Hi Johan,

I have also been using CD Baby for sales for the last 8 years or so
and have had an excellent relationship with them.

BUT, since Derek Sivers sold CD Baby to another company (who I
believe are primarily CD manufacturers) things seem to be a little
rocky. I, like you have had nothing but automated responses for the
last month or so. Up until now I've been getting regular payments for
sales and could also check what those sales have been via the
excellent OLD system. Now they've gone and made it "funky looking"
and a little basic and things seemed to have come to a halt.

I'm hoping this is purely teething issues with the change over but as
you have expressed the lack of response to emails is a worry. Not
sure about the royalties side of things. You won't get any royalties
via CD Baby. You'll need to join up to ASCAP or equivalent deals with
these things in the USA - I believe.

I'm sorry that it's buggered up your release, you'll have to put that
one down to bad luck.

Good luck,

Steve Roberts.


At 05:53 AM 7/09/2009, you wrote:
>Hi ambient list
>
>A few months ago I asked for recommendations and opinions on digital
>distributors for small artists, and the overwhelming collective
>recommendation was for CD Baby.
>
>Well, I just wanted to give my experiences and warn everyone from
>working with them at the moment. It started very well, they answered
>all my questions promptly, but after I paid the $55 they have only
>e-mailed me once (telling that they would start to sell the album in
>1-2 weeks - and that was about two months ago), otherwise they have
>ignored all 5-10 emails I have sent them (only sending autoreplies
>back) and when I phoned them I never got through their endless
>queue, I couldn't wait forever since it was an international call.
>So here I am, the album has leaked and has already been released in
>other territories by other labels, I'm losing a lot of sales in the
>territories I had planned to sell it through CD Baby and I seem to
>also have lost $55.
>
>The autoreplies say that they are busy reconstructing their web
>site, but it's still a very bad way to not answer e-mails or calls
>for two months, when they have written that they send the music to
>the stores immediately after receiving it and all necessary
>information (which they have had since June in this case). If you
>have these kinds of problems then you should write something about
>it on your web site, not continue to encourage people to sign up
>with you and pay you money.
>
>What are other people's experiences of working with CD Baby during
>the latest months? Have you been able to get material released, and
>have you got paid royalties?
>
>Can anyone recommend some other digital distributor for small artists?
>
>Cheers,
>Johan.
>