11 Ways to Boost Your Music Sales With CD Baby

July 21, 2011{ 49 Comments }

CD Baby gives you more tools than any other distributor to sell your music the way you want. In fact, we’re the only distributor that allows you to easily sell Vinyl, CDs, and downloads worldwide. Here are some quick tips for maximizing your selling potential with CD Baby.

1. Use CD Baby’s Music Store Widget

This customizable and free HTML widget allows you to sell your MP3s, CDs, and vinyl directly to your fans wherever they follow you online. Embed this music store on your website, blog, social media profile, or any other website simply by pasting in HTML code. The Music Store Widget is available in a variety of attractive themes. Select the theme that best fits your needs, choose what product you want to sell, and begin selling your music YOUR way. (Check it out at http://members.cdbaby.com/musicstorewidget.aspx).

2. Use CD Baby’s Link Maker

Get linked and sell more music! Make it easy for your fans to find your music on CD Baby. The CD Baby Link Maker Tool makes it easy to create CD Baby buy buttons and put them on your website, blog, AND social networking profiles. Just type in the album name. CD Baby generates the graphic link. Copy the code and paste it wherever you want fans to see that your music is for sale. (Check it out at www.members.cdbaby.com/link).

3. Analyze and Understand Your Web Traffic

Who’s checking out your music? Where did they come from? From your account page (under “web hits”) you can easily view this valuable info. This makes it easy to asses the effectiveness of your promotional campaigns and make adjustments based on real-time data. Maybe there is a blog or website out there that you’ve never even heard of that is generating significant web traffic for you. If so, you’ll see it in the hits tracker and be able to establish an online strategy to engage those fans directly.

4. Set a Quantity Discount

Your music makes for an excellent gift! Sell more by encouraging your fans to buy multiple copies of an album for a percentage off the selling price. Choose and change the discount at any time.

5. Offer a Free Track

Allow fans and prospective fans the chance to download a song for free as an enticement to purchase the whole album. If they like what they hear, they’ll come back for more. Try giving away a few different tracks and see which one is “the hit.”

6. Run a Limited-Time Sale

Since you can change your music’s selling price at ANY time, it is easy to run sales and special offers you can announce to your fan list. Once the offer expires, simply go back into your account and raise the selling price again.

7. Write a Compelling Description

It’s important to describe your music in an enticing way that makes strangers want to hear it. People see the words before they hear the music. Make sure your album description isn’t too cryptic or aloof, but rather is descriptive enough that it might change a semi-interested browser into someone who will click the “buy” button. Read more about how to describe your music so it sells.

8. Tell us Who you Sound Like

Make sure you’ve filled out your sounds-like section in your account. Choose three well-known artists that you sound like. When CD Baby customers search for one of those artists, your album could appear in the results! Be realistic, though. Just because you love Radiohead and the Beatles doesn’t necessarily mean you SOUND like them. It is usually valuable to get a friend or fan’s slightly more objective opinion before deciding.

9. Use Download Cards

Never get caught empty-handed. These convenient little cards can fit in your wallet and come customized with your album artwork. Sell them at shows and give them away to industry contacts. The recipient can redeem the card at CD Baby for a hi-quality download. You keep all the money! Get your very own CD Baby Download cards here.

10. Accept Credit Cards at Shows

CD Baby’s Swiper Program allows you to accept credit cards at your merch booth. Don’t lose sales just because your fans are short on cash. Learn More . . .

11. Let Your Fans Know About our Affiliate Program

Not only can your fans use social media to spread the word about your music by re-tweeting, sharing blog posts, etc., but now they can make money doing it! By joining CD Baby’s affiliate program, your fans can earn $1 from every referred sale. And that comes out of CD Baby’s cut, so you make the same amount no matter what.

Not on CD Baby? Sign up for a CD Baby account right now!

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Have a tip to share? Post in the comment section below!

Kevin Breuner's Author Bio

http://www.musicianscooler.com Dave Jackson

Does this mean the affiliate program is back up and functioning?
http://www.alexterriermusic.com Alex Terrier

can’t find anything about the affiliate program… I’ve been thinking of something like that and I think it could be really helpful.
can’t find the hits tracker either… am I just blind or is it hidden somewhere?
thanks
A
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/eattheweeds Eat The Weeds

I am also trying to find (unsuccesfully so far) the CD Baby hit tracker….

thank you
admin

Hey guys,

The hit tracker is on each album dashboard. Just click the edit/view link next to an album listing and that wioll take you to the album dashboard. From there, click on the WEB HITS link and that will display your hit info.
John

I am not finding any links or information about the CD Baby affiliate program. Could you tell us where to find it??
brandon

say something about the affiliate program! where is it and how do we promote it to the fans?
http://www.myspace.com/dougcashrock Doug Cash

I’m still dumbfounded how many artists have never heard the baby or do not use it as a tool. I know one cat who pulled one of his cd’s because it did’nt represent where he was at in his life. WTF ?
So as opposed to giving consumers 24 oppurtunities to find your music, now they only have 12.
Brilliant.

Long live the baby.

DC
http://cdbaby rick bottiglieri

i would like to know how to get my cd distributed around the world and get a link to the cd baby affiliate program. could you tell us where to find it?
http://www.omgaiamusic.com Terri Mason

How Do you offer a free track on CD baby?
Ash

I too would like to know more about this affiliate program, what a great idea!
admin

Hey guys,

Just a quick note. We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the CD Baby affiliate program. It is moments away from launching, and we thought it would be live by the time this post went up. We’ll be sure to let everyone know when it’s live, because it’s definitely a cool way to get people to help spread the word about your music.
http://www.quinnnrecords.com Dwight

Everything you said Works,I’ve been with CDBaby for years, and it’s a fantastic place to sell CD’s.
joseph

Could someone please clearly tell us step by step how to find “Hit Tracker”. I can’t find it at all and I’ve spent a lot of time looking.

The Admin. instructs the following:

—The hit tracker is on each album dashboard. Just click the edit/view link next to an album listing and that wioll take you to the album dashboard. From there, click on the WEB HITS link and that will display your hit info.—

I follow those instructions and don’t get anywhere. I don’t have an “edit/view” link on my account.

Thank you
http://www.rankingdeezed.com Ranking Deezed

This is great site to have ones music sold on.I love your work.
http://www.antiqcool.co.uk Pete Smith

Give it away I say

Songs from our catalog have been played by hundreds of radio stations and podcasters worldwide and it didn’t cost them a penny, in return we got exposure and promotion…..sounds like a good deal to me, that’s why many of our tracks have been released under a creative commons license and are free to download. So what if you lose out on lost sales, you gain more in the long term by increasing your fan base (If you can survive that long)

With such an overcrowded market place giving away your music is essential in my opinion. The biggest problem for emerging indie artists today is obscurity, not piracy. To find out more listen to The Antiqcool Podcast
http://antiqcool.podbean.com/2010/01/22/the-antiqcool-podcast-episode-1-how-can-you-be-a-part-of-our-success/
http://www.virtualdreamer.com The Nature Sounds Guy

Does CD Baby still require packaged CD’s to get started? When the packaged CD market is all but dead why require us to send in a CD? I am pretty sure you can attach a virtual barcode to a download just as easily.
admin

The Nature Sounds Guy – No, you don’t have to send in a CD. We have an uploader where you can upload your music and artwork. You’ll see the upload option when you sign up a new album.
just asking

can a artist get a weekly trending report from CD Baby for there iTunes Sales
MARK CONRAD

How can I offer a free download of one of the tracks from one of my CD’s I am now selling on on CD baby?

I don’t see anything in the CD Baby FAQ area on how to do it.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lackey1 The Lackey

CDbaby should have a search where you can find free tunes, maybe a search on price would be nice. Or you guys could even have a free song of the week type widget like emusic.com has.

“How can I offer a free download of one of the tracks from one of my CD’s”
set your song price to $0.00 I think
http://www.twinraymusic.com Twinray

How do you track the downloads from download cards?
- Chris R. at CD Baby
  
  Those show up as free cdbaby.com downloads in your members account. Since you’ve already been paid by the customer for the download card (or given it to them for free), the download code changes the price to zero for that transaction.
http://twitter.com/Daydreams4rock Daydreams4rock

clear thinking for a creative man
who ever comes next can be my fan
find me on facebook twitter youtube
link comment sub and will for you 2
Anonymous

“4. Set a Quantity Discount” CD Baby needs to add the ability to set a quantity discount for several different CD titles by the same artist. Make a little icon with several different CDs stacked on top of eachother with a Ribbon tied around them, and significant savings. I’m sure the technology to do this is within the scope of what the CD Baby programmers could easily implement.
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  I’m pretty sure it’s on the list. Thanks!
Douglas Bischoff

I’d love to take a look at the web hits to my CD Baby pages…. only the “web hits” link mentioned in item #3 seems to be extremely well hidden. Can someone provide an exact URL?
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  Well, it’s https://members.cdbaby.com/WebHits/Albums/Monthly.aspx. BUT… you’re really only going to get there, I think by logging into your account, choosing one of the albums from your account dashboard, and then looking in bottom right hand corner of the album dashboard. Click “web hits.”
http://www.facebook.com/LeeFoxRox Lee Fox

How do I get the link maker to work on Facebook?
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  I believe you’d have to use an iFrames app that allows HTML. But you could also post our widget on facebook: http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2011/05/how-to-sell-your-music-on-your-artistband-facebook-page/
  - http://www.facebook.com/LeeFoxRox Lee Fox
    
    iFrames seems to be a sticking point for ‘social networks’ and the use of widgets.
    
    I can’t seem to get FB to let me use the CD Baby widget since I have another iFrames widget in place.
    
    (The other lets me collect email addresses and delivers a free song for me plus other functions.)
http://www.facebook.com/the1g Eugene Sedletsky

Summed up well.

#12 Should be “Market yourself via unrelated post comments” like..

CLICK MY NAME. Haha, wait, that’s MySpace. ; )
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  And say something like “Hey, check out my new music!” without leaving an artist name or link.
http://www.facebook.com/lindseyneal Lindsey Neal Kuykendall

I’m impressed that CD Baby took the time to reply to each comment.
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  Well, then I guess I should reply to this one too! Thanks.
Robert of Prague

I’ve got a friend in a rock-band who is selling their CD on TuneCore & CDbaby; isn’t that redundant?
Also, CDbaby claims to put Indie bands on iTunes “in as little as 48 h”. Are you kidding me?! iTunes is loaded w/ 100s of stars. TuneCore is honest: 2-4 weeks. So, whom is an Indie, DIY musician to trust, huh?
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  Regarding our 48 hour claim, no we’re not kidding. If your CD Baby submission is paid and complete, you’ve uploaded artwork and audio according to our specifications, you’ve provided thorough and accurate publishing information for each song and finalized your release for digital delivery, then yes, we can deliver your music to iTunes in 2 business days. iTunes makes no promises about when they post the release once they’ve received it. But normally they’re very quick about that.
  
  Regarding the Tunecore/CD Baby thing, it’s not necessarily redundant. CD Baby also handles physical distribution to 2500 retail stores, warehousing and shipping of CDs, download sales from your cdbaby.com album/single page, etc. So it is possible that your friend is using Tunecore for digital distribution and using us for the rest.
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  Regarding our 48 hour claim, no we’re not kidding. If your CD Baby submission is paid and complete, you’ve uploaded artwork and audio according to our specifications, you’ve provided thorough and accurate publishing information for each song and finalized your release for digital delivery, then yes, we can deliver your music to iTunes in 2 business days. iTunes makes no promises about when they post the release once they’ve received it. But normally they’re very quick about that.
  
  Regarding the Tunecore/CD Baby thing, it’s not necessarily redundant. CD Baby also handles physical distribution to 2500 retail stores, warehousing and shipping of CDs, download sales from your cdbaby.com album/single page, etc. So it is possible that your friend is using Tunecore for digital distribution and using us for the rest.
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

We sell a lot of instructional children’s music on CD Baby. But before you sign up (at http://members.cdbaby.com), did you get permission to use the Jeopardy song in your music? If not, you should contact the publisher first before attempting to sell the song.
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

Sorry for the confusion. I think you talked to one of our brand new customer service people. We’ll make sure they’re properly disciplined, hazed, and humiliated for their error. Just kidding. I simply told them that YES, you CAN give away free tracks through CD Baby. Basically, the way to do that is to set your MP3 selling price for a particular track on cdbaby.com to zero. This will not change anything in the digital distribution realm (iTunes will still charge 99 cents, and so forth), but it will allow customers on cdbaby.com to “purchase” an MP3 of your music for free.
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

If you’re using our HTML links, you’d need to use a Facebook app such as iFrames that allows HTML embedding, then set that as a tab on your Facebook page.
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

Hello, you can pay for your submission inside your CD Baby member account. Add the submission to your “cart” and then click to go to the checkout process. You can pay by credit or debit card or paypal. If you need any help, please feel free to write cdbaby@cdbaby.com
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

Jam on, Frank!
Mggilbe09

You spelled “lose” as “loose” under number 10
- http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin
  
  Thanks. I don’t think you want to lose or loose sales.
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

I’m not that familiar with Mac Mail, but I know if you use a email-newsletter service like ListBaby or MailChimp, there is an HTML mode where you can input code that displays graphically in the emails you send out.
http://members.cdbaby.com CD Baby Admin

Simply log into your CD Baby account and go to the “accounting” section. All reported iTunes sales will be listed there.
T.N.R.

Can use CD Baby to release my album for free on itunes? Atleast for the first month or so?
- http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley
  
  You cannot set your price for iTunes. (Which also means you cannot offer your songs for free.) They use their standard pricing model (typically 99 cents per song).
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see which sales were generated from the Widget, since we end up handling the transaction the same way as if it had been done directly on cdbaby.com.

Music Promotion for Independent Musicians

11 Ways to Boost Your Music Sales With CD Baby