LANDR music distributor: the complete guide for independent artists in 2026

LANDR is unlike any other distributor in this series. It did not start as a distribution company. It started in 2012 in Montreal as MixGenius, an AI-powered mastering service, and distribution was bolted on later as part of an ambitious plan to become an all-in-one music production platform. That origin shapes everything about LANDR in 2026 — its pricing structure, its feature set, its aggressive audio recognition system, its relationship with AI, its investors, and crucially, the fundamental question of whether distribution is actually its core business or just a subscription hook for selling everything else.

The answer to that question matters significantly to artists evaluating LANDR as a distribution partner. This guide covers the full picture.

What is LANDR?

LANDR Audio is a Montreal-based music technology company founded in 2012 by Pascal Pilon, Justin Evans, and Scott Murray, originally operating as MixGenius. The LANDR platform launched publicly in 2014 as an AI-powered mastering service, training machine learning models on thousands of professionally mastered tracks to deliver instant automated mastering. Distribution was added later, expanding into what LANDR now describes as “your one-stop music production powerhouse.”

In 2026, LANDR’s platform encompasses AI mastering, global music distribution to 150+ platforms, over 3 million royalty-free samples, 70+ professional VST plugins, remote collaboration tools, music production courses, a plugin and sample marketplace, and — following its acquisition of Reason Studios in January 2026 — one of the most storied digital audio workstations in music production history.

LANDR claims over 7 million registered users globally. Its investors include Warner Music Group, which took a stake in the company’s early funding round alongside rapper Nas and DJ collective Plus Eight Equity Fund (Pete Tong, Richie Hawtin, Tiga, John Acquaviva). General Catalyst, Peak Capital, Investissement Québec, and others participated in a $26 million Series B round in 2019. Total reported funding is approximately $53 million.

The Warner Music Group investment is worth flagging early. Warner is one of the three major record labels — a company that competes directly in the same market as the independent artists LANDR serves. This is not as severe a conflict as UMG’s ownership of CD Baby, where UMG’s subsidiary distributes music that directly competes with UMG’s own roster. But it means LANDR’s investor base includes a major label whose interests are not necessarily aligned with independent artist independence. Artists who specifically want to avoid major label financial relationships should know about this.

How does LANDR work?

LANDR operates as an open-access platform — any artist can sign up, choose a plan, and start distributing without an application process or gatekeeping. The distribution workflow follows the standard model: upload audio and artwork, enter metadata, select platforms, set a release date, and LANDR handles delivery.

What distinguishes LANDR’s workflow is its integration with mastering. Artists can master tracks directly through the same platform before distribution — a genuine convenience for artists who want to handle both steps in one place without switching tools or accounts. Whether the AI mastering itself is good enough to replace professional mastering is a separate and contested question, but the workflow integration is real and has value.

Release approval times vary significantly by plan: 7 days on Distribution Basic, 2 days on Distribution Pro, and between 2 and 5 days on Studio plans. This is slower than DistroKid at the Basic level and comparable to Ditto Music. LANDR does not charge an additional rush fee for faster processing — the 2-day turnaround is included in the Pro plan rather than being a separate add-on.

Royalties from streaming platforms are collected by LANDR and paid to artists via Tipalti, the same payment processor used by DistroKid and CD Baby.

What are LANDR’s current pricing plans?

LANDR’s pricing is genuinely confusing because it operates across two different product categories — Distribution-only plans and Studio bundles — with distribution included in all tiers but at very different price points depending on what else you want.

Distribution-only plans

Distribution Basic — $23.99/year: unlimited releases for one artist, 100% royalties, 150+ platforms, basic earnings reports, Spotify artist verification, lyrics management, royalty splits, custom release dates. Release approval: 7 days. Support response: 5 days. Social platform monetisation (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) not included.
Distribution Pro — $44.99/year: everything in Basic, plus up to 5 artists, 2-day release approval, 24-hour support response, YouTube Content ID and social media monetisation, advanced reporting, custom label name, country exclusions, high-quality format delivery, metadata updates after release.

Studio bundle plans (distribution included)

Studio Essentials — $99/year: everything in Distribution Pro, plus unlimited MP3 masters, 1,200 sample credits, LANDR Mastering Plugin SE, and approximately $2,000 worth of other tools, plugins, and courses. Important caveat: the unlimited mastering included is in MP3 format only — and LANDR does not accept MP3 files for distribution. The masters generated by this plan are in a format LANDR itself cannot use for releases.
Studio Standard — $143.88/year: everything in Essentials, plus WAV masters (the format actually required for distribution), more sample credits, and additional plugin access.
Studio Pro — $191.88/year: everything in Standard, plus HD-WAV masters, LANDR Mastering Plugin PRO, premium mixing courses, and DAW streaming.

The Studio Essentials plan’s MP3 mastering limitation deserves to be stated plainly: artists who buy this plan expecting to master and distribute in the same workflow will find that the master files produced are in a format LANDR itself will not accept for distribution. To actually use the mastering output for distribution, you need Studio Standard ($143.88/year) or above, which produces WAV files. This is not hidden, but it is not clearly communicated at the point of sale either.

Cover song licensing costs $15 per track across all plans — a one-time fee per cover, which is reasonable compared to DistroKid’s $12/year recurring charge.

The royalty model after cancellation: the 15% commission trap

LANDR has a genuinely unusual and significant policy regarding cancelled subscriptions that most reviews and comparisons understate. It deserves a full section.

When you cancel a LANDR Distribution or Studio subscription, your music does not get removed from streaming platforms. LANDR explicitly guarantees it will remain live unless you ask for a takedown or it violates content policies. This is superior to DistroKid’s default behaviour, where music is removed on cancellation unless you have paid Leave a Legacy fees per release.

However, there is a significant catch: once your subscription is inactive, LANDR begins collecting 15% of all your streaming royalties permanently, for as long as your account remains inactive and your music remains on the platform. This applies to you and to all collaborators listed in royalty splits.

This is not a one-time cancellation fee. It is a permanent, ongoing commission on all future earnings from music you have already distributed — with no end date and no ceiling. An artist who distributed 50 tracks through LANDR, cancelled their subscription to switch distributors, but left the music live while migrating would find LANDR taking 15% of all streaming income during that entire migration period. An artist who cancelled and simply forgot to request a takedown could find LANDR collecting 15% indefinitely.

To stop the 15% commission, you must either reactivate your subscription or request that your music be taken down from all platforms. There is no middle option.

Compare this to Ditto Music, where Release Protection (on Pro) keeps music live after cancellation at no additional commission. Compare it to DistroKid, where Leave a Legacy keeps music live permanently at a one-time per-release fee. Both of those models charge upfront for permanence. LANDR’s model charges nothing upfront but extracts a permanent ongoing commission once you stop paying — a structure that could cost far more than any upfront fee over time.

The 15% post-cancellation commission is arguably the most important piece of information in this entire guide for any artist considering LANDR.

What platforms does LANDR distribute to?

LANDR distributes to 150+ platforms including:

Spotify
Apple Music / iTunes
Amazon Music
YouTube Music
TikTok (Pro and above only for monetisation)
Instagram / Facebook (Pro and above only for monetisation)
Tidal
Deezer
Pandora
SoundCloud
Beatport
Regional and emerging platforms across multiple territories

The social platform monetisation limitation on the Basic plan is significant and was changed in June 2025, when LANDR moved TikTok and Instagram/Facebook monetisation from Basic to Pro. Artists who signed up for Basic before this change and relied on social platform royalty collection were affected by this retroactive feature removal. It is a reminder that LANDR adjusts its plan contents over time — what you sign up for today is not necessarily what the plan will include next year.

What features does LANDR offer?

LANDR’s feature set is broader than any other distributor in this price range, but the breadth comes with important caveats about which features are useful, which are genuinely included, and which require higher plan tiers than the headline pricing suggests.

Distribution features

Unlimited releases across all plans — no per-release caps
100% royalty retention while subscription is active
Royalty splits — automated sharing between collaborators
Custom release dates — included on all plans, unlike DistroKid’s Musician plan
Spotify artist verification support
Lyrics management with Musixmatch
Country exclusions — ability to restrict releases to specific territories
YouTube Content ID — included on Pro and above, with a 20% revenue share on Content ID earnings (industry standard)
Social platform monetisation — TikTok, Instagram, Facebook — Pro and above only as of June 2025
Metadata updates after release — available on Pro and above
High-quality format delivery — Pro and above
Advanced analytics — Pro and above
Custom label name — Pro and above

Production tools (Studio plans)

AI mastering — the flagship original product, available in unlimited quantity on Studio plans (MP3 on Essentials, WAV on Standard and above)
LANDR Mastering Plugin — desktop plugin for in-DAW mastering, available in SE and PRO versions depending on plan
3 million+ royalty-free samples — accessible via credit system on Essentials, more credits on higher tiers
70+ VST plugins and instruments
Remote collaboration tools — share DAW projects, stream audio, and communicate with collaborators in real time
Music production courses — covering production, mixing, marketing, and more
LANDR Layers — new AI co-production tool that generates musical parts to complement uploaded tracks, available on Studio plans

What LANDR does not offer

Sync pitching — no active pitching to music supervisors, TV, film, or advertising (Ditto Pro includes this)
Publishing administration — no mechanical royalty collection or PRO registration (Ditto Pro includes this)
Physical distribution
Radio promotion
Label services or A&R

The AI mastering question

AI mastering is LANDR’s founding product and the reason most artists first encounter the platform. Whether it is good enough is a genuine question that the industry has debated since 2014.

The honest answer in 2026 is: it depends entirely on what you are using it for and how critically you listen. LANDR’s AI mastering produces competent, consistent results for artists who want their tracks to meet streaming loudness standards and have a reasonably polished sound without paying a mastering engineer. For a demo, a bedroom-produced single, or any release where cost is a primary constraint, it does the job.

A Pitchfork feature on mastering noted mixed responses from the professional community, with engineers finding the technology “not flexible or intelligent” compared to human mastering. LANDR received positive feedback from industry figures including Bob Weir, Nas, and Tiga — though notably these are artists and performers rather than mastering engineers. The technology has a ceiling that professional mastering engineers can hear, even if casual listeners cannot.

For artists distributing through LANDR specifically, there is a practical wrinkle: the Studio Essentials plan produces mastered files in MP3 format, which LANDR does not accept for distribution. The usable mastering output for distribution (WAV files) is only available from Studio Standard ($143.88/year) upward. Artists who buy Studio Essentials expecting an integrated master-and-distribute workflow will need to upgrade.

LANDR Layers and the AI co-production question

In 2026, LANDR launched Layers — an AI co-production tool that analyses an uploaded track’s harmony, rhythm, and structure and generates musical parts to complement it: session musician-style instrumental layers, transformed sample stems, and arrangement suggestions. It is available on Studio plans and represents LANDR’s move from AI as a post-production tool to AI as a creative collaborator.

This is contested territory. The Fair Trade AI program (discussed below) addresses the training data question, but the creative AI tools themselves raise questions about what it means for production to be “AI-assisted” versus “AI-generated.” LANDR’s content policies prohibit fully AI-generated music from distribution — but the line between AI-assisted and AI-generated becomes harder to draw when the platform providing distribution is also generating musical parts for the same track. LANDR reserves the right not to distribute content it deems primarily AI-generated, even if it is also providing the AI tools that helped create it.

Artists using Layers should be clear in their own understanding of how much of their music is genuinely theirs, both creatively and contractually, before distributing through LANDR or any platform.

The Fair Trade AI program: what it is and what it is not

LANDR launched its Fair Trade AI program in July 2024. The premise is that artists distributing with LANDR can opt in to allow their music to be used to train LANDR’s AI tools, in exchange for a share of revenue from the AI tools and services that use their data — specifically, 20% of revenue generated by those AI tools is distributed among participating artists proportionally to their contribution.

This is meaningfully better than the industry default, where streaming platforms and music tech companies train AI on artist catalogues without consent and without compensation. LANDR’s opt-in model and revenue share is a genuine attempt to address a real ethical problem.

However, several caveats apply:

Participation is opt-in, but only artists who hold 100% of both composition and recording rights are eligible — no covers, no songs with publishers, no artists on labels that own any portion of the master
Opting out removes songs from future training datasets, but everything trained before opting out cannot be reversed — the knowledge derived from your music remains in LANDR’s models permanently
LANDR’s own policy page notes it “reserves the right not to distribute” content that falls below platform standards or overuses AI-generated audio — a clause that has been flagged by commentators as creating leverage over artists who have opted into the Fair Trade program and whose music now trains the very AI tools that might one day reject their releases
The 20% revenue share is distributed among potentially millions of participating artists — individual payments may be very small unless an artist contributes a disproportionately large or distinctive catalogue

The Fair Trade AI program is a positive step and LANDR deserves credit for implementing it when most competitors have not. But artists should read the terms carefully before opting in, and should not assume that participation provides meaningful financial return relative to the value of the data they are providing.

The aggressive audio recognition system

LANDR sells samples. This is central to its business model and its revenue — the sample library is one of the core products in the Studio plans. Because LANDR needs to protect that business from unlicensed sample use, it has built an unusually aggressive audio recognition system that scans uploaded music for anything it identifies as a sample.

The practical consequence for distributing artists is significant: if your music contains any sample — licensed or not — LANDR’s system may flag it, restrict your release, and demand proof of licensing before it proceeds. The system cannot distinguish between a sample you legally purchased, a sample that is cleared for commercial use, and an unlicensed sample. It flags anything that matches its database and puts the burden of proof on the artist.

Multiple Trustpilot reviews describe releases stuck in “In Review” for weeks or months due to sample flags, with support communication described as inconsistent, confusing, and in some cases providing incorrect guidance. One detailed review from November 2025 describes a cover song held in review for three weeks, LANDR providing contradictory information at multiple stages, requesting a songwriter be added with incorrect birth year data, and the release still unresolved after every change was made as instructed.

This is a structural problem, not an edge case. If you regularly work with samples — even licensed ones from third-party libraries, or from LANDR’s own sample catalogue — the audio recognition system will create friction in your distribution workflow. Artists in sample-heavy genres (hip hop, electronic, lo-fi, R&B) should treat this as a meaningful operational risk before choosing LANDR as their primary distributor.

The irony that LANDR sells you the samples and then flags your release for containing them is not lost on the artists who have experienced it.

The Reason Studios acquisition: what it means for LANDR’s direction

In January 2026, LANDR acquired Reason Studios — the Stockholm-based developer of the Reason DAW, one of the most distinctive and beloved digital audio workstations in music production. The acquisition, announced on January 6, was reported across Music Business Worldwide, Music Ally, and MusicRadar.

LANDR CEO Pascal Pilon stated the vision: “Our vision is to make Reason and the Reason Rack indispensable tools for every producer, regardless of what DAW they use. Wherever music is made, Reason will be there.”

Reason Studios will continue to operate under its own brand, maintaining its products and community in the near term. LANDR plans to “gradually introduce” AI-powered features and deeper integrations — a phrase that prompted cautious commentary from the production community about what “gradual” means and whether Reason’s distinctive analogue-modelled workflow will survive AI integration intact.

For artists evaluating LANDR as a distributor, the Reason acquisition confirms what the overall platform trajectory has been suggesting for several years: LANDR’s ambition is to be a complete music production ecosystem, from creation to mastering to distribution. Distribution is the revenue-retaining mechanism that keeps artists within the ecosystem — not the primary product that LANDR is optimising for.

LANDR also owns Synchro Arts, the developer of VocAlign and Revoice Pro — professional vocal alignment and pitch correction tools widely used in commercial studios. This gives LANDR a growing suite of professional-grade audio tools alongside its more accessible AI-powered offerings.

How does LANDR compare to competitors?

LANDR’s closest comparisons depend on what you are primarily evaluating — distribution, mastering, or the combined platform.

As a pure distributor:

DistroKid — $24.99–$89.99/year, 0% commission, unlimited uploads, 24–72 hour Spotify delivery. Faster. No mastering or production tools. Music deleted on cancellation without per-release fees. Reportedly exploring $2 billion sale.
Ditto Music — $19–$219/year depending on plan, 0% commission, includes sync pitching and publishing administration on Pro. Release Protection on Pro keeps music live permanently. Independently owned.
TuneCore — $14.99+/year, 0% commission, unlimited releases. No mastering tools. Owned by Believe.
CD Baby — $9.99/single + 9% permanent commission. Now owned by Universal Music Group. No subscription required but most expensive long-term for earning artists.

As a combined platform (distribution plus production tools):

LANDR Studio plans offer genuine value if you use multiple tools — mastering, samples, plugins, collaboration, and distribution under one subscription is a real benefit for artists who would otherwise be paying for each separately.
The Studio Standard plan at $143.88/year gives you WAV mastering, distribution, samples, and plugins. If you were already paying separately for mastering ($10–$30/track or more), samples ($10–$30/month for a library subscription), and plugins, the bundle may represent genuine savings.
If you only need distribution and will not use the production tools, LANDR’s Distribution Basic at $23.99/year is competitive on price but inferior to Ditto Pro on features at a marginally higher cost.

For a full comparison across all major distributors, see: thebestmusicdistributors.com/compare

What are the pros and cons of LANDR?

Advantages

Integrated mastering and distribution in one platform — a genuine workflow advantage for artists who use both
Music stays live after cancellation — no deletion risk, unlike DistroKid’s default behaviour
Custom release dates available on all plans — not gated behind a higher tier as on DistroKid
YouTube Content ID included in Pro with no separate per-release fee (though 20% revenue share applies — industry standard)
Fair Trade AI program — an opt-in, revenue-sharing approach to AI training data that is more ethical than industry norm
Studio plans offer extensive value for production-active artists using mastering, samples, and plugins
Acquisition of Reason Studios positions LANDR as an increasingly comprehensive production ecosystem
Warner Music Group investment provides financial stability and industry relationships
Support generally rated more positively than DistroKid and CD Baby for routine queries
No per-release fee for cover song licensing (flat $15 one-time, not recurring annually)

Disadvantages

15% commission on all royalties after cancellation — permanent, with no ceiling, applying to all future earnings on already-distributed music
Slower release approval at Basic level — 7 days versus DistroKid’s 24–72 hours
Social platform monetisation (TikTok, Instagram) moved to Pro in June 2025 — retroactive feature removal from Basic plan
Studio Essentials mastering produces MP3 files only — unusable for LANDR’s own distribution workflow
Aggressive audio recognition system flags licensed samples and causes release delays, sometimes for weeks or months
Warner Music Group is an investor — a major label financial relationship that some artists will consider a conflict of interest
Distribution is not LANDR’s core business — the platform’s optimisation priority is its production ecosystem, not distribution reliability
AI tools including Layers create ambiguity about where AI-assisted ends and AI-generated begins, with content policy enforcement risk
Fair Trade AI opt-out does not remove previously trained data from models
Tipalti payment processor creates same friction for international artists as on DistroKid and CD Baby — W-8BEN forms, payment threshold issues, processing fees
Plan contents change over time — features have been moved between tiers without prominent notification

Delivery speed: plan-dependent and inconsistent

LANDR’s stated delivery timelines vary significantly by plan: 7 days on Basic, 2 days on Pro, and 2–5 days on Studio plans. In practice, user reports suggest these targets are not always met, with some artists on paid plans reporting 3-day-plus delays and others noting inconsistency in how quickly the same plan processes different releases.

The 2-day approval on Pro is meaningfully faster than Ditto Music’s 5–10 day standard but still well behind DistroKid’s 24–72 hours. For time-sensitive releases — dropping music to coincide with a social media campaign, a press feature, or a coordinated promotional push — LANDR at any tier is not the fastest option in the market.

Custom release dates are available on all plans, which is a genuine advantage over DistroKid’s Musician plan and allows even Basic users to schedule a Friday release. The ability to set a release date independently of approval speed is useful, though it does not help if the approval itself is slower than expected.

What are users saying about LANDR?

LANDR holds a Trustpilot score of 4.1 out of 5 from approximately 2,500 reviews — a reasonable score that reflects genuine satisfaction from the majority of users, particularly around the mastering tools and the integrated platform experience.

Read reviews at: trustpilot.com/review/landr.com

Common positive themes:

Integrated mastering and distribution workflow genuinely valued by artists using both
Support described as more responsive than competitors for routine queries
Platform UI praised as clean and well-designed
Studio bundle value for production-active artists
Releases generally going live on time when the recognition system does not flag them

Common negative themes:

Releases stuck in review for weeks or months due to sample recognition flags, with inconsistent and confusing support communication
Royalties assigned to wrong artist profiles on streaming platforms, with slow or absent resolution
Support response times of weeks or months for complex issues, despite paid Pro memberships
Plan content changes (particularly the June 2025 social monetisation change) applied without adequate notice
Copyright infringement notices for tracks with legitimately licensed samples
The 15% post-cancellation commission discovered only when attempting to switch distributors

One Trustpilot reviewer described LANDR releasing their album under a different artist’s profile across all streaming services with no help to fix it and no support response — describing “a year’s work wasted.” Another described releases sitting on the shelf for two months with no communication from LANDR about why. A third described the post-cancellation commission as effectively making LANDR impossible to leave without financial consequences.

LANDR does reply to Trustpilot reviews publicly, which is a positive marker. But as with all distributors, responding to a review is not the same as resolving the problem for the artist who raised it.

Community discussion at: reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers

Who should use LANDR?

LANDR is well-suited for:

Artists who already use or plan to use AI mastering regularly and want to handle mastering and distribution in the same platform without additional subscriptions or file transfers
Producers who want access to a large sample library, professional plugins, and collaboration tools alongside distribution — the Studio Standard or Pro plans offer genuine value if you use multiple tools
Artists interested in the Fair Trade AI program and comfortable with the terms, who want to participate in a more ethical approach to AI training data
Artists who do not work heavily with third-party samples and are therefore unlikely to trigger the aggressive audio recognition system
Hobbyist or semi-professional artists for whom the integrated production platform adds enough value to justify the Studio plan pricing over pure distribution alternatives

LANDR is not well-suited for:

Artists who work extensively with samples — even licensed ones — and cannot afford weeks of review delays or false copyright flags
Artists evaluating LANDR purely for distribution without needing the production tools — the 15% post-cancellation commission, slower Basic delivery, and removal of social monetisation from Basic make pure-distribution alternatives more cost-effective
Artists who plan to switch distributors at some point and want to leave without financial penalties — the 15% ongoing commission after cancellation is a structural exit barrier
Artists who need guaranteed fast Spotify delivery for time-sensitive releases without paying for the Pro tier
Artists who are specifically concerned about major label financial interests in their distribution infrastructure — Warner Music Group is an investor

The distribution-as-subscription-hook problem

This deserves its own section because it is the structural issue that underlies most of LANDR’s distribution-specific problems.

LANDR’s core business is not distribution. It is a music production platform that uses distribution as the stickiest possible subscription feature — once your catalogue is distributed through LANDR, the 15% post-cancellation commission creates a powerful financial incentive to never leave. Every track you distribute through LANDR while subscribed becomes a liability the moment you cancel, automatically generating a permanent commission for LANDR until you either resubscribe or request a takedown.

This model aligns LANDR’s incentives with keeping artists subscribed to its production tools, not with being the best or most reliable distribution service. When a release gets stuck in the sample recognition system for three weeks, LANDR’s urgency to resolve it is shaped by the risk of losing a subscriber — not by the direct cost of distribution failure. When support is slow for paid Pro subscribers, the same logic applies.

Compare this to Ditto Music, which builds revenue from subscription fees and sync/publishing services, with distribution quality directly impacting artist retention. Or DistroKid, where distribution speed and reliability is the entire product. For both of those companies, distribution failure is an existential problem. For LANDR, it is a problem for one department within a much larger platform.

This is not a reason to never use LANDR for distribution. For artists who genuinely use and value the production tools, the integrated model has real benefits. But for artists who primarily need reliable, fast distribution and are evaluating LANDR because the headline price is similar to competitors, the structural reality is that distribution is not where LANDR’s attention or innovation is concentrated.

Conclusion

LANDR is a genuinely interesting platform for a specific type of artist and a genuinely poor choice for another. The line between the two runs through how much you actually use the production tools versus how much you need distribution to work reliably and quickly.

If you produce music regularly, use mastering tools, work with samples and plugins, and would benefit from having all of those things in one subscription, LANDR’s Studio plans offer real value. The Fair Trade AI program is a meaningful differentiator. The Reason Studios acquisition and the Synchro Arts ownership suggest a company building something substantial in the music production technology space.

If you primarily need music on Spotify and Apple Music, are working with samples, are thinking about switching distributors at any point in the future, or simply want distribution to be the priority rather than a bundled feature, LANDR’s structural problems — the post-cancellation commission, the aggressive audio recognition, the slower Basic delivery, the retroactive plan changes — make it difficult to recommend over focused distribution alternatives.

The 15% post-cancellation commission is the single most important fact about LANDR for any artist considering signing up. Read it, understand it, and make a decision with full awareness of what it means for your flexibility. Everything else follows from there.