Now You Make More Money When You Sell MP3s on CDBaby.com

January 22, 2013{ 14 Comments }

CD Baby’s mission has always been to help you earn the most money from your music. Towards that end, I’m excited to announce that we’ll be lowering the admin fee we take of MP3 sales on cdbaby.com from 25% to 9% — lower than any other digital music retailer out there.

And that lower rate holds true for all our direct-to-fan sales tools, including CD Baby’s MusicStore for Facebook, our HTML Music Store Widget, and our custom Linkmaker

It’s simple: you make more money when you sell your music through CD Baby.

When you sell an album download for $9.99	You Make
On CD Baby	$9.09
On BandCamp	$8.49 to $8.99
On a traditional download store like iTunes or Amazon	$6.37*

*After CD Baby’s 9% admin fee

Regardless of how or where you want to sell your music, we’ve got you covered: digital distribution to iTunes, Spotify, and others, online retail sales on cdbaby.com, sales through Facebook or your own web site. And now we take the same tiny 9% admin fee regardless of how you sell! Why? Because we feel we’re the best place for artists to get their music to a worldwide market. And, frankly, we hope you’ll think of us first for all your new releases.

Make it your New Year’s resolution to direct your fans to CD Baby, one convenient place where they can purchase CDs, vinyl, and MP3s — and where you’ll make the most money!

Sincerely,
Felsen Now You Make More Money When You Sell MP3s on CDBaby.com
Brian Felsen
CD Baby President

P.S. Did I mention nobody gets you into more stores than CD Baby? All the big digital stores, like iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Rhapsody, Xbox Music & many more. Plus you get access to over 15,000 record stores to sell your CDs, through our partnership with Alliance Distribution and Super D. So give us a try today!

Guest's Author Bio

http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

Hey Linda, thanks for talking up CD Baby. We always like to remind folks that:

a) We don’t have yearly fees — so we only make money when you do, and you can feel secure leaving your music up for sale until the end of time, even if it’s not selling, without us hounding you for an annual fee.

b) we don’t just get you onto a few sites; we distribute to iTunes, Spotify, GooglePlay, Amazon, Rhapsody, Rdio, Xbox, Muve, and so many more.

c) for the same one-time fee, you get worldwide digital distribution, global physical distribution in over 15,000 record stores, CD/vinyl/MP3 sales on cdbaby.com,inclusion in our sync licensing program, and direct-to-fan sales solutions like our MusicStore for Facebook, HTML Music Store widget, etc.

d) we’ve got the coolest customer and artist service team around — and you can actually reach them by phone.

e) we’ve been around for almost 15 years now, and we’re not going anywhere. The same can’t be said for many music biz startups.
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

Absolutely.
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

Hey Sam, hopefully soon — but I don’t have a more specific ETA. We’re working on it, though.
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

Hey V, we understand the frustration that can be caused by a request to have your work sent back at your expense, but I have to point out a few key things that you may be overlooking.

First off, in our effort to maintain the original promise to CD Baby artists made by Derek Sivers, CD Baby’s founder, we will always retain a copy of your album in our warehouse no matter what happens.

Second, in our effort to provide our artists, who are operating on an independent level, the best deal possible, we do not charge annual account fees, warehouse fees, restocking fees, or any other excess fees that are typically associated with other companies such as Amazon.

We also do not charge a lot of the annual fees that many other music distribution companies charge their clients. We are not looking to shake the pennies from your pocket. Asking artists to cover the shipping for their own stock is one of the ways we are able to make sure that you are not paying more than you need to pay.

Ultimately, we work with 350,000 artists, many of whom have more than one release. We keep enough stock on hand to manage 6 months of sales. In the beginning we have no sales data, so 5 is a modest and safe amount to start with; however, if the album doesn’t sell, then that initial stock will be considered overstock. The amount of copies determined as overstock may not seem like a lot at first glance, but when you put it into perspective with the bigger picture, you will see why we can’t hold onto any excess material that isn’t selling no matter what the overstock quantity is. No processing fees or any other warehouse related fees, we are only asking that you cover the shipping of your albums.

The other option is of course recycling, which makes all of us here at CD Baby cringe to think about. We would much rather see them get home safe!
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

No ETA. Still working on it.
http://twitter.com/mezzobeats MeZZo

Hi there, I’m relatively new to cdbby but I’m blown away by its efficiency and caring nature. Maybe you guys can do something on teh merchandize front like you do with physical cds.
- http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley
  
  We’ve toyed with the idea from time to time, but no major plans yet. Hopefully one day.
- http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley
  
  Oh, and thanks so much. Glad we can help you distribute your music!
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

Earl, CD Baby is a digital and physical music distributor. We’re not promoters, and especially not radio promoters. The kind of blanket, commercial radio promotion campaign you’re talking about costs tens of thousands of dollars. (Impossible to do for all 500k artists who work with us — and if we did, the efforts would be rendered meaningless anyway, simply through the sheer volume of artists we’d be promoting at once).

That being said, commercial radio is yesterday’s news. Artists are “breaking” and making careers for themselves without ever being played on commercial radio. We work with tons of musicians who are subverting that system, going around the old gatekeepers (and cozying up to the new), touring without label support, selling records without major label distro, and they’re doing quite well.

“The onus of a lot of work” DOES fall on the artist, though — or at least the artist’s team if they’re lucky enough to have assembled one (manager, band, label, publicist, booking agent, etc.) Our job is to simplify the artists’ lives, to take care of the complicated busy-work (distribution, publishing royalty collection, sync licensing, etc.) so they’ll have more time to… keep working hard.

@ChrisRobley
http://BlastDaddy.com/ sync

You mean CD Baby prints your CD (thru DiscMakers), ships them to you, then you ship them 5 copies back? I’m sorry, that’s some real backwoods nonsense! Why not just print on demand and forget all the warehousing?
- http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley
  
  We warehouse CDs by artists who’ve used any number of disc manufacturing services, not just our own.
  - http://BlastDaddy.com/ sync
    
    Christopher, Thanks for your reply. Are there any plans at CD Baby for offering print on demand?
    - http://blog.hostbaby.com/ Chris B at HostBaby
      
      We’ve definitely entertained that idea, but no current plans. We do offer small run printings–if you just want to do 50 or 100, etc.
http://blog.hostbaby.com/ Chris B at HostBaby

We are working on making higher quality formats available soon. Stay tuned!

Music Promotion for Independent Musicians

Now You Make More Money When You Sell MP3s on CDBaby.com