Brian Zisook: And so we're now considering strongly minimum time for monetization, minimum time for chart eligibility, and maximum replay value, with respect to TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. So you have all these considerations that you're thinking about that are already going into creative, more than you would apply otherwise, and then now you're thinking about how to monetize from day 1. It's a recipe, in my opinion, for disaster. 

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

All right. I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Brian Zisook; Brian Z. He's the co-founder of AudioMac, which is a leading music streaming platform with over 30 million monthly users. He oversees global operations and manages relationships with over 400 record labels including Universal, Warner, and Sony. He's transformed DJ booth into an industry leader with 8 million monthly page views, and over a million dollars in annual revenue. So he’s someone that has a lot of expertise and experience in the music industry. I'm excited to connect with him today and talk a little bit about Audiomack, this platform, and, when it comes to streaming, what kind of sets it apart from other streaming options, and just get a general sense of the lay of the land. We're in a time of such amazing revolution and transition with the current state of the music industry, so I'm looking forward to connecting and kind of seeing what your perspective is on where things came from, and where we're going moving forward. So Brian, thank-you for taking time to be here today.

Brian Zisook: Michael, thank you so much for having me. That was a fantastic introduction.

Michael: It's great. You know, the introduction, right? The self, when you have 30 million monthly users, 400 record labels, you've had quite the career. Naybe to start things off, you could just share a little bit about your story and how you got started building Audiomack.

Brian: Going back to 2003, I was still in college. I was doing radio at Illinois State University. I was a program director and show host, and I would spend a lot of my time researching artists who I wanted to interview on the radio program. We would conduct those interviews during the week. We'd then air an edited version of those interviews on our show over the weekend. At the time I was thinking, this is pre-podcast there and Michael, I was thinking there's got to be a better way to get more than like 17 people on campus who are listening to this interview live to hear it with all the time that we were putting in. And so in 2005, I sent a cold email to a gentleman by the name of Dave Mackley, who would eventually become my business partner, who is the current CEO of AudioMack. I pitched him on the idea of making my radio interviews available in podcast form on DJ Booth, which was a platform he created when he was in college. He emailed me back about 15 minutes later, and fast forward within a few years, it became both of our full-time jobs. DJ Booth was our sole platform until 2012 when we noticed that there was a problem in the marketplace, which was a lot of musicians, in particular rap artists, were using free file sharing services to release mixtapes. They were a terrible option, both for the artist and for the fan. So the solution that we came up with was Audiomack, which was a platform that would not charge artists to make their music available. So they didn't have to enter a credit card, there was no bandwidth limit, you didn't have to pay for a monthly or annual subscription. Over the last 12 years, Audiomack, as you mentioned in your open, has grown to a full fledged DSP with over 400 licensed content partners and over 30 million monthly active users globally.

Michael: Wow, that's incredible. I'm curious, having such a firsthand experience with music distribution and the amount of music, I feel like I've heard quite a few stats and the explosion of the amount of music, the amount of content going out. I'm curious from your perspective, what has that been like kinda charting the past 10 years, past 20 years as it relates to streaming. Are you seeing an increase in the number of songs released? What's your general sense on the state of music distribution, music release?

Brian: Fantastic question. So obviously there's been a lot of publications that have covered this rapid increase, and we've seen the numbers on Spotify. Anywhere between like 60,000 and 100,000 new tracks uploaded to DSPs daily. Audiomack is not a full catalog service, meaning we don't have every piece of recorded music in history available, and so what we see is not necessarily indicative of what other DSPs in the landscape are seeing in terms of overall volume. Of course, historically speaking, distribution meant that you needed to physically press up something that needed to be shipped out somewhere, and so there were all these costs involved. The barrier to entry was obviously much higher. With digital distribution, you now have no or low cost solutions where you could either pay a flat rate on a monthly or annual basis, or you do a distribution deal that has licensing terms, wherein the partner is taking a percentage of your royalties for a set term. Obviously, all of these options mean that everybody who's ever thought about becoming a recording artist now can pursue it without needing access to a multi-million dollar recording studio or a physical manufacturing plant or an expert distributor. I think it's both great and terrible simultaneously. It's great because there are likely hundreds of thousands of incredibly talented humans over the course of the history of recorded music, never got the opportunity to share those talents with the world because of those barriers, right? The cost barriers, the connection barriers, the location barriers. I mean, back in the day, you had to be in one of a few cities: New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, to really break through, and now you could be literally anywhere at home in your basement and break through. On the other side of that coin, of course, is because of the vast volume of material being made available on DSPs, it's become laborious and almost chore-like for a lot of casual listeners, and those who work in editorial and curation. It's overwhelming, it's taxing, and of course, music listening should be enjoyable. So if you're feeling those feelings, something is wrong.

Michael: Super interesting. Especially at the time of the recording this, the breakthrough that we've had with AI and music generation, we're kind of in the early stages, but it seems like these tools are going to make that issue even more pronounced or that opportunity that issue, kind of both sides of the coin. I'm curious, in the world of being a DSP, what is it that you feel like Audiomack sets it apart from other DSPs and what's really like the main angle; the main purpose for Audiomack versus other DSPs?

Brian: Well, first of all, the way that we make the content available is conducive to artist discovery. I think if you are a regular user of Spotify or Apple Music, the experience is quite passive, right? So you have a handful of playlists that you have favorited and you press play, and you let it rock, as opposed to the typical Audiomack user that is younger, multicultural, 94%of our audience is multicultural, and they are far more active. They're leaning into the Audiomack experience and they come to us, in part, specifically for discovery. They want to find their next favorite artist. They're not only pressing play on the artists that they were already familiar with before they started their session. Even for those who do have a full catalog subscription to a Spotify or an Apple and who use Audiomack, it's as a supplemental service, right? So they are using Audiomack because of our curatorial experience, because of the way that we highlight music, in particular from underserved markets, right? Outside the US, our biggest markets are Africa and the Caribbean. We're the #1 streaming service in Nigeria and Ghana, as well as 15 other countries in the continent, and we're #1 in Jamaica and across most of the Caribbean. So our ability to be on the ground in these markets, understand both the plight of the local artists, but also the plight of the local consumer, and then aid both. I'll explain. So, a lot of the curation that is done on other DSPs within Africa is not being done by individuals on the ground. It's being done by folks who are in the UK or in New York, or Los Angeles. Not to say that you can't do a great job curating a playlist for another country that you're not in yourself, but to be on ground to understand the tastes of the local community, it just fundamentally creates a better experience. From the users experience, you have these markets where there are all these socioeconomic challenges at play, right? So you have limited or no disposable income, you have lack of access to credit and debit, you have hard cap data plans, you have unreliable WiFi, things that we take for granted here in the US. So, it's a non-starter as a young user to sign-up for Spotify or Apple Music, etc. because you don't have an iphone, you don't have a credit card. We see a lot of young users who upgrade from our ad supported model to our Audiomack+ subscription. They'll use gift cards right? Because they're what we call “income unsure”. They don't know month-to-month if they'll have enough disposable income to continue their subscription. So understanding these challenges and then providing solutions for them is what we focused on a great deal.

Michael: Man, that's awesome. It seems like in some of the countries that are maybe less developed or less fortunate as we are in the United States to have things that we take for granted, like the internet and in a lot of places, clean water. There's such a big movement because of organizations like yourself, like Audiomack, and just in general, it seems like the access of internet is starting to transform different countries. I think that it's great, not just for the moral benefit, but also just for the growth benefit. There's so much opportunity in these places that don't necessarily have access the same way that we do, but there's a lot of people to serve there, and a lot of opportunity for them to serve as well. So it's great that that's a core part that you're able to provide that these other companies aren't.

Brian: Thank-you.

Michael: So, the other thing that you had mentioned was about how on a lot of services, the music streaming experience is a little bit more disconnected; it's more passive. That to me feels like a huge issue. I hear that all the time from artists and from fans who, they're just like streaming music, but they don't actually have a real connection, a real relationship. I'm curious with Audiomack, you mentioned that a big part of it is having more discoverability built into the platform. Alongside that angle, are there more ways for the artist to connect with the fan as well? What do you see as some of the biggest benefits that the service provides that kind of helps to break down the wall between fans and the artists?

Brian: Yeah, there are, and that's something that we poured a great deal of time and budget and effort into. So, first of all, we allow our users to leave comments under albums and songs. It's that social media-like experience integrated into a streaming app environment that checks both of those boxes. Cause typically what you see is the consumption has happened in one place and then the conversation is happening in another. So it requires the user to play hopscotch between multiple apps, right? You're consuming, but you want to feel like you're part of the conversation. Well, both can be happening within the Audiomack app. The other is Connect. So we launched this last year, and Connect is a feature that is available within the Audiomack creator app. So if you either create an account yourself or your music's delivered to us through your licensed label or distribution partner, and you gain access to your account, you can utilize our creator app, and it has a wealth of tools and features in it. One of which is Connect. It's a messaging feature that allows you to actually send messages to everyone who's opted in to follow your account. Now what we noticed was, across the DSP and streaming landscape, in order to actually reach everyone who has opted in to follow your account, they make you either subscribe to some premium plan, or pay for advertising, or boost a post. Otherwise they limit that audience to a small percentage of the total following. As someone who has been a publisher myself, we were affected by that back in the day at DJ booth when Facebook basically Trojan horsed the entire publishing industry, and you went from having access to hundreds of thousands of readers where you can post links to your articles, and then overnight, they only made them available to like 10%. That fundamentally hurt our business. So as a young artist, your business is the attention economy, right? You need to be able to access those, certainly who have opted into want to hear from you. So by using Connect, you can send messages with calls to action, such as “here's my new song, take a listen; here's my new album; what's your favorite track? I'm going on tour, here's a presale ticket link; I just rolled out a brand new line of merch; here's a discount code.” It works like a timeline on X, not a DM, right? So you send the message out, every user who follows you receives a push notification, unless they turned those off. They then will open up the app directly to the message and then they can reply in thread, and they'll see everyone else's reply, so their fellow followers. The artist then has the ability to reply in thread, generating more engagement; more commentary. What we've seen is Connect messages not only bridge the gap between the fan and the artist and solidify that bond, but all of the engagement metrics on an artist's profile go up as a result. So aggregate plays, reposts, favorites, likes, comments, playlist ads, and total follows, because when you receive a message from one of your favorite artists, you're going to tell people about it and then they're going to follow the artist because they want to receive it too.

Michael: Holy cow! Dude, that is awesome! That’s one of the biggest things I feel like is missing from Spotify is there's no ability to actually connect with your people and send them a direct message or make announcements, have some of the social media feeds integrated into it. Very cool. So, I don't know how much about Modern Musician or what we're building with our software as a service, but it's basically a CRM tool that lets artists build advanced workflows and sequences to send out emails and text messages to their fans, and I'm always looking for ways to integrate with platforms and services, especially like what you just shared of being able to help artists connect more with their fans. I'm curious if you have any sort of external integration capabilities for, whether it's through Zapier or like an API integration, if there is a way to sync up from our platforms to be able to help connect artists with their fans.

Brian: I am not the tech guy, nor the dev guy, but I'm sure that there is. So I can put you in touch with those people who are experts at what they do. I mean look, at the end of the day, our foundational mission is to empower artists. Everything that we do is meant to put artists in a better position to succeed, especially at the twilight of their journey. The more tools that we provide for free, the better opportunity that they have to succeed, and our hope has always been that that approach is the best marketing that we could ever do. Artists who see success on our service shout it from the rooftops: AudioMap believed in me, they championed me, they curated my music, and they helped educate me on this crazy, ever changing business. So anything that we can do to further that mission is something that we would absolutely look into.

Michael: Awesome. Well, we'll definitely sync up after the interview to talk a little bit more about next steps and how we can connect the platforms. So, speaking of empowering artists and helping them to evolve their careers, one hot topic lately, as I'm sure you're very aware of, is AI in all facets of our lives and businesses and for musicians and creators and artists in particular. It seems to be a really interesting point of history where some of these tools are, to the point that you brought up earlier around never before has it been easier to create high quality music in like a home studio for what used to cost tens of thousands of dollars, and now anyone, even if they're not necessarily a musician by trade but they're just a music lover and they have a great taste, can start to create some very high quality music and potentially create a career around it. I'm curious about your thoughts around the current landscape of music and AI, and if an artist is listening to this right now and maybe they're feeling a little bit uncertain or a little bit scared because these tools feel threatening from a standpoint of the artistic craft, or maybe on the other hand, there's some artists who feel like maybe it's overblown. I think that's another thing too. It's like: oh, this isn't that good. I'm just curious to hear your general thoughts about the status of AI right now and where things are headed for musicians.

Brian: My thoughts are multifaceted. I am a proponent of tools that aid in the creative process, but they're supplemental; they're not in replace of. At the end of the day, I think most music consumers appreciate and identify their favorite artists because they know that those artists are like them: human. I think the idea that fully AI derived creations could ever be a substitute for, or fully replace human-made music, is a legitimate fear. I just don't see it. Anything can be viewed through the prism of I took 3 minutes out of my day to press play and then they move on. It's almost to me like Gaper's block, right? There's an accident on the side of the road. You can't help but take a look and then you move on. I think what we've seen up to this point is there have been these fully AI created works that utilize the vocals that are learned from known artists, and people take a listen because they're curious, and that's legitimate,  and then they move on, and there's no stickiness once it's known that it's not a human. So I guess those are my thoughts there. In terms of general fears, I mean, history is sort of repeating itself. Whenever there have been technological advancements, whether that's specific to music or generally speaking, there's always been a fear that those advancements will mean fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, less authenticity, right? The advent of the digital audio workstation (the DAW), the idea that it would mean a lesser product. You can make the case that drum machines have greatly impacted the long the fruitfulness of rock music, but pretty much every other genre has carried on and has made great strides and has had great innovation. So it remains to be seen, but I think we should embrace it and use it wisely. If you're an artist though, and you're worried that you're now going to be competing on streaming services with hundreds of thousands of fully AI created works, I can tell you that there are hundreds of thousands of fully AI created works already on streaming services, and a lot of them have less than 50 plays and they're not being curated.

Michael: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is that the concern that humanity, as it relates to artists, are just going to be completely left behind in that it's all going to be AI generated, doesn't feel like that's likely going to happen because, really, it's the combination of humans and creativity and intelligence with these tools, but using them as tools; using them as an extension of our creativity that end up getting the best results. Yeah, I mean, it is super interesting. Looking back at how these different evolutions have happened in music technology, and how that's extended our capabilities, but we haven't lost that spark or that drive or that creativity that kind of comes out of. I can also understand the case that maybe we're dealing with something unique in terms of this new form of intelligence, and if it has an exponential curve, then that gets into some territory that's beyond just like music creativity, but just sort of like things like Neuralink augmenting our brains with being able to actually merge with AI. I'm going down a rabbit hole here. I'm in the middle of reading the book The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. He goes deep into this idea of singularity. It's pretty interesting stuff, but I 100% agree. I think that the right way, at least for now, to align with AI, to think about it as a tool, and to play with it because it is truly remarkable what you can do with it. I think that there's some other industries that might be a little bit further along in terms of how it's integrating AI versus the music industry. Adobe, I feel like is a great example of how they've just built AI into their workflow, and now you can do amazing things. You can just circle something and it generates the exact thing you're looking for. You gotta think that pretty soon, if not already, DAWs are just going to build in like some version of prompt engineering where it creates a whole track and you're like, I want an orchestra with this, and then it does the orchestra, and then you're like: actually, I want it with like sound like this. It just does it. What a wild time to be alive and to be creating anything.

Brian: There is one other area where I would probably throw caution, which is: it is very difficult for writers to be compensated in the current landscape. On the publishing side, we're talking about even less in terms of payouts than artists see on the master side, and one area that has always been a supplemental means of income is sync placements in film and television, commercials and video games. I think a lot of the larger opportunities, like a soundtrack, for instance, the opening credits or closing credits in a movie, we're still going to see placements from human artists, but I have already been told that some of the scenes where typically you'd spend anywhere between $250-$500 for like the song that plays in the background at a house party for like 5 seconds, they're probably going to default more commonly to AI created works where humans don't have to be paid for that because these productions, the budgets are not what they once were and that's a way to cut costs. That's not me saying that I agree with that, that will mean fewer opportunities, forcing placements from artists, but that is certainly a ramification of AI.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a really important thing to call out because whether we like it or not, it seems like that is a big thing to be aware of and to keep into our landscape as we're moving forward and planning how to build a successful career. So along those routes, I'm curious if you have any recommendations for… I think for a lot of artists, one of the biggest challenges or one of the things that they're trying to figure out is: how do I make my music career sustainable? How do I actually make an income with my music in a world where it takes millions of streams to start making some revenue with streaming? I’m curious if you have any recommendations or advice for artists that are looking to make an income with their music.

Brian: I think the hardest part of starting your journey is attempting to monetize it on day 1, because when you are creating art, it naturally does not mesh with commerce, right? Art and commerce are oil and water, and if your singular focus is on monetizing your music from day 1, meaning like you don't have any audience, you have no fans, or you do have a small audience, but it's on social media and as we know, followers are not necessarily fans. It will fundamentally change your approach to your creative, right? How can it not? You're thinking about how to generate more listens; to generate more revenue. That correlation is not necessarily a straight line. We've seen the runtime of hit songs over the past 20 years decrease. Why? In streaming, you only need someone to listen for 30 seconds for that to be considered a monetized play, and I think a song needs to be at least 90 seconds to be eligible to chart. Don't quote me on that, but it's something like that. And so we're now considering strongly minimum time for monetization, minimum time for chart eligibility, and maximum replay value with respect to TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts. So you have all these considerations that you're thinking about that are already going into creative, more than you would apply otherwise, and then now you're thinking about how to monetize from day 1. It's a recipe, in my opinion, for disaster. The focus should be, at the beginning of the journey, consistently releasing music, building up a catalog, and building up a fan base because something is new to someone, no matter when it was first released, the first time that they hear it. What we've seen on Audiomack is discovery can happen anywhere. It can happen externally, it can happen on social media, it can happen through trending or listening library, right? The idea is once someone finds you, wherever that entry point may be, and they navigate to your profile, they will dig in. And so you've taken someone from a one-time lister potentially, to streaming however much is available in your back catalog. Where artists trip up is they haven't released enough. There's nothing else to chew on when that user and perspective fan arrives at their artist profile page. That's how I would answer that question which is: the hang up on monetizing from day 1 is extremely unhealthy. Focus on creating the best work that you can generating an audience, and that will naturally happen over time.

Michael: Super smart! So what it sounds like you’re saying is that monetization is important, but one of the biggest mistakes is that a lot of times we're trying to jump to that point of it, before we're ready for it, and rather than trying to monetize on day 1, it's important to actually build a catalog, provide value, build a community. Once you have the community, once you have the catalog, then some of the parts of monetization start to stem out of that. The analogy that comes to mind when I think about that is sort of like asking someone to marry you on your first date. The first time that you meet someone probably isn't the time to be like: Hey, let's get married! Yeah, maybe you'd be a great partner, but it takes time to build a relationship. It takes time to build trust, and then eventually it leads to more commitment. It seems like you'd take a similar approach in terms of monetization.

So let's imagine that, someone who's listening to this, has kind of put in the time and the energy to kind of build a catalog and maybe they're just still getting started. They have maybe like, I don't know, 10 or 20 songs, and they've started to build a bit of an audience around it as well. They're kind of at the point where it might make sense for them to start monetizing and start to provide value to their community in the form of different products. I'm curious if you've seen any particular strategies or monetization, things that the fans truly find valuable that you'd recommend artists consider if their streaming isn't the main thing that they're focusing on for the monetization.

Brian: Yeah, the focus, Michael, should be on community building. I think a lot of artists, because of the anxiety and stress that comes with being on social media constantly, they associate engagement with fans as unpleasurable. I understand that. The way to shorten the path to be able to monetize these fans is by having them be part of a community, and the way you accomplish that is, as the artist, to be a community member yourself. So that means replying to comments that are positive on social media. That means using the Connect message feature that I mentioned earlier, which is a way to engage in a direct fashion, and then when you win and you celebrate these wins publicly, these community members feel like they were a part of that win; like they were a teammate who helped contribute to that victory, and then they're absolutely, to use your analogy, more likely to be in it long-term, right? They don't feel like the relationship is purely transactional. So then when you do have a call to action like: I just dropped a new merch line, you can be upfront and honest. I've seen a lot of artists do this where they say: Hey, look, I'm going to educate you. I'm not making much money off of you streaming my music. That's just the reality, however, if you support this merch line where my margins are solid, I'll be able to take these funds that you've provided directly supporting me, you get something out of it that's tangible where you can show off that support both online and in the real world, and as a by-product of that decision and that transaction, I'll be able to reinvest this money into what you want from me, which is more music, and depending on how much money they're able to generate, just sustainability, right? I talked to artists every day and the biggest hurdle for most aspiring artists right now is enough money to pay bills so that they have some semblance of comfort in their everyday lives to be in the right headspace to continue to ideate and create and record and release. So to recap, probably what was a very long winded answer, Michael, I would say: be one within your community, celebrate wins publicly so that your community members feel like they played a role, and then help them understand the value in directly supporting them non-music endeavors and help them understand that those funds will go back into the coffers.

Michael: That's fantastic. Yeah. You're definitely speaking my language. Our platform is called StreetTeam, and the idea is sort of to modernize the classic idea of a StreetTeam member who's like you mentioned, like a member of your team almost, but really, at its core, it's about community. It's really about connecting with your people, and I couldn't agree more in terms of that being like the #1 thing to really focus on, cause that's one of the most powerful benefits of music, it seems like, is the community and the fact that it brings us together. Like one of the best things that we get out of it, and that's so interesting that that part's missing from most platforms, in terms of streaming. Yeah, big fan of what you're doing with your Audiomack platform. Maybe for a last question, if someone's listening to us right now and they are interested in exploring the Audimac platform, what's the best place for them to go, and how would you recommend that they get started in order to have the most success on the platform?

Brian: Yeah, just head on over to audiomac.com or download the app. You can create an account for free. If you actually have an account on the platform because one of your label or distribution partners delivered your music but you've never gained access, you can reach out to us. Our department email is contentops@Audiomack.com. You provide us with the link to your profile, the name of your distributor, we'll verify that you are who you say you are, and we can dispatch a claim code to an email that you provide to us so that you can gain access. Then once you have access to your account, that is really what unlocks everything. You'll have the ability to monitor your stats and through your creator dashboard, see where are your plays coming from both within the Audiomack ecosystem, but also geographically. You can determine where your music has been added, whether that's to trending globally within a particular genre vertical or onto playlists. As I mentioned before, you can use Connect, which is our messaging tool. We have sponsored songs, which we are really excited about. We didn't touch on that during this conversation, but in short there has been a huge uptick over the past 5 years, as I'm sure you're aware, of these Fugazi 3rd party “marketing” platforms that take your money and bot your music. Humans aren't actually listening and so you're not getting any prospective new fans, and the worst part is that by doing this, you are in jeopardy of being kicked off of DSPs because using bots is in direct violation of DSPs terms of service. We've seen an uptick of this on AudioMac, as I know Spotify has seen as well. They've actually started to flag and find distributors whose artists use these services. So sponsored songs is a solution to this problem. You can now target a particular cohort based on past listening history and geographic location, and for as little as $1, either using your existing monetization account with us or through an external payment, you can set up a sponsored song campaign where we slot your song into a listener's cue. So a real human being who we've already identified as being likely interested in the music that you make based on location and listening history, will actually listen. Artists are worried about I have a limited budget. Where can I invest that money? Well, you can actually get real plays from real people that count toward your actual stats without having to worry about getting kicked off the service. So that's available as well. Just like I did when I was like 8-years old and my family got our first computer in the house and I just played around and didn't worry about breaking anything. I did eventually break things, but you can't break anything on Audiomack, right? What I mean by that is: download the app, download the creator app, play around, and dive into the data, learn more about what we have to offer, and I guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Michael: Awesome. That's so cool. Well, Brian, thank-you so much for taking the time to be on the platform today and for creating Audiomack to help connect artists with their fans and really empower them to not just be kind of passive in connecting with their fans, actually building a real relationship. I'm looking forward to talking again soon.

Brian: Thank-you so much for having me on the podcast, Michael, I appreciate it.

Michael: Yeeeaaaah. Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow. First if you hit ‘subscribe’ then that’s make sure you don’t miss a new episode. Secondly if you share it with your friends, on social media, tag us - that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review it’s going to help us reach more musicians like you take their music to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.