The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I'd like to hear some opinions on/informative anecdotes about CD Baby from people who have experience with it. Do you consider it worthwhile? How many albums, if any, have you sold? What about digital distribution? etc etc etc. Any helpful information would be appreciated.

While I haven't sold anything there... and I DO plan on contacting them soon, I have bought albums from them before. Most notably my two Brad Sucks albums. So he is using it with success. (and my purchasing experiences have been second to none)

Our CD Baby experience has been excellent. Not that we have sold much, but what do you expect? Our appeal is limited.

$90.28 in CD sales over the years
$52.02 in Digital distribution

http://cdbaby.com/group/mightyoctothorpe

SPUD

Yeah, I got a random message from them that like 5 years later a band I submitted sold a CD and that they owed me money for digital and such. It took a little bit of emailing with them to get it all sorted out since my email had changed and all that, but in the end, I got about $23 submitted to my paypal account.

I think it is a pretty easy way to get your CD online overall, but there a number of services to do this today that weren't available years ago.

Ken

Okay, yeah, I've got two albums up on CDBaby. I have had good experiences with them and plan to send them my next one whenever I finish the packaging (I'm bad at that).
My live CD:
# CDs sold: 5
Digital distro: $12.78
My second studio CD:
# CDs sold: 7
Digital distro: $12.80
See? I'm even less popular than #! I haven't even made back the submission fees
One of the good things about CDBaby is that they submit to digital distribution for you.
-bill

I've never tried to sell my music. But even though my songs on myspace are free, I do get requests for full albums from people that aren't friends or family, so I've been thinking about making an album. I've always thought it might be fun to pick 14 of my solo songs that I've done based on SF titles, but do collabs on every song with SF members. Take my time, perfect them, master them, then sell them with the proceeds going to charity. It would help me meet one of my life goals to do something good for man, woman, children and animal kind and maybe a little something for the Earth while I'm at it.

Spud wrote:Our CD Baby experience has been excellent. Not that we have sold much, but what do you expect? Our appeal is limited.

$90.28 in CD sales over the years
$52.02 in Digital distribution

http://cdbaby.com/group/mightyoctothorpe

SPUD

So over how many years is that? We're working on putting Pumpkin Buzzard on CD Baby and I think our appeal is roughly as limited as yours.

Sorry for the bump. Could any of you fellows tell me how long it usually takes for digital distribution to become active? Pumpkin Buzzard has an album up now here (please buy many many copies), but it's been several weeks without any news on digital distribution.

jute gyte wrote:Sorry for the bump. Could any of you fellows how long it usually takes for digital distribution to become active? Pumpkin Buzzard has an album up now here (please buy many many copies), but it's been several weeks without any news on digital distribution.

You opted in for digital distribution, right?

Yes.

Yeah, as I recall there was a delay before the album showed up there, and they won't really tell you when they list it. It just appears. I think if you're not a record company they don't adhere to any sort of schedule on your behalf. How long was it? Couple months, maybe? This was a couple of years ago so now I don't recall. Oh, I got paid again, very exciting!
-bill

I had a really good experience with their customer service, so I suggest you contact them directly if you haven't already. I assume they rip the CD manually, and tag it for itunes and such before uploading it to some magic digital distribution center somewhere. I would think this takes them a while to do.


Ken

Digital is now active. Thanks for the help, guys. Bumping this to post about CD Baby's stats for 2008: http://cdbaby.org/stories/09/01/15/8158752.html

Some interesting info here, with the most interesting part being perhaps this:
"In total, CD Baby paid out over $34 million to artists in 2008 alone, up 28% from the prior year. That averages out to $228 for every artist with an active album for sale. (Yes, I know, not everyone got paid that much, it’s just an average, but you gotta like that number.) Who’s selling volume? Close to 4,000 clients got paid more than $1,000, and approximately 200 artists got paid more than $10,000."

jute gyte wrote:approximately 200 artists got paid more than $10,000."

I'm pretty sure one of those 200 is Rone. I should give this a whirl.