Artist Uses Innovative Distribution Model in Ambitious Album per Month Project

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by refe in ARTISTS, INNOVATION

CreativeCommons.org ran a story last week on their blog about an artist named John Wood who is doing something interesting with his music:

“Beginning this past March, John Wood has written, recorded, mixed, and mastered an album a month. Distributed under the moniker Learning Music Monthly, the music arrives on the first of the month as CDs in subscribers’ mailboxes and MP3s in their digital lockers, all released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license.”

“Offering a tiered subscription service (amenities include stickers, bonus albums, a song written for you on your birthday, and much more depending on price), Learning Music Monthly is a great case study in figuring out how independent artists and labels (LMM is released through CC-friendly label vosotros) are approaching distribution in today’s current music climate.”

As the Creative Commons folks mention, Wood’s distribution model is subscription based, with subscribers choosing the amount they would like to pay. Everything that has to do with the album has been released under a CC license, including the music, cover art, sheet-music, lyrics and mix-stems.

The subscription model dates back to the days of Motown (probably further) when labels offered subscriptions that let fans receive new singles and records from each of the bands on the label’s roster when as soon as it was released. More recently this model has been getting a lot of attention, with several well-known acts like Beck and Billy Corgan experimenting with this type of distribution.

Subscriptions make particular sense for this project – 12 albums in 12 months would be a lot for even the most die-hard fan to keep track of. Having each new album arrive at the subscriber’s door (or email) as soon as it’s released simplifies things considerably.

photo by cameronparkins

Pay-what-you-want seems to be working out pretty well, too. If a fan chooses not to pay one of the predetermined tiered prices they are able to simply give a donation of whatever amount they are able/willing to pay. “I’m sure we have a handful of subscribers who wouldn’t have signed up had it not been for the donation option,” Wood acknowledges, “The majority of subscribers have paid by donation, and some of those very generously.” About six months into the year long project, Woods says that he still feels good about the way they’ve chosen to set the project up.

Creative Commons was also the natural choice for Wood:

“CC seems to fit the project well. I feel like this license can inspire new creative opportunities. Also, it just makes sense with the current state of technology. I’d rather people have the music than not; so if someone burns a CD for their friend, that’s great. We’ve gotten a lot of positive nods from people just for being aligned with CC.”

I think Woods is right on in his thinking here. If you want to get your music heard by as many people as possible you need to remove the barriers. Restrictive copyright may (or, more realistically may not) prevent unwanted sharing, but remember that it also prevents the kind of sharing you want from your fans. To take it a step further and release the mix-stems is also a smart move, especially when some of his tracks are actually remixes of tracks originally recorded by other artists.

It will be interesting to see where Learning Music Monthly takes Woods once it runs its course. Regardless of the result, it’s great to see an artist trying something new and attempting to respond to the new possibilities presenting themselves to the music industry today. You can listen to Wood’s work here.

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