Josh Woodward Does It All For Free

Josh Woodward may be one of the most humble artists in the music industry, which is also why you probably are not familiar with him. He is a singer-songwriter from Ohio and he chooses to give all of his music away for free, or you can purchase physical CDs from him at a price that you choose (although you have to pay at least $2 for a physical CD, in order to cover the cost, and he doesn't let you pay more than $20). Find and download his music at joshwoodward.com

This method of free distribution might remind you of what Radiohead did for a short time with their album In Rainbows, but the big difference is that Radiohead did this only temporarily for that single album, Josh Woodward has a deep discography totaling up to over 150 songs, all of which are available as either free digital downloads or on a "name your price" system. If this doesn't impress you yet, because plenty of beginner musicians may give away music for free, take it into account that his website has pulled in over 2.5 million song downloads.

As for Woodward's actual style of music, most of it is acoustic folk/pop, but he has experimented around with different sounds such as rock or even electronic with an auto-tune sound on a couple songs. His 2007 album Dirty Wings is one where he takes on a much more noticeable rock vibe than in any of his other material and it is for this reason that this album stands out as my favorite Josh Woodward album. The only real critique I can make of his music, is that he has put out so much content that is all so readily available, that much of it fails to stand out among the rest of the pack without dedicating more serious listening time. But no worries, because this still leaves a few dozen excellent songs that did noticeably pop out to me. I've been listening to Josh Woodward's music for more than a year and a half now, and I still could put his library on shuffle and find new gems
I didn't notice before.

Also of note, a handful of Josh Woodward's earlier songs were written as challenges for the website SongFight.org, where a song title is posted about once a week and artists have that time to record a new original song inspired by the song title, and then the entries are voted on in the next week. Woodward still holds one of the highest win percentages on the site, having entered 44 times and won 24 of the contests.


Here's a few of his songs to check out:



Remember, all of his music is available to download for free at JoshWoodward.com