When I first spoke with Cooper Anderson nearly two years ago, he was just your average everyday 19-year-old that had launched a successful record label at 14 and developed a fully independent global digital music distribution platform in between college classes.
But in just the past two years, a lot has changed.
Not only has his company Catapult undergone a total branding overhaul to become All Good Distribution, but both the music industry and the indie scene have begun moving rapidly away from many of the long-established trends of releasing, touring, and traditional promotion.
That’s led Anderson to follow suit, winding down the record label arm of his company and focusing more fully on providing independent artists with a way to curate and control their own releases and distribution.
Of course, this new evolution into All Good was spurred by more than just a hunger for change. It was accelerated also by a different company named Catapult Distribution that was less than thrilled about sharing their name with Anderson’s platform.
Cooper Anderson: You can say, "Oh, why didn't you Google it?” Well, I was 14, give me a little break.
I had a long talk with my parents, and I also talked to a bunch of people who I also just trust in various businesses, and even music as a whole, and it was like “well, if you want to take this seriously, beyond just being like something you did when you were a teenager, and you want to keep this going, you should change the name while you're still young.”
It's still the same team, same software, just new logo, new colors, new name. I still own the company, 100%, no outside investors. It's just all-Oklahoma, all-me.
Brett Fieldcamp: That’s the way that the now-21-year-old prefers it, with himself at the helm and no one to answer to but the artists and the community that have made All Good a success.
But that model does come with its own challenges, not least the decision to only allow new artists onto the distribution platform by application or brief signup windows.
Cooper Anderson: The traditional way of building a distribution company is that you get as many clients as you can, but that's not how we do it.
If we take all those on at once, like, yeah, we'll make a lot of money, but then the service goes down, the quality goes down, the quality that we're known for, that people refer their friends to “oh, I'm with All Good and they take care of me, you know, you should join.”
So that's the non-traditional way of doing things, because at the end of the day, we're a software company, and you want to sell yourself for as much as you can, but you don't - I personally don't - want to sacrifice the quality, you know.
Brett Fieldcamp: But that hands-on approach to music distribution and indie ownership took on a new life when Anderson was introduced to an ambitious new form of music distribution called Phyzi.
An artist-designed, credit card-sized product with USB connectors that plugs directly into a phone and allows fans to instantly upload an artist’s music to the device that they’re already carrying, Phyzi is a new take on physical media for music, all without the streaming services and algorithms that have come to dominate the music industry.
Cooper Anderson: Phyzi is just me and a crew of guys who want to give ownership back to the fans. And I did not start it. I just came in to help.
You know, the way I explain it is: My mom grew up with vinyl and cassettes, my older siblings grew up with CDs, but Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they don't have a physical thing. So it's like this is our generation's physical format, right?
It's something you can plug into your phone. It's how people say, like, "Oh, don't make your fans come to you, go to where your fans are.” Well, your fans have phones.
Brett Fieldcamp: But more than just reaching music fans where they are, Anderson is also watching where they’re going, and as more and more listeners turn their backs on the streaming models and AI-overrun music platforms, he wants to continue offering new ways for truly independent artists to release their music on their own terms.
Cooper Anderson: Artists are getting fed up with streaming. I've seen it at All Good. I've seen it as a fan. There are countless artists who are just pulling their music from streaming for completely correct reasons.
Phyzi was kind of a jumping-off point as to what could be the physical format for this generation and for the current consumer who doesn't have a record player or CD player or tape deck or whatever, but they have a phone, you know.
Brett Fieldcamp: It’s a far cry from where he began as a young teenager, launching a record label and releasing some friends’ albums, but the spirit is still the same: supporting artists, navigating the changing trends of music fandom, and saying yes to new opportunities for creativity and innovation.
And he still has to graduate from college, too.
Cooper Anderson: People always ask me “what's your five year plan?” I don't know. I'm one day at a time. That's all I can handle, really. You asked me how I juggle all this? It's one day at a time.
Brett Fieldcamp: You can keep up with Cooper Anderson’s All Good Distribution by visiting allgooddistro.com and you can get a look at the new Phyzi physical media at phyzi.io.
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