Michael Walker: Hey, this is Michael from Modern Musician, and before we start the show, I wanted to let you know that right now I’m looking for new artists to mentor personally. Specifically, we’re looking for artists that have at least 1 song professionally recorded. It doesn’t have to be Beyonce level production, but it just needs to be something that you feel proud of and you’re ready to promote. We’re looking for artists who are really just poised for growth, and are ready to go all in on their music. There’s a saying that when the student’s ready, the mentor appears, and so if that's you, if you’re truly ready for it, then I want to invite you to apply for a free coaching call with our team. The goal is to launch an automated system that allows you to build a loyal and engaged fan base so you make a sustainable income with your music online without having to sell your soul to social media, or post 20x a day on TikTok. Before we get started, we always offer a free 30-minute coaching call to make sure it’s a good fit before you get your campaign launched. At this point, the artists that we’ve worked with have hit over 561.3 million streams, a #1 album on iTunes, and we’ve helped many artists grow from scratch to making a full-time income with their music online. In a few rare cases, they’ve even been able to generate over $1 million a year with their music. With that being said, we are very selective with who we work with just based on who’s the best fit and who we can best serve. Because we have a limited amount of time available for those free sessions, we do require an application process where you can submit your music, and you can apply for a free coaching call with our team. So if you’re interested, go ahead and click on the link in the show notes to submit an application and share one of your songs. I'm looking forward to checking out your music, and now… let’s start the show!

Mershad Javan: Unnecessary pressure for every artist to come out and immediately capture all sorts of marketing, and promotional, basically, hype really more than anything else. I think that is really doing just kind of a disservice to independent musicians, rather than focusing on really writing and putting out the best things, even if it takes a little bit longer. 

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.

So I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Mershad Javan. Mershad has over 20 years of experience in the music industry. As an entrepreneur, he has grown from being a songwriter signed to major record labels, to joining publishing companies taking on executive roles. He's now helped grow two companies for significant exits, both as a founding CEO and a hired C-level operator, and he served as a venture partner with top tier venture capital firms in California and Zurich. I'm really excited to connect with him today about the platform Octiive, and something that he's working with specifically related to distribution for indie artists. To touch on the issue, or sort of like a place that we find ourselves in right now, especially as indie artists where we have the ability to connect and distribute and share our music easier than ever before, but in a lot of cases, we feel pressured to appear bigger or kind of different than we already are. One thing that in the short time that we've talked backstage, I've already appreciated about Mershad was really focusing on authentic growth and real connection and the numbers that matter. So looking forward to having a conversation today and appreciate you being on the podcast.

Mershad: Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. And likewise, it's always a cool conversation when it comes to music and music tech and so forth. So appreciate it. 

Michael: Absolutely. So yeah, maybe to kick things off, if you could share a little bit of an introduction for anyone that's listening to this right now who this is their first time meeting you. We talked a little bit about this backstage, but could you share just a little bit about your introduction and how Octiive has started and the heart behind the company? 

Mershad: Yeah, certainly. So the boring, formal side of it: my background’s in business. I went to school for business, but I've always been, as you and I kind of kicked it off earlier, just a music geek, huge musician, music fan. Started out in bands playing guitar and singing and really with just a bunch of buddies that you would co-write with and so forth. That led to my, I guess, passion and fascination for the music industry. I guess the bullet point version of it was through that experience and process and having worked… we got a demo deal with a major label, we completely fizzled out and failed, but I was just always curious how everything worked. Then you start seeing these wars, I guess, for independent musicians, that's the lack of resources. So ultimately we started as a company called Mondo Tunes, and that was really to help the independent musicians get the same distribution channel and resources or range as more established artists. It used to be just major labels that had the artists. Now it's come down and you see a lot more emerging artists that are independent. That was really the whole focal point behind it. And to tie that all up, I mean, we grew fast. We were a California based company at a time. Since then we've expanded. We sold a large stake actually to a UK based media company; a large media company that took a big chunk of it, and that's when we transitioned it to/rebranded as Octiive. Mondo Tunes a lot of people still know that but we rebranded as Octiive. 

Michael: Awesome. The interview cut out just a little bit for me, but I think I got everything that you're saying there. So having both in your own music career, had firsthand experience with distributing your music and being one of the fortunate to actually get signed to a major record label deal, and I'm sure you've been along for this ride, this journey through the transformation of distribution as it related to pre-internet and post-internet, and so I'm curious to hear your perspective now, both having gone through that yourself and having worked with a large number of artists and indie artists who are currently in the industry, what are some of the biggest challenges that you see artists struggling with right now related to distributing their music? 

Mershad: The main thing is, I think this unnecessary pressure for every artist to come out and immediately capture all sorts of marketing, and promotional, basically, hype, really more than anything else. I think that is really doing just kind of a disservice to independent musicians. Rather than focusing on really writing and putting out the best things, even if it takes a little bit longer. So with us, although we cater to a high volume distribution channel, we see a lot of artists just putting out stuff incomplete material and saying: let me just put this out and I'll just work on the next thing, rather than how can you make that the best version of itself and then keep going So, that, and with the lack of patience for marketing and really building a sustainable brand is one thing that we see constantly, and it does happen, right? I mean, those things… Call it overnight, I mean there's always a lot of hard work behind it, but artists should realize it's going to take hard work and time and you have to have that patience and perseverance to continue on. 

Michael: I think it makes a lot of sense. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the challenges or mistakes is because of the pressure; because so much social internet is public, especially Spotify! You go to your profile and you can see when you have less than a thousand streams and there's like a certain amount of social clout, and with social media, there's certainly like there's a big difference if you go to a page and it seems like it has a lot of engagement versus if it's someone that's just starting out. So it sounds like what you're saying is that part of the issue is that because of that pressure, sometimes artists lean towards short-term solutions, kinda cut corners to artificially boost their numbers, as opposed to really focusing on the core heart of what will actually help them grow. Could you share a few examples of: what are some of the most common use cases you see are common mistakes in terms of if someone's listening to this right now, what are some of those tactics or strategies that you see as maybe being somewhat beneficial short-term, but maybe not aimed in the right direction? 

Mershad: Yeah, certainly. So suppose we'll say is, I mean, if you see something online and if it's “too good to be true”, it's too good to be true, right? So a lot of these artists, unfortunately, will buy or team up with companies that promise a number of streams, right? It's impossible to do that, right? So when you read “we'll get you 10,000 on Spotify, 5,000 on AppleMusic”, it's artificial. And what happens is you're going to get dinged for it, and the issue there is, and I think you've probably seen it… most have, but they're cracking down! Streaming companies, for good reason, they're cracking down and saying: Hey, we don't want to funnel a bunch of mediocre stuff, and we want to start championing in good music. So that's a big one that we tell all our artists: don't do it. I mean, if someone's promising you that it just can't happen. You have to really build a true fan base. I think there was some good services coming out now that do help with that. Kind of a “fan fave” type of thing or the “super fans” that you can start connecting with and have almost like the old StreetTeam, right? But it's all digital and have people really help you start promoting your music. But all of that does start with the foundation of a good song, good music, getting back to the roots of really writing meaningful songs, good chord progressions, good melodies, good lyrics, lyrics that connect, the hooks going back to that and so forth. So that's the one I would say, and if there's a big red flag, don't do the bots, don't do the magic marketing companies that over promise stuff and you will get flagged and you're the one that's going to lose because your stuff's going to get taken down and then your brand takes a hit and so forth. 

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah, it seems like there's a double-sided issue when you buy fake streams, fake followers, in that like 1) you're paying money for artificial or bots that aren't actually going to pay you money so the value it's not sustainable because you're not earning enough back from the investment, but then 2) your algorithm that basically suggests recommended music, it's all sort of messed up because the platform doesn't know who to recommend because it's all a bunch of bot artificial traffic. So any of that benefit that you get from organic is just gone because you'd sort of seeded the platform with the wrong type of traffic.

It's funny that you mentioned building up StreetTeam. StreetTeam is actually the name of a software platform that we're developing right now with Modern Musician. It's exactly positioned the way that you described. The main purpose is to help artists connect with their fans and kind of modernize the idea of what the traditional StreetTeam was, so definitely on the same wavelength.

Mershad: Man, that's awesome. I'd love to… Man, I'd love to hear more about that. You know, who's a big fan of that? and I'm a big fan of him, WMG CEO: Robert Kinkle whose really behind the superfan tools and service offers. I think they're building their own. I'm sure. They'll be doing something there as well, but they're huge on it. They feel that that's going to be the next driver for, again, connecting fans, musicians and vice versa to discover good music. So that's awesome. You guys are right exactly where you should be.

Michael: We should definitely connect on that after the episode. So when we talk about this idea of focusing on building real connections and building a relationship with those fans or kind of building those true fans, what are some ways that an artist can do that in a world where there is so much online kinda noise, and with Spotify, it's kind of hard to message or connect with your fans; you don't really have that direct line of access. Have you seen any creative ways that artists have been able to build those types of relationships? And, do you have any tips for people that are listening right now in terms of how they can focus on the right thing as opposed to artificial streams?

Mershad: Yeah. You know, I wish there was a more formulaic way to do that because what works for me, perhaps doesn't work for you and your fan base. I think first and foremost, obviously it's almost like the needs to be unsaid, but really honing down our social media with again, good followers, followers that truly actually care about your music, not buying things, not trying to buy for the sake of the vanity and numbers, but building a solid base that is fan of your music because if I have 500 and you have 50, 000, but my 500 are legitimate followers that actually like the music I'm putting out, the chances of that spreading, obviously, it's much higher than what your 50,000 was completely unknown and what that may result in. So I think to start focusing on that, really good content, again, good music and putting things out, and then there are good companies out there that you can potentially team up with. One of my favorite ones is a company called Fave; CEO that I love; her name is Jacquelle. I have no skin in the game other than loving the company, and they do a really good job and it's exactly that. It's, to me, a very good, selective and proven ways to connect the artist and musician with their core fans. That catches like fire once you start really building on that, and if they're truly passionate about what it is that you do. I'm sure if someone's listening, I'm sure they wanted some sort of a maybe a better answer, just kind of a magic button for that, but there really isn't, but I do think it does start with, again, good content, good music, and start building it from the ground floor with solid communication and messaging and materials that you put out there. 

Michael: That definitely makes sense. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is to start with, you need to make sure that you're reaching the right people because if they're not real people or they’re bots, then it doesn't matter regardless, but once you actually know that this is someone that is a real person, a real fan, then it's just about building a connection with them/building a relationship, and there's different ways to do that, there's different mediums for it, but really it is that at its core. What it reminds me of is when I was first starting with my band Paradise Fears about, gosh, 10-12 years ago now, one of the things that we did that, honestly like I've said, this was one of the best/#1 things that we ever did to build our audience was we started to walk up to fans who are waiting in lines for shows and some of our favorite bands had have thousands of people waiting on the sidewalk, and so we would literally just walk up and introduce ourselves and ask if they wanted to listen to a clip of our song. That worked so well that we decided to go out and follow tours for about 6 months. There's six of us in the band. We followed different tours, and if people like the music, we would offer a CD. We sold 24,000 CD’s doing that in about six and a half months.

Mershad: Wow! That's awesome. 

Michael: That was like the big break for us and the thing that helped us to kind of enter the market. But it really comes back to what you're describing with: it's about building a real connection with the actual fans. In this case, you know that they're true fans because they spent money to be at a show, they're waiting in line for the show. Yeah, I really think that there was something about that connection of us meeting them and having conversations with them. So any way that you can have a conversation with fans, regardless of if it's an online conversation, or a zoom conversation or an in-person conversation, it seems like that's a great way to think about building that initial connection. 

Mershad: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, it just makes it just makes it more personable, right? I mean, that connection, I think it's second to none over any kind of text and so forth. It's funny you mentioned that. My band, we would do the same thing. It's kind of the same strategy a little bit. Again, I'm going to definitely age myself, but it was burning CD’s with our songs at the time. Digital was there, but not in the same fashion as the streaming world now. Then we would find bands like… We love Weezer and bands like Jimmy Eat World and so forth, and we'd go to those concerts and pass them up: Here's a free CD, here's some music. There's ways that you can do that digitally now, right? I mean, you can easily share links. There's all sorts like the last FM/the last future FMs. There's different companies that you can easily quickly share your links with all your streaming sites and so forth. But you're right, I think the effort needs to be there, and that's the key. It's how do you… Just put together a game plan, and it's thinking like an entrepreneur. At the end of the day, you're an entrepreneur that's pushing a product and the product is you, right, or your band. So how do you put together a game plan? And once you do, how do you put some sort of action items to execute and go out and do it? Yes, most of the time it's not going to work; it's not going to get you the results that you want immediately, but something will click and then you can start building on that. So just getting out there, getting active, and pushing digitally, physically, whatever it is, I think it's really key. Most people… you just don't see that as much anymore. I think most people are hoping that it somehow just virally catches on. Whatever that means these days, and that's the end of it. Like, someone's going to find it and it's going to spread, and then it's on. Good luck with that. Right? So hard work still has to be there. Entrepreneur mindset has to kind of dictate and drive it. 

Michael: Yeah, 100%. That kind of leads me to: based on your experience, both as an entrepreneur and throughout your life experience., I think that you probably will have a good answer to this. It's more of like a human/business 101 kinda question, but I think it's relevant to the conversation that we're having right now around building an audience and kind of putting yourself out there and having those conversations. Just in general, building relationships with your customers or maybe other artists, if you're a musician and you want to go on tour with another artists, for example I'm curious if you have any advice for: how do you approach, and build these relationships in a way that isn't just, I don't know, spammy, or isn't just like: Hey, like go listen to my music or “me, me, me”, like “do this thing for me”, but how do you actually build a meaningful relationship with those fans? Whether you're using online social media to have those conversations, or in-person, I'm curious if you have any recommendations for just general relationship best practice in order to be able to build a network. 

Mershad: Yeah. Oh man, that's a really, really good question, and you're right, it's hard to do without kind of the, whether you want to call that the cold approach or the cold call element at some point, and how do that without being intrusive or just being annoying, right? If somebody is sitting in line and they're already in line to get into their favorite band, how do you make that approach? I don't think there's a perfect answer to that, but I think not doing it is not in your favor. But I will say this: so if you are going to reach out, first of all, let's start with a digital aspect, right? If you are going to make some outreach attempts, I wouldn't use some sort of software tool. There's a bunch, I won't name them, but where sending it out and you're customizing it, right? It's basically: Hey, Michael, and then the body, it's the same email going out there, because eventually that will come across as spam, right? So if you're going to make that outreach, finding whatever amount of people, you almost have to personalize it and reach out with that intention. Like I want this person potentially as a fan, or this person to hear my music. Maybe it's a potential business relationship or some sort of a strategic partnership, right? We get it a lot, and I think I mentioned I'm also a venture partner at a VC. We get that a lot as well, and you can tell when it's completely just a drafted mass email attempt. Even if I had interest, I would just be turned off. So somehow you have to do that. Then the physical aspect, it's almost the same. I think the way you said it: it's going to say, Hey, how's it going? My name is Mershad. I don't want to intrude, but I see you're waiting in line here. My band or my music, we're huge fans of them, and I'd love to, if you're interested, if you have a few minutes, if you want to check out something new, I would be completely honored, right? And yeah, you're going to get some no's, like, man, I have no time, but you're also going to probably get some people that appreciate the fact that you did that. So I think that holds a lot of clout, and I think it's a good way to go about it. If you're thinking fast, yeah, the numbers may not make sense on a spreadsheet in your favor: I want to reach out to 10,000 people this weekend. Okay, that's not going to work but if you are looking at building grassroots, which is also a good way, and then you start getting those super fans, I think that's still your best approach unless you have referrals, right? Referrals are obviously probably the strongest, but let's just discount that and say that's not an option or it's a limited option. I think that's your best approach. 

Michael: Got it. Super smart. Yeah. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that when you are approaching someone as much as possible, you want to make sure that it's personalized so it's not sort of a cookie cutter, obviously generic post that you're just mass emailing out to a bunch of people. Generally you can tell the difference between if someone's just copying and pasting the exact same message to everyone, versus actually putting some real intention into personalizing it, and then aside from that, just being willing to show up and potentially be rejected. If someone says, no, thanks… In fact, that's definitely going to happen. I know for us, we had plenty of people who said: no, thanks, we don't want to talk to you.

Mershad: No, no. Sorry to cut you off, but I was going to say, I mean, yeah, welcome to the rest of your life. I mean, yes, [laughs] that's going to happen in relationships, businesses, I've heard of school, right? You have to go through this process. I think it's such a good learning curve getting that rejection. I do think that sifts out the ones that really aren't maybe meant to do it. Those challenges, obviously, it's such a setback for them to stop, then I think it does sift out those ones, and then the ones that are actually meant to continue on have better odds for it. But yes, expect to get, obviously, the denials and rejections and so forth. 

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's such a good personal growth opportunity and there's so many examples of extremely successful creatives or authors who got rejected hundreds of times before writing a bestseller. I mean, the one that comes to mind is, I think JK Rowling had submitted Harry Potter to hundreds of publishers and basically got rejected by all of them. It does seem like learning how to make a proposal or make an offer and graciously be rejected and learning how to not take it personally is something that's a really valuable skill set just for the rest of your life. 

Mershad: Man, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Absolutely! You'll learn a lot more from that than getting a bunch of yeses cuz where do you go from there, you know? 

Michael: Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's sort of like if you're shooting a free throw and if you're just aiming the whole time but never actually let go, then you'll never miss it, but you also can never make it and you'll never get any feedback to know like: oh, I should probably to the left. So it's always better to… if you want to get good at shooting free throws, shoot as many as possible and make sure you're aiming, but learn from it, don't just shoot once every three months, try to be consistent with it. 

Mershad: Yeah man, well said. 

Michael: So, let's talk a little bit about Octiive and maybe the current status of the music industry as it relates to distribution. I'm curious what you see right now. Obviously there's some big shifts that are happening and waves both related to developments of technology with AI music generative tools, but also just in terms of the internet and how music is distributed; the channels that are available to Indies versus signed artists. I'm curious right now for anyone that's listening to this, what are some of the biggest opportunities that they have around distributing their music, and maybe you could share a little bit more about Octiive and sort of the heart behind what the platform is for. 

Mershad: Yeah, for sure. So just like most companies, we've also gone through the process of, I want to say transformation, but we're constantly learning and just trying to see what we can improve, what better service offering we can offer to our end user, in our case being musicians and artists. We started as a digital music distribution company, as I mentioned, MondoTunes, and then eventually, we saw that artists with digital tools, especially with DAW’s, like the Protools and Logics and so forth, Garageband, even, people are now more prolific about writing songs. So at that time it was like: okay, how can we cater to this, cause now it's happened at a much more rapid pace, to ensure that we can still provide resources and the tools for them to get music out faster? So then we really built and rolled out/really launched an unlimited upload model, which we still do today. So where we stand now, of course, that's what we do, and we do that well. We do distribution. If you look at our value proposition, in my opinion, I think most hopefully would agree, it's probably the best in the market because we are a bunch of musicians and our slogan of “by musician for musician” stands, but also now with tools and being able to put out music so fast and so easily, and I feel like there's a lot of cutting corners, what else can we do to help now identify emerging artists and really start going after and supporting them more than anything else? Like you're doing exactly what you should be doing, and we've seen it from your earlier work. It's getting better, better, better, better and it's funneling down in a sense. In conclusion to that, we do distribution and we continue to do that well, and we will continue to do it. We do want to add creator tools to help artists become their best selves, whatever that means. It's relatively speaking to that artists: Let's get your best version of the song out. From there, we're getting behind artists from a label services standpoint, and I hate using that term, but still applies. It's getting behind them from: we can advance royalties now, just make advances, essentially saying: Hey, we can help you with whatever it is. From a marketing perspective, we can get behind playlist pitching. We can help with all sorts of cross-promotional stuff. We've expanded in Europe, so if you're in the States wanting to get out here or vice versa. So things like that, and then lastly, it's always a question of: cool, now my music is out, what else can you do for me? It's additional promotional tools. It's getting that one page where you can really direct all your fans into one spot and they can see your bio, your links, everything from an outgoing kind of marketing approach, and then also, really important, business intelligence: What information and data can we give you Michael as a songwriter to make good, sound decisions for your career? We're building a lot of good data analytics of: here's all your social media. Let's say there's mentions about you out there here's where it's at. Here's all your streams, data, sales, regions. If you're going on tour, here's the spikes on a heat mapping, and here's the places that you should consider and so forth. So we're really packaging all up to make sure that a) we stay relevant for the end user, and then b) we're helping artists really just put out better work and then get out there and hopefully start making more money as a musician. At the end of the day, that's kind of what we're at. One thing I probably should mention, again, the reason why I'm extremely excited about this, so we had sold the company, a large stake in it at once this past year, probably due to some stagnancy and just difference of visions and so forth. We actually reacquired the asset wholly. So it's almost like putting a band back together, bringing out some new key hires to really get behind the independent musicians, because it became a little bit too corporate and a little disconnected from what the average independent musician needs, and we feel that we're already back and really starting to kind of build that out with a lot of discussions, a lot of talks with musicians: What are you looking for? You left our platform once. Why? What can we do better? Let's re-engage kind of thing. So I'm really excited about that part, and I'm learning a lot as so is our team as we have these discussions ongoing. 

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. So, it sounds like really your approach is distribution is a piece of it, but you really want to take more of a holistic approach in terms of serving indie artists, in particular, who might not have access to traditional record label deal, but things like advances for them, as well as other tools for analysis of some of their numbers. They can figure out better: where should we go on tour? What kind of shows should we play? I guess one question would be just around… Clearly, there are different types of distributors or different platforms that an artist could use for distributing their music, like DistroKid or CDBaby or TuneCore and some different ones. So I'm curious, what do you feel like is the main thing that distinguishes or that makes Octiive unique and the best platform for artists to be as it relates to distributing their music and kind of building their career?

Mershad: Yeah man. So all the companies you mentioned all have some great strengths. From an artist's perspective, the good news there is: there is when you have options, the consumer wins at the end of the day, right? That's when you get the best deals, you get the best service and so forth. The one thing we're extremely proud of is, first of all, our artist support. Literally within a couple hours, if you reach out to us, you're going to get somebody to respond, and I'm not talking about some bot-ish or AI or some kind of a custom template thing. We actually engage with every artist from a support standpoint, whether you're a current artist or potential artist. So our artist support, we're just proud of, and we take a lot of pride to make sure that we deliver exactly what you need, again, being musicians first: what can we help with? Value proposition wise, most independent musicians, I hate to say, very kind of a broke bunch, but we love our music and our craft. How can I best optimize my music? How can I capitalize off of a service that's good for me? For us, we have the largest range, most regions, most places that you can get, most stores, essentially, in streaming platforms that you can get into for the least price. So the one thing I will say is if you go through the process, we say: This is our price and includes everything, and it legitimately includes everything. I can't say that, based on our tests at least, to the others because they'll say it starts with X amount of dollars, and then once you go through it: Oh, do you want this store as well? Or do you want also this, or do you want this service? Before you know it, your average transaction is much higher than what promoted you to come in. So I think that transparency for us is key. Great communication. Make sure your music's available everywhere as transparent as it gets, and then let's try to do something long-term. That's really our mission.

Michael: Awesome. Well, that definitely makes sense, and it's very on track with the conversation that we had today around transparency and connection and, really, being real as an artist with your community and just in general how you show up. So Mershad it's been great connecting today. I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast. For anyone here that's listening right now that's interested in checking out Octiive, or diving deeper to connect more, where do you recommend to go to touch base? 

Mershad: Website's best: OCTIIVE.com. Reach out to us, test us out, send us a quick note if you have any questions. Our guys will get back to you ASAP. So we'd love to obviously have that traffic coming in and anything we can do to help, we'd love to do it. 

Michael: Awesome. Thanks Mershad. So like always, I'll put the links to the show notes for easy access and until next time! YYEEAAHH.

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.