He has set up the Saturday Mor-ning Music Club to distribute the album, along with a range of extra digital content, over a 12-week period to subscribers.
Starting in late April, subscribers will be able to download a new bundle of content each Saturday.
"The inspiration really came from bands such as The Beatles having a fan club," explains Difford. "When you signed up for it, you got photographs, flexidiscs, newsletters and so on. I just thought that period is relevant to today. Even though music is so instant and you can get it so easily, I thought it would be good to stagger it."
Difford and his manager Matt Thomas are still finalising the release schedule and pricing, but Thomas suggests if all the proposed tracks were bought individually from iTunes they would add up to around £28. "This gives you an indication of the areas were are looking into, considering the added value of the videos and lyrics," he says.
Thomas says it will come at premium price and "we are definitely not going to be underpricing this". He adds, "It is high-end for fans and there will be pricing tiers for early entry and later entry".
The Saturday Morning Music Club will not be confined to Difford alone. He is currently working on signing up six other artists to offer material this way on different days of the week.
"My plan is to sign other artists so that every day of the week you get to download four new tracks from one of them," he says. "If I can get six major artists to want to join in with this club that will be brilliant. So it'll be me on Saturday, someone else on Sunday and so on."
Asked how he would tackle the traditional midweek lull in digital sales, Difford suggests, "Maybe we could have Jazz Wednesday!"
Chris, That & The Other will be available physically after the 12-week period is up, enabling those signing up to the club to get exclusive first access to content.
"Times have changed and the way we deliver music has changed," Difford says. "The music industry today is unrecognisable to someone like me. So my manager and I have to form our own industry and distribute our music down a channel that makes sense to us. Basically, it's like being an independent label on the internet and doing it with a bit of imagination."
He says that while online has changed the rules for marketing and distribution, his creative process remains unchanged. "As I'm steeped in tradition, I'm making the album in the way I normally would - working with 12 or 14 songs and visualising what the album should sound like," he says.
All content from the album will be fed into a single desktop application and is similar in spirit to the iTunes Pass approach used by Depeche Mode in the US last year for the launch of their Sounds Of The Universe album.
"By using the internet to our advantage, we're refreshing the idea of a fan club," says Difford. "In a way, we're trying to slow the internet down a bit."
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