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My CD with Pere Soto is now on CD Baby. Since we are still looking for the right label to release it and didn't want to pay to press it ourselves we decided to release it in digital form. CD Baby distributes the music to sites like iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo, ect.Oasis on CD Baby
All you have to do is send CD Baby one finished and mastered CD, the liner notes, and cover artwork and they will make a page so you can sell digital downloads.
I know a lot of musicians who have had great results with CD Baby and it's really a no-brainer. There is really nothing to lose by putting your CD on CD Baby. You can even burn just a couple of CDs at a time and make more as they sell. They will even give you a credit card machine to take payments at your gigs.
I went to their open house a couple of months ago and got a chance to talk to a lot of musicians who are on CD Baby. One producer said that even though she has distribution through three major labels CD Baby sells more CDs than all of them combined. There is even now a HostBaby for websites and Filmbaby for independent films. They have a great business model and they're good people who really care about getting independent artists in the game.
No matter what your marketing strategy is for your CD it can't hurt to sign up for CD Baby also. Here is their digital distribution deal:
The Deal
* Think of it like traditional physical distribution:
o You are the label. (You own the music and all rights.)
o The retail store is now Apple iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo, ringtone companies, etc.
o CD Baby is just the distributor that gets your music to the retailer.
o They pay us. We pay you.
* We do not take any rights to your music. This is not a record deal.
* You are just “lending” us the right to be your digital distributor, for the albums you tell us distribute, for as long as you want.
* You can cancel at any time. We will never tie up your rights or make it hard for you to leave.
The Money
* NO startup cost. This is a free service for CD Baby members.
* We keep only 9% and pay you 91% of all income from your music.
* You always get paid the week after we do.
It's NON-Exclusive, but...
* Just like in the physical world, there can't be more than one distributor bringing the same album to the same store. Otherwise, when the album sells, how would the store know which distributor to pay?
* We will never prevent you from doing anything you want with your music.
CD Baby website
1 comment:
Hey David,
That's a very progressive distribution model. Even the most equitable of the independent labels tend to have a 50/50 split (as opposed to the major label 75-80% to the label.)
I was just talking to an instrument maker a couple of weeks ago who said that he spent most of his adult life practically on food stamps until he was able to find himself international distribution through selling his instruments on his own website and is now backed up 2 years with orders.
This is why the major labels have been running scared since they started the first round of lawsuits against a bunch of college students and such for illegal downloading.
As a few of the indy label owners in the rock scene have pointed out, (Ian McKaye and Steve Albini, who also happen to be musicians come to mind,) mechanical production of music is a fairly recent phenomenon (also read the famous article "The Work of Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.) Do I need footnotes here?
Anyhow the music labels were able to set up a business model in which they made a huge amount of money for a relatively small investment, giving quite a paltry sum to the artists in return. If we consider that this began only in the mid-forties, we're talking a mere 50 years.
Now, as you show in this posting, the nails are being rapidly hammered into their coffins and the working artist and craftsman can attain a much higher level of control over their music.
This, my friends, is a beautiful thing.
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