For anyone who wants to accomplish anything in the music business, the name 'CD Baby' is one you show get to know, if you don't already. CDBaby.com is the easy, simple, thorough, professional, inexpensive way to market your recordings. You pay one, reasonable, upfront fee, send your music, provide all the album/artist details and they do the rest.
This is NOT a commercial. I do NOT work for CD Baby. I receive no compensation, discount or promotion for saying any of these things. This IS my blog though. And my intent is to discuss music and many of the other things that I perceive as related to music. So I am just stating what I have found to be, through my experience, FACTS.
From Wikipedia, "CD Baby began with its founder, Derek Sivers in Woodstock, New York.[when?] Sivers was a musician and scion of a wealthy real estate family, who created the website to sell his own music. As a hobby, he also began to sell the CDs of local bands and friends. He chose to make CD Baby a "utopian" online store for independent musicians. To do this, Sivers followed four main principles based on his personal preferences:
**The musician will be paid every week
**The musician will get the full name and address of everyone who purchases their music (unless they opt out)
**The musician will never be removed from the system for not selling enough
**The site will never accept advertising or paid-placement
In addition, Sivers made sure to listen to every CD he sold (currently several people are employed to do this). The operation was run mainly in Sivers' bedroom.
Sivers, eventually hired John Steup as his vice president and first employee. In an interview, Sivers recalls saying to Steup: "This thing might get huge one day. I mean, we might have 100 artists here." Steadily, CD Baby grew as more artists wanted to sell their music through the website. Sivers and his employees always dealt with the artists directly.
In August 2008 it was announced that Disc Makers, a CD and DVD manufacturer, bought CD Baby (and Host Baby) for 22 million dollars following a 7-year partnership between the two companies, according to Sivers."
This is the guy who started it. I'd like to be just like him when I grow up. (He's actually quite a bit younger than me.)
I miss the mob from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.
Cheers to you, Derek.
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