Worldwide CD Distribution and Download sales
CD Baby is the world's premiere all-independent online CD store. They’ve been selling and distributing CDs for independent artists since 1998, and have paid over $80 million to artists. You can trust CD Baby to provide you with online retail sales of your CDs as well as sales of song downloads through today’s most popular music download sales sites like iTunes and Rhapsody. Best of all, unlike other online distributors, the lion’s share of the money from the sale goes directly to you, and you’ll get paid every week for the music you’ve sold!
CD sales...online and off
Not only is CD Baby the number one indie store online, but they also make your CD available to over 2,400 traditional retail CD stores in the USA. Plus, your membership lasts forever (or until you don’t want to sell that CD anymore). So CD Baby will never tell you that your CD isn’t selling enough or you’re not important enough. Even if you only sell one CD every 20 years, CD Baby will be glad to warehouse it and take orders for it.
They will create a web page dedicated to showcasing and selling your CD that includes long two-minute sound clips instead of the usual 30 second clips on other online retail sites. Your CD Baby web page will also include links to your own Web site, reviews, and any other text you want. You page will have an easy web address, www.cdbaby.com/yourname, where you can tell your fans to go to buy your CD.
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Your CD will be added to the galleries and search engines at cdbaby.com, which gets over 150,000 hits daily from people who are looking for independent music to buy!
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CD Baby will take credit card orders for your CD, online or through their toll-free phone number, and ship it out within hours.
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They email you every time your CD is sold and give you the full contact info – name, address, email, etc. – of the person who bought it.
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A distributor that pays you every week for CDs sold.
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They let you set your own CD price, and only takes a small fee of sales to cover their costs.
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They offer full accounting where you can log in to see every sale, every payment, and communicate directly with a real person at the company.
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CD Baby only works with independent artists like you, so you're given red-carpet treatment, not taking a backseat to major-label artists.
How the money works:
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You set your selling price at the level you want.
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CD Baby keeps $4 per CD sold, no matter how high your selling price is.
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They pay checks every week to everyone who wants to be paid ($10 minimum). You set your “pay point,” so you really can be paid whenever you want. How’s that for musician-friendly?
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You get paid full retail price for brick-and-mortar sales.
Worldwide download sales of your music.
CD Baby will encode your music and distribute digital copies of your songs to legitimate paying online e-tailers, like Apple’s iTunes store, Rhapsody, Sony Connect, eMusic.com, AOL's MusicNet, BuyMusic.com, the new Napster, Music Match,* and many more to come! New retail partners are added all the time.
Best of all, CD Baby keeps only 9% of the net income generated from your online digital sales, and they'll pay you every week! They’ve been selling and distributing CDs for independent artists since 1998, and have paid over $4 million to artists. While other companies wanting to do digital distribution must face the significant start-up expenses of building a new system from scratch, CD Baby already encodes every CD that comes in their door and are already paying artists every week. All that's added is delivering your audio files to the music services.
(*These services are not required to carry your music. CD Baby will submit it for their consideration, but they always have final right of refusal.)
How It Works:
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You sign CD Baby’s agreement, giving them the right to distribute digital copies of your music to legitimate paying music services (e.g. Napster, Listen.com’s Rhapsody, Emusic, etc.)
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Your CD Baby membership allows you to make your songs available for sale on iTunes, the internet’s largest multimedia superstore for digital music, movies, TV shows and more!
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CD Baby pays you 91% of whatever the music services pay CD Baby for the use of your music.
(Note that these services are not required to carry your music if they don't want to. CD Baby will submit it for their consideration, but they always have final right of refusal.)
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Once you sign CD Baby’s agreement, they will make a perfect digital copy of your CD and store it in a safe place in their office (NOT online!) for future processing.
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CD Baby will process it to the needs of each music service. Each service has their own requirements – some including mailing the storage media to them.
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The music services pay CD Baby and deliver a detailed electronic report of all activity.
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CD Baby gives you full detailed reports of all activity and pass ALL information they receive on your music through to you..
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CD Baby adds 91% of whatever amount was generated from your music on to your next CD Baby payment, keeping only a 9% cut for their administrative work.
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Payments go out through their existing every-Monday-night CD Baby payments (whether by check, electronic funds transfer, or however you wanted to be paid).
NOTE: IF YOU ORDERED PRIOR TO JANUARY 2007, YOU CAN STILL SIGN UP MANUALLY USING YOUR DISC MAKERS CLIENT NUMBER
Starting in January 2007, CD Baby became available exclusively through
the Ultimate Web Sales & Distribution bundle. If you ordered before
that, you have already received our exclusive Aftercare Kit, which
includes a special CD Baby information sheet and coupon with your
unique client number printed on it. You must use that client number
to qualify for your free setup and free membership.
Once you have the sheet with your Disc Makers client number, just
follow these steps:
1. First, click
here to fill out the CD Baby online submission form. The online
submission form will ask you for your Disc Makers client number. Your
client number is located at the bottom of the CD Baby flyer that was
included in your Disc Makers Aftercare Kit.
2. If you'd also like to have
your songs available for download sales, click on the “Digital”
button at the top of the page after your have completed your CD Baby
online submission form, read the CD Baby
Digital Distribution Agreement carefully and click on the button to
agree to the terms.
3. Fill in the coupon at the
bottom of the CD Baby flyer that was included in your Disc Makers
Aftercare Kit. Make sure you’ve checked the appropriate box
on the front of the coupon – choose to get both FREE digital
download distribution and worldwide CD distribution, or Free worldwide
CD distribution only. Mail the completed coupon along with 5 copies
of your CD to:
CD Baby
5925 NE 80 Ave.
Portland, OR 97218-2891
Important: When you sign up, you will need an email address
that you check regularly because CD Baby will email you when they
need you to send more CDs, when you’ve sold CDs, and just
to keep in touch with you in general. If you don’t have an
email address, you can get one for free from mail.yahoo.com.
