it and why. Unless you are a real asshole, you shouldn’t be afraid of what you might find. Most music bloggers embody the sense of community that makes the blogosphere such a unique environment. They tend to lean toward being kind rather than being cruel. If you do run across any bad reviews, take the opportunity to reach out to the writer and clear things up. And who knows, some of those lemons out there may offer a chance to make some lemonade.

I recently did a Google search on Kyrareed and was surprised to see how well the recent post I wrote for Tunecore was received. Not only did I find some really nice things said about my blog, but I also found some new blogs to add to my list of recommends. Thank you to all the bloggers who mentioned kyrareed.com.

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