I’m in the process of putting out my 6th album, “Attack of the 80s Synths.”  It’s a retro-80s album with lots of gear that they used in the 80s.  To get my music on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, etc, I use CD Baby.  They’ve got a sale right now – for $25 per album you can get the pro distribution package.  A lot of people have switched to DistroKid for digital distribution, because it’s $20 per year for unlimited album uploads and they don’t take a cut… unlike CD Baby.  So why stick with CD Baby for digital distribution?  Here are my reasons:

  1. DistroKid is $20 per year forever.  If you stop paying, down comes your music.  There is a way to pay more and eliminate this issue, but I find the practice sleezy – it doesn’t cost them anything to leave your music online.  You’re paying for nothing.  CD Baby will charge a percentage on sales, but your music stays online forever.
  2. CD Baby support is good.  DistroKid support is the source of horror stories online.
  3. I like the process at CD Baby.  I don’t mind them taking a cut because they have to process everything.

BUT, and it’s a big but… I will never sell physical CDs through CD Baby again.  And here are the reasons:

  1. After several years, if your CDs aren’t selling, CD Baby will charge you money to send them back to you, or they will throw them away.  That might make sense for a label, but the vast majority of their customers sell very small amounts of CDs, and at some point they’re all going to get the email delivering the bad news.  It didn’t use to be this way – they just decided one day to screw over their artists.  On principle alone I’d never sell CDs through them again.
  2. CD Baby also owns Discmakers, the biggest name in having CDs made.  Two albums ago, the smallest amount of CDs you could have made was 20.  Now it’s 50.  Artists who sell a lot will snicker, but for the vast majority of CD baby artists, 20 was more reasonable.  This is a cash grab.  And this happened before the pandemic, so they can’t blame that.  Up the limits of orders and start shipping back or destroying unsold CDs – it’s almost like CD Baby wanted to lose customers.  Well, they did… to DistroKid.
  3. With things like PayPal it’s no longer difficult to sell your own physical CDs.  And Epson makes a $200 printer that can print directly onto blank CDs, and if you really want to you can get a heat gun and shrink wrap plastic sleeves for CDs and do your own packaging.  There’s no reason to go through a middleman for small amounts of CDs, and best of all, you can make them on demand.

I think it’s sad that CD Baby has turned so hostile to their artists regarding CDs.  I have lost some faith in the company… but honestly DistroKid has IMHO a dishonest business practice of charging artists to leave their music online, which costs them nothing.  Yes, it will cost them some admin costs when music sells or streams, but that still leaves the question of crappy support.  Too many bad stories out there.  I’m sure there are good ones, too.  Maybe I ought to release a single through them and then see what happens when I try to get support.  For $20 it’d be worth it just to review their process and support setup.

Anyway, I’ve submitted my new album to CD Baby and I expect it to go live online by about Dec 14.  The process was easy and painless.

If only they’d go back to the old ways when dealing with CDs.  I’m not holding my breath.