CD Baby, good or bad?

Envato Authors AudioJungle
1

Hey guys,

I would like some advice.

Have any of you used cdbaby.com to release a single or full blown album? What was your experience?

I am seriously considering using this service to release an album of music I’ve been sitting on for years.

Any insight would be great.

Thanks,

John

2

I don’t know exactly, but seems like you can not give a link on a such sites here…

3

All and all, they’re still pretty good. They are local here, and have gone through some pretty serious changes over the last few years. But it is still a good option to get your stuff out, and you can talk with a real person when you call. The workers are all down to earth, many are musicians. The ownership changed a while back after a buy out, and there have been some new side projects launched, but CD Baby hasn’t been impacted too negatively.

My buddy runs distribution, and helps out on the marketing of artists. I would suggest sending along some kind of treat with your submission, if possible. They appreciate cookies and the like. If you do this a couple times, you may end up as the featured artist of the week, which lands you in their email blasts and newsletters that go out to various lists, and get picked up by several online music memes and re-aggregated. I know this may sound a bit cheesy, but they are a very small company at heart and still have a lot of fun with it.

4
I don't know exactly, but seems like you can not give a link on a such sites here...

plastic3,

I’m totally embarrassed if putting that link on here was against the rules. Or did you mean that I couldn’t link to a CD of my music from that site from my profile page here on AJ if I were to do it?

Thanks,
John

5

Thanks OhmLab… that’s some cool insight. :wink:

6

I simply think, that link on the competitors’ sites - it’s no good…maybe I’m wrong…

7
I simply think, that link on the competitors' sites - it's no good...maybe I'm wrong...

Oh, I see. I don’t see it as a competitor at all. They don’t sell royalty-free music like AJ. It is a site for selling an actual CD of music to listen to, not for use in a project or anything like that.

Does AJ have buyers that purchase simply for listening? If so, I didn’t realize that.

My motivation is that I have an album that is fit for listening to, but not for project background music like here on AJ and was looking for a place to sell it.

I hope that makes sense.

8

I dunno much about CD Baby. I looked into it at one point in time for releasing my Trance stuff, but now I just stick with Amazon MP3 and iTunes :slight_smile:

From what I understand is, you pay a specific fee (say 35$) to release the music, and that covers all costs upfront. With the way Amazon and iTunes work, they simply just take a small cut off the sales price (which as about 10-20% I believe). As you said earlier, CD Baby is just like iTunes and Amazon MP3, they sell actual CD media, not royalty-free stuff. So technically speaking, it isn’t in the same area as AJ, at least from my understanding.

  • Derek