Why CDBaby Is Awesome

    I didn't have any interviews to post this week, so I thought I would do a short article on this amazing website called CDBaby. For those of you who are not familiar, CDBaby is a website geared mainly towards musicians offering a place for artists to sell their music online in both physical CD format and digital downloads. They also offer digital distribution to big sites like iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Rhapsody and many other sites that I had never even heard of before. I have been using this site for my band Thrifter for many years now and I am still impressed as to how many services CDBaby offers and how cheap it is to sign up.  There are many things to cover, so I'm just going to do a summary of the services they have to offer.


      In order to get started, you first have to create an account on their website. Then you have to fill in all the details about your song or album. This part does get a little tedious because of the amount of information you need to provide, but trust me, this is a good thing. The more details provided to your audience means they will make a more personal connection to your music which in turn will increase the chances of them buying it.


     There are no monthly or annual fees. It only costs $49 to upload an album or $9.95 for a single song. Included in this price, is the ability to sell your music online as a physical CD and/or as digital MP3 downloads. If you wish, they can also assign your album with a specific UPC barcode and ISRC numbers for each individual song.  As for digital distribution, you can either opt to sell only on CDBaby or you can choose which sites your music will be sold on. For all you artists who just want to get the music out, there is even an option to distribute your music to ALL of CDBaby's distribution sites even if it doesn't pay. Recently, they added a new feature where you can opt to licence your music to TV shows, movies and YouTube. If your song gets used in a TV show or movie, you get paid for it. Again, this is all included in the one-time fee. The only extra cost you will have to cover is shipping your CD's to them. In addition, CDBaby offers tons of free articles and other resources for musicians including tips on how to tour, get radio play and sell your music.


     They also offer other services such as credit card swipers for merch at shows, download cards to hand out or sell, disc duplication so you can have a professional looking album and website hosting/design so you don't have to use MySpace anymore. These services cost extra and are not included in the one-time fee, but what do you expect? They can't offer everything for only $49!!


    To summarize, CDBaby will fulfill all of your online musical needs! It is a great feeling to go to iTunes or Amazon and see that your album is available for anyone in the world to buy. Getting people to actually BUY the music is a different story, but at least its available. There are probably other things I forgot to mention, but those are the basics. Click on the CDBaby logo to visit the site and learn more!




-Cliff