BONUS: Whats on Your Website? With Joseph Longo

[00:00:00] Rosalyn: Welcome to Refocus, a podcast that helps you find your focus to build a thriving creative career in the music industry. I'm your host, Rosalyn Dennet.

Hello and welcome to Refocus. We've got an awesome guest with us today, Joseph Longo, who will be sharing website tips for artists that will provide insights into designing your website. Joseph is the Learning and Development Coordinator at Ban Zule. He has a background in teaching graphic design and digital marketing, and provides educational materials, webinars, and videos for Banzo will members to keep them up to date on industry standards and new additions to their platform.

Joseph, thanks for coming on the

[00:00:55] Joseph: show. It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for

[00:00:58] Rosalyn: having me. So let's just start with, how important is it for an artist to have a website? We have all these other free things, we have social media, we have other ways of getting ourselves out there. Why do artists. In particular need a website.

[00:01:11] Joseph: Such a good question. And it's, it's funny cuz we do get that quite often and I think these days, like you just mentioned, there's so many other platforms to choose from and it is so important for artists to be present on as many platforms as they can. I think, you know, some people have their preference on which platforms they prefer, which ones work better for them, but as many as you possibly can.

I always say, the more you can get your art out there, the more you can get your face out there, the better. Just the more opportunities there are for people to find you. What's so important about a website and I, I, I personally always say, have it all, have a profile wherever you want to create a profile.

Like I said, whether that's. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever does you feel comfortable and you feel it works for you, but you need that website as well. And there's a few reasons for that. The big one is that it's your slice of the internet that you can fully customize and control the user experience, which I think some artists think that way.

Some haven't really discovered that yet. And that's one thing that I love to really teach people about is the user experience. When somebody lands on. It's a very rigid, singular user experience. They log into their account, they see a timeline, they go to somebody's profile. They may or may not see an update that they post, and even the profile that they see for you is very controlled.

It's curated by Facebook. Everybody's is the same. The photos are in the same place. It all looks the same, and that has its purpose. But with a website from beginning to. You completely control the user experience from what they see, what music they hear, the visuals that they see, how do they feel when they land on it?

You can completely control that. What's available. Can they purchase something? Can they stream something? Can they browse some merch? Can they read about you? You need it all, and a website is extremely, extremely important for that. I,

[00:02:51] Rosalyn: I think with all these other options that a lot of times I will find. In, in doing like artist applications and juries and, and all sorts of things that I'm surprised at, at how many artists don't have a website.

And it is infuriating when you are a person who wants to learn about that artist and get the experience of what they have to present. So if I'm a festival director, if I'm a grand officer, Just an audience member. I wanna get all of my things in one place. I want the one-stop shop. I don't wanna have to click three times to get to three different streaming services in this place for your videos and this place for your photos.

And then where's your bio? I don't know. You know, it's a, you know, the thing that I really stress when talking about a website is that it's the least amount of clicks possible. The biggest amount of information about you possible out

[00:03:40] Joseph: there. Exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself, Rosalyn. And one analogy that I always like to give is, you know, I'm old enough, not that old, but old enough to remember, let's say buying CDs or buying, even buying cassettes back in the day.

And I'm sure some people, you know, vinyls are still pretty popular, but. What I always like to tell artists is think about the experience that you used to have when you bought a cd, when you bought a vinyl, when you bought a cassette and you'd pop in the music, and then you'd take out, let's say, you know, the Jewel Case booklet out of the cd, and you'd look at the artwork and you'd read about the band and you'd look at the pictures while you were listening to the music.

You'd stare at the album cover and get lost in the vibe that the album cover was trying to communicate while listening to the music. That's all part of the same thing. To me, that's one of the reasons why a website is so important because it's that album cover, it's that artwork. It's that booklet that people are going to look through and are going to take in and absorb while they're streaming and listening to your music, and that's part of your package.

As an artist, as a musician, as a band, the visual aspect of it is as much part of your branding as a music

[00:04:41] Rosalyn: is amazing. Yeah. It's like a whole. Way to put together your, your brand and your package. Yeah, exactly. And present yourself. Exactly. And everyone does it differently. And you know, with Banzo will and other sites that have like, you know, it's a template, right?

You're building off of a template. Yeah. But you have so many options and it's your own what you're coming up with your head. Or if you're using a, an outside designer, you know, you're working with a designer as an artist, that's still your vision of how you want yourself to be represented. To the public.

And so just like with the CD or, or an album, you know, there's a specific vibe to it, but not all vibes are created equal. And so, good point. I have seen some, uh, some questionable ones out there. Do you have tips for how to present yourself and like kind of. Aesthetically. And what are some things that people can keep in mind, whether they're designing themselves or working with a a designer?

[00:05:33] Joseph: The biggest thing I, there's um, as I'm sure you can imagine, there's a long list of things that I would recommend here, but the biggest thing that I would probably give you is an answer. Is the imagery, and it used to be, let's say 10, 15 years ago that you would have to, if you wanted professional looking imagery for your website or even for your album artwork, let's say that you would have to hire a photographer or know somebody that had a good camera and knew how to use it.

These days, everybody at least either has a smartphone in their pocket or knows somebody or has access to somebody who does. So anybody can take really, really good quality photos. Themselves. And so the big thing I would say is to have some imagery ready for your site that is professional level, again, which doesn't need to be taken by a professional.

If you get some good lighting, break out your iPhone, you can take a beautiful photo. You can take a beautiful short video to use as the header video on your website that people will see right when they land on it. And that. Biggest thing for me. If you land on a website and there's pixelated images that have been stretched out to fill the space or are just really blurry, look like they've been taken 20 years ago, it's part of that whole experience and vibe that we were just talking about where if they land on the site and they see these things, it detracts from the experience of listening to your music.

And that might sound a little extreme, but it's true. It's, it's a, it's a whole visual presentation. It's a whole package. So that's my biggest

[00:06:52] Rosalyn: suggestion. Maybe like the word that I'm, that I'm thinking of there is like intentionality. Even if it's a picture of your thumb, whatever. If that's your thing, great.

Exactly, but it's gotta be in like the highest resolution and it has to be this intentional picture of your thumb versus like, oh, whatever. I have this screenshot my own. Photo off of Facebook and put it up onto the screen and it, yeah, it's stretched and it's this and that. So just kind of having the, being intentional about, about what you're putting out there as

[00:07:19] Joseph: representing yourself.

Yeah. You know what, I've seen some beautiful, beautiful sight that projected this amazing atmosphere and what they did. If you're not comfortable being in front of the camera and you don't want to take pictures of yourself necessarily. You can go in your backyard, you can go to a park and just take some beautiful pictures of some trees.

I saw so many sites that were just atmospheric pictures of a field, and that was consistent across the main page, across their album artwork. It was the header on each page of their site, background images, just different photos of this one, what looked like a beautiful field around sunset, and it doesn't have to be anything fancy.

You can grab your phone, go out. Take a couple of pictures that are consistent, like you said, intentional in one vibe, in one message that you want to convey along with your music. So that's my biggest tip by far.

[00:08:02] Rosalyn: You've been in the website game for a while, I'm sure you've seen some changes. What do you see as some, some emerging trends of things that, that people are starting to put up on their website that can really help them boost them along?

[00:08:14] Joseph: Great question. The big thing is fundraising and crowdsourcing in different forms. Of course, that. Spiked during the pandemic where live performances were null to very few, and artists needed to find other ways, creative ways to generate income for themselves. Finding ways to generate income through your site and getting creative with that is something that's really taken.

A big step forward in recent years, and that's something that Ben Zeal has really put a lot of focus on too. So, couple of things that we did, we launched an integration with a service called Printful, um, which is a merch fulfillment service. And if nobody's ever heard of a merch fulfillment service before, there's a couple of them out there.

But they're amazing because what they do is they let the artist design and sell any kind of merchandise that they want to through their site with no upfront investment. So, you know, it used to be that you had to, if you wanted to sell a t. You'd have to shop around, find a t-shirt printer in your town, go maybe buy a bunch of t-shirts up front, maybe 200 T-shirts, who knows how many they requested that you buy to fulfill an order.

You spend hundreds of dollars. You have all these t-shirts, and you hope you sell them. You hope you sell enough to break even, and then maybe make a profit

[00:09:21] Rosalyn: as a person who has a basement full of boxes of T-shirts. Yes, I,

[00:09:25] Joseph: there you go. Yes, you understand. You know this. Yeah. And so with these merch fulfillment services, you can sell t-shirts of any design.

You could sell mugs, you could sell key chains, fanny packs, anything you can imagine with your brand and your name on, and your colors you can put for sale on your site. And when somebody buys it, they make it, they ship it to them, it's all taken care of, and you just collect your cut of

[00:09:44] Rosalyn: it. One of my favorite things that I saw Ban Zule do really early on, oh, there's two things actually that that come to mind in this, but one was a subscription where you, you know, if you're a musician who say you wanna release things or you know, let's say you're making a lot of content, you know, you can put it behind a paywall.

Let's say you're a teacher and you wanna like record stuff for your. Students or have, you know, make she music, whatever it is. People could subscribe similar to kind of like a Patreon, but through your own website. Can you explain a bit about that? Yeah,

[00:10:15] Joseph: and I'm really happy you brought that up because personally that's my favorite feature that Bensal offers now, and there's a couple of reasons for that.

The main thing being that it's basically free, it's included with our pro plan and it's commission free just like the rest of our stores. And if you want to be able to collect recurring payments through your website, if you look at. Website builders, there's a hefty fee involved with that. Other website builders, like let's say Shopify for example, or others, there's an extra fee.

They have very fleshed out services for that. But if you want to collect recurring payments, it's gonna cost you a little bit more, but it's something that we've thrown in with our plans without raising the price at all to help. Artists have another way to raise funds for themselves and to get through what was a really tough time in the pandemic and now moving forward in this new music landscape.

To more directly answer your question, what they do, just like Paton, exactly like you said, what it does is it allows you to set content behind a paywall. And it's a great way, I think, and I tell our members this all the time, your fans wanna support you. They really, really, really do. If you give them something interesting, If you give them exclusive content behind a $2 a month paywall or a $3 a month paywall, exclusive behind the scene videos of vlogs, uh, exclusive photos of the recording process, whatever it might be, they wanna support you If it's not something crazy expensive, that they're gonna have trouble fitting into their budget.

They want to, and we have so many members. Have a two, $3 a month paywall and they have a good amount of fans. You see that and I'm like, you know what? I really wanna support, I'll pay you three bucks a month and in exchange, get some fun videos and be able to keep up to date with what's going on with you, and maybe a free song here and there.

It's such a great tool and a great way to generate income for people, and we're seeing that service grow and grow and grow more, more, and more every

[00:11:56] Rosalyn: month. I think that's fabulous. I mean, think about how many folks have a $60 membership to a gym and like Yeah, and don't go every month and. They don't expect that $60 back if they don't go.

Yeah. So asking for, you know, a couple bucks to support an artist you love can be an easy sell and is is a really neat way for folks to engage the fans that love them and wanna support them. Also, you'd mentioned kind of. Crowdfunding and, and crowdsourcing. I wanna bring up again too, that benzo will, does not take a commission.

Mm-hmm. Which I think is incredible, but you also allow people to just, there's like a tip jar kind of option. Right. And you people can just donate. And I love that as well, because when folks are dreaming all their music for free mm-hmm. And, and the cost of printing CDs and vinyl and all that stuff is, is.

Expensive. It's so much. Yeah, and, and you know, nowadays it's harder to get people that even want to accept a free cd, let alone pay for one. So, you know, having a wave to just make a little donation. Have you been streaming my music? Please go to my website, throw me five bucks. It's like a little less transactional where yeah, you're getting something, you have the pressure of putting something out, but people are able to.

To continue to support you through, through your own site. And I think that's really

[00:13:07] Joseph: great. Yeah, it's, it's pretty amazing and it's really heartwarming actually. And you wouldn't believe, and for anybody watching this, who might, if you're an artist, if you have a band, if you produce music and you might, you think, oh, I have a small fan base.

I don't think too many people are gonna wanna pay for exclusive content or, you know, donate a little couple of bucks here and there to help out. You would be really surprised. People who are passionate about music are very passionate about supporting the people who produce the music that they love. We see this all the time, and your fans will be very generous and very willing to support you if you give them the opportunity to.

I think everybody out there would be

[00:13:43] Rosalyn: surprised with that in mind. You guys hit a very huge milestone. We did, yeah. Recently. Congratulations. Thank you. Can you so much tell. Tell folks a little bit about the big news

[00:13:54] Joseph: For sure. So, Ben Ziegel has been around for almost two decades now, and within that time, uh, Ben Ziegel members have grossed over 100 million in sales through their websites.

Again, completely commission free. Which is unbelievable cuz from the beginning, Ben Ziegel was created as a way to put the power into the hands of musicians to be able to build and manage their own sites while selling their own music, direct to fan, being able to cut out the middleman, so to speak. Being able to cut out the designers, being able to cut out the labels to a certain extent.

And to see that a hundred million, it's a, it's a mind boggling number to think of, and I'm sure it's spread out over almost two decades, but still, it's, that's a lot of money that independent musicians, small, independent musicians have raised by selling through their websites with us, and we couldn't be happier and more proud about it.

[00:14:41] Rosalyn: Well, congratulations. That's incredible. One of the things that I appreciate about what you do is, and I'll get into a bit more of. Later as well. But you're really designing for artists, for musicians. Mm-hmm. When you're, when you're doing your templates. So there are things on the benzo site that I personally love when, when I use it, stuff like you have options to create an E P K.

And for folks who don't know what an E p k it's, it's an electronic. Press kit. We used to back in the day, print that on paper and carry around like boxes of leaf. I remember that with, you know, with your CD tucked inside in a weird way. And you know, it was a whole thing. But the idea of the electronic press kit was that it wasn't, Direct to fans, it was direct to buyers.

So direct to either festivals, you would give it to like a, a festival you would give your, your Prescott to media to radio. So it's a little bit more of like a high level way to present yourself less of a, a marketing way. More of like a, here's the goods, you're gonna straight to the goods of what you need to know if you're considering playing my music on the radio or if you're considering hiring me for a festival.

So can you talk a little bit about, about some of the features that you would recommend somebody. In their electronic press kit.

[00:15:56] Joseph: Absolutely. Like you mentioned, electronic press kit is something that you would present to, uh, prospective bookers. Um, anybody who might be wanting to learn a little bit about you in a quick, really condensed way or.

Sometimes more importantly, uh, something to offer up high resolution images per se for people who are gonna be putting together promotional material. So let's say somebody's gonna be advertising an upcoming show that you're on the card for. They need a graphic of you. They need a graphic of your band to put into this advertisement.

They'll come to your electronic press kit to get some high resolution images. So that's the main thing. The first thing that I would recommend would be some really nice high-res images. And again, these used to be, we call them pro shots. You know, like you need to go to a photographer or hire somebody to come and get like these really nice pictures for you.

Really. Now just prop up your iPhone, get some good lighting, take a hundred pictures and choose the best lens. You know, put a bit of a filter on it, on through your phone. Adjust the uh, saturation, the vibrance a little bit, and boom, there you go. You have some beautiful high resolution images ready to go.

But those are really important for the reason I mentioned before, but also just to present your brand in a really clean, crisp way. Aside from that, you do want a little bio, nothing too wordy. You don't wanna have paragraphs and paragraphs of text on your E P K, but you know, couple of lines. I would say two to three sentences are usually enough to give a really concise summary of.

Your genre, who you are, where you're from,

[00:17:16] Rosalyn: what do you do? And it's online so you can always link to your bio. If people wanna learn more, you just exactly hyperlink or link it in there so that you just give 'em a little teaser and they can, they can get more where they want it. That's

[00:17:26] Joseph: exactly it. It's little teaser of everything.

Perfect. That's aside from that little bio high resolution images, you do want to have a little bit of your music and we always recommend, if possible, your latest video, something on there that they can watch and stream. Um, I do talk to a lot of artists, a lot of our members that don't have video and I.

Especially with people who are maybe of a slightly older generation who are still active musician. Um, I think there's a little bit of a misconception with video that it needs to be either like a music video or something that's professionally shot, um, which is just not the case anymore. And I think the younger generations of musicians are so used to this because they grew up with social media, so they're used to video being something that's a little bit more accessible.

But for anybody who didn't necessarily grow up with social media, I think it's really important to get used to the fact that you can take great looking video. Again, even if you have a six, seven year old smartphone, it can still take really, really good 10 80 p video. You can prop it up on a table if you have tripod even better, and you can just record yourself jamming, you know, record yourself playing something and put that up.

And that's. More than enough. In a lot of cases, you don't need a professionally shot music video to put up on your site. I

[00:18:35] Rosalyn: usually say to folks that your number one calling card is live video. Yeah. Like that's, that's the first thing you know before anything else. If you wanna present yourself to bookers, you know, especially that's what they're looking for.

They wanna know what it's going to be like if you play. At their festival or you play at their coffee house. So depending on who you wanna present yourself to, if you can show here, here's me doing that thing. This is what it sounds like when I do that thing I want you to hire me for, it's gonna go a long way.

And again, like you said, I could be, if you're looking to play on big stages and you've. Played on, you know, even a medium stage. Having that a video from there doesn't have, again, doesn't have to be professionally shot. Mm-hmm. But they see the way that, that you interact on stage and the energy that you have on stage and the energy that a crowd has During the pandemic especially, we saw a ton of folks just, yeah.

Streaming from their backyard or doing that kind of style of video that's like just folks performing, not necessarily for an audience. And that has a ton of value too, because you're just, again, you're getting the energy of what it's. During a live performance. Absolutely. And you can imagine you're the, you're in the audience at that point and you're imagining what it's like.

So yeah, I, I would, I would highly recommend on, on an e PK that that's very findable on there. Absolutely. Another thing personally that I love is that it is, Like a lot of the folks that work at your company are musicians. Yeah. And I cannot tell you the amount of times that I have typed into the chat, Hey, you know, I wanna do X, Y, Z, and the person types back to me like, oh, hey Rosalyn.

Uh, this is so and so. We did this together. Like, like, it's like a person I've worked with. Yeah. In the music business. It is so. That you support both in the product that you make, but also um, in the people that you hire, you're supporting, uh, musicians and, and music workers. And I think it goes a long way for the user experience that I know, that the person I'm talking to understands what I'm talking about.

You know, I don't have to explain why I want my MP3 to be downloadable. X, Y, z you know, it just makes it so much easier to, to explain what, what I'm doing when I know the person on the other end of the line is not just the chat bot. It's a, it's a person who, who gets

[00:20:50] Joseph: it, you know? Yeah. You know, Ben Segal's famous tagline was always four musicians by musicians, and that's.

Been true since day one. Chris, the founder of Ban Ziegel, was a musician. Everybody who's hired for the most part is or was a musician or is involved in the music industry in some way, or at the very least had a strong passion for it. So you have so much homegrown talent. In banal too. So many people started in the support team, came in there working their way, learning the product, learning about the industry, and then worked their way up into different roles like I did.

I started in the support team a little to about 10 years ago with banal, and uh, worked my way up coming from a music background as well. And that's always been our philosophy, and it's so important because our customer support team has always been the number one priority with Ben Ziegel. We want to talk to people, like people We don't want to come off as, and I'm sure you can think of a million experiences you've had, anybody listening can think of.

Anytime you have to call your internet company or your phone company a terrible experience that you've had where you feel sort of dehumanized in a way, like you're talking to somebody who just doesn't care, isn't going the extra mile for you, and it's just a non pleasant experience. We talk to people, like people, we relate to them.

We. Understand what they're looking for. Cuz most of us were there at one point. Most of us were musicians. We know what they need. Um, we know how to talk to them, which is a big thing. We don't talk to people in a way that's not personal. You know, we're very sort of, you know, professional, but casual in the way that we communicate with people to make them feel like, you know, you're talking to a real person who's hearing you.

And who's understanding what you're looking to do and wants

[00:22:28] Rosalyn: to help. I love it. It's really incredible. Also, on the flip side, whenever I have, you know, staff or someone who's interacting, I always have to preface like, I don't think they would be a jerk, but I always have to preface like, don't be a jerk. I guarantee you the person on the other end is like a member of F M O or has like showcased at FMO or like, yeah, so I mean, people shouldn't be jerks anyways, but you.

A lot of times you're talking to a bot.

[00:22:53] Joseph: I think we've been conditioned, and it's really sad when talking to people in customer service, you're almost expecting somebody to cop out of something, to sort of not want to help you or to talk down to you, or you're just expecting a negative. At least I am. I've had so many bad experiences with customer support and, uh, yeah.

I'm, I'm, I'm so happy to hear that Rosan, that's amazing because that's really what we strive for. So

[00:23:15] Rosalyn: before we wrap up, looking into the future forward, Thinking trends, what you know, do you have any predictions for the website of the future and what that's gonna look like?

[00:23:27] Joseph: Ooh, that's such a good question.

Wow. The website of the future and what that's gonna look like. You know what it's, that is such a good question and to answer that, yeah, I think you have to look back and websites as they are right now. Of course, the functionality of websites, the features that you have on them and what they can do for you.

Has. But the basics of what a website is hasn't changed in the last 20 years. It's really just, and it goes back to what I was saying before, but it being your little slice of the internet, your little customizable space. So I think the services that are available through sites, how you're gonna fundraise, what kind of information and how that information is on there, the formats of the visuals that are going to be available on the site is gonna change and evolve.

But to be honest with you, in the near future, Or even like projecting the next 10 years, I can't even imagine the concept of a website at its base, what it is. Uh, really changing too much cuz at its base it's really simple. Maybe that's

[00:24:19] Rosalyn: the brilliance of it. And maybe that's the, the point to hit home with is that we've seen social media come and go.

You know, we've seen MySpace as the thing, and then it's gone and we've seen, you know, streaming services come and go and the popularity of certain sites come and go. So I feel like websites, because they're steady, because they're your piece, maybe that's why it has such longevity. Yeah, and that value because as the trends change and the things come and go, You have your slice of the internet that can be yours as you imagine it, wherever you're at, without, you know, without having to bow to the trends of

[00:24:56] Joseph: the time.

Exactly. And you know, one other thing, without going into too much deep, this is a pretty deep topic to get into, but when we're talking about, um, search engine optimization, so what that is, is how easy is it to find you online in search engines when people type in certain keywords? So if they type in folk music, Ontario, are you gonna be the first result?

Are you gonna be the third result? Are you gonna be on the second page of Google? That's search engine optimization. And when it comes to a website, the longer that you're established and the more of a regular visitorship that you build up on your website, the more search engines like Google kind of trust you and deem you important.

So the longer that you can have this website of yours established for on there, uh, just the better. And like you said, it's immune to trends. Social media platforms come and go. Streaming services come and go. Uh, your website's gonna be there. And the longer that you can have it established the.

[00:25:45] Rosalyn: Do you have any other tips?

I'm glad you brought up SEO because I think that's, um, something that's not talked about enough in the artist space. Are there some things that, that artists can do to, to improve their SEO on their website?

[00:25:59] Joseph: Absolutely. And um, actually we have a great, it's free online. You can just Google Bansal SEO for Musicians ebook.

Um, it's free online. You can find it. It's a great resource that we put together with a lot of tips. If anybody's curious, you can just Google. Um, you can find it really easily through our website. A couple of things, if I had to name them off the top of my head for people to keep in mind is updating your site regularly.

That is a big one. Google prioritizes sites that aren't dead, uh, sites that are regularly updated. So Google does something that's called crawling your Site, which is they do this every couple of weeks where they look at the content. And then they update their search results. So they check your content, they check your page names, all that good stuff.

They do a scan of your site and then they update on their end. Um, so if every time they scan your site, the content is exactly the same, all the text is the same, everything's in the same place, nothing has changed over time. That'll start to sort of degrade your search engine optimization. Uh, they really prioritize sites that are fresh, that are regularly updated.

And that could be a new blog post. That could be, um, have a latest news section and just update it with a couple of lines of text once a week. It could be as simple as that. Or just, you know, adding some new pictures, adding some new videos, embedding some different things. Um, a blog feature is a great way of doing that.

That's the number one way. The second one is, Having clear text, clear content with keywords that you want to be associated with you. So let's say Folk Music Ontario, make sure it says Folk Music Ontario on your site. Clearly in as many places as you can, possibly squeeze it in there and don't muddle that with too much else.

When it comes to page titles or the site title, try and determine what the keywords are that you want to have associated with your site and use that text everywhere possible. Those, those are two big tips. I would start.

[00:27:42] Rosalyn: Amazing. Thank you so much. No problem. Joseph. How can people find out a little bit more about you and

[00:27:48] Joseph: Ben Zule to find out more about Ben Zule?

Really, the best way is to, we have an amazing blog that's updated regularly with great tips for independent musicians, uh, great tips for designing your website, keeping your website up to date, and making good use of our features. I would definitely recommend keeping an eye on the blog or following us on social media because we do announce all new blog posts there.

That's probably the best way. If you are curious. Really reach out to our support team. You don't even need to be a member. Just go to bansal.com, click on the little chat bubble and talk to one of our team members. Talk to another musician and ask them anything you want to know. They'll be happy to talk to you.

[00:28:21] Rosalyn: Well, thank you so much, Joseph. I really, uh, appreciate you and, and what Ban Zuel does for artists and and thanks for chatting with us today.

[00:28:28] Joseph: Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

[00:28:36] Rosalyn: That's it for this episode of Refocus. Please subscribe, rate, and review on the podcast app of your choice so you never miss an episode. For more information, you can visit us@bomontario.org and follow us on social media. At Folk Music Ontario, this refocus session is brought to you through the generous support of the Department of Canadian heritage.