Justin Vernon

The story of this musician is proposed as evidence of a emerging Music Commons by David Bollier

Description

The story of musician Justin Verson, recounted by David Bollier:

"“Shelly Banjo and Kelly K. Spors recount how musical unknown Justin Vernon recorded nine songs on a desktop computer while staying at his parents’ hunting cabin in northern Wisconsin. He posted the songs on his MySpace page and printed 500 CDs.

After a handful of music bloggers discovered his music and publicized it on their blogs, word of mouth took over. Within a year, he had a record deal with a small indie label, and had sold 87,000 copies of his album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” half of them through downloads. Vernon assembled a band, Bon Iver (a mangled version of the French words for “good winter”), which now tours almost continuously.

The story of Justin Vernon is about how an artist and social community can discover each other and co-evolve together without the corrupting influences of the conventional music industry. If the Grateful Dead’s business model was once seen as an aberration, the Internet is making it a viable alternative for large numbers of performers and bands. Musicians can now avail themselves of a growing online infrastructure to sell their own CDs, arrange gigs and licensing opportunities, promote themselves to the press, and distribute audio and video tracks. There is even a site, Slicethepiece.com, that allows artists to raise money from investors and fans.” (http://onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2350)