CD Baby

[bbottom]

Have any of you guys used this service? And if so, what do you think about it?

[Pissy]

We use it. It's a legit sales channel for hard goods.  They take your music and retain the rights to distribute it electronically. This is how crazy out of nowhere sites end up with your music streaming. There are a lot of services hooked to CDBaby. iTunes does this as well, which is how your music ends up on Spotify and Grooveshark.  This is a broad generalization. Someone may know that grooveshark only works with iTunes or only CDB. I'm unsure who does what from who. I do know that it's like dumping your music on the whole Internet though.

There are cons to this however.  If you wanted to have your music removed from a specific site, you can't. You signed up for it when you signed up to have CDB or iTunes do your distribution. Spotify being a paid service, is using your music and making money off of it. You will only see the effect of this if someone bothers to buy your music from iTunes or CDBaby. Otherwise, you get nothing.

Most bands are ok with this arrangement.  I could go into a whole diatribe of perception of worth and ethics associated with allowing your hobby to be someone else's gold mine for the sake getting heard, but I won't.

[lordfinesse]

Yes we use it. There are different "levels" of just how available and streaming you want your music to be. Like anything, there are pros and cons.

My overall CDB (CDBaby) experience has been positive. My overall CDB (Charlie Daniels Band) experience however, has been hit and miss.

[Jake]

Just don't go all willy-nilly with acronyms like that. I awoke some sleeping giants (yesterday?) by bringing one up in Spook's Peavey thread. Still licking those wounds.

[rayinreverse]

We make money off spotify plays. It lists it out as .04 from spotify. You'll get these big long lists of payments from CD Baby. Its handy has hell. They get it everywhere really easily.
I just checked we've made $1000 on CD baby. The potential is definitely there.

[chille01]

Yep, all of my old band's shit is on there. We also see the .04 payments from Spotify and the like, but it's never added up to no $1000. Once in a while someone will actually pay for an MP3, and a few times we even had some hard copy sales into Europe and the like.  Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. CD Baby makes your music available to a wide audience, but it is still up to you to sell it.