CDBaby

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DavidK

DavidK

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How long does it take to get a CD on CDBaby? Anyone? Bueller?

We have sent them some, I am curious as to when it will be processed and up.
 
I thought they go up within a week or so. I can't remember, but I have sold 2 CD's with them. (Not 2 units, I mean 2 different CD's). Also, make sure you sign up for digital distribution. I get about 35 bucks a month for tunes that are on my shitty first CD that I can't even listen to.
 
DavidK said:
How long does it take to get a CD on CDBaby? Anyone? Bueller?

We have sent them some, I am curious as to when it will be processed and up.

My understanding is it can take a couple of weeks to a month or so. I suppose it depends on how much of a backlog they have. They do a LOT with your CD, and they now offer digital distribution, which can take 3-4 months.

I think I found that info on their website somewhere...I know it's on the net.
 
ours went up within a couple days of getting that to them. it took longer to ship it than for them to put it up.

for them to get it up on iTunes is another story. ours went up just shy of 4 months, however some people had their stuff up in just under 2. i think it depends on their workload.

the one annoying thing is that you start with like 2 CDs or something and can't send them more until you sell those. then you can send 4, and then 8 and then 16...etc...doubles each time. but the point is...you can be promoting the hell out of the CD sell your first 2 copies and then it says it's out until you ship 4 more (that can be another 4 days or so until they get it)...then those sell out in like a day, ship those...bla bla bla. i mean you kind of want it to be a big push, but your big push doesn't look that good when people go to buy your CD and its constantly sold out. you can't even pre-order it. you need to wait until it's physically in stock. that's my one gripe about CD Baby, but it save's their ass from warehousing hundreds of CDs from millions of artists that sell 2 CDs total.
 
I thought it was 5 CD's first time around. Unless it's changed. Either way, I get your point. But I wonder if they changed it from 5 to 2 for the first shipment.
 
Thanks for the info fellers. I have a record label doing the itunes and amazon stuff, supposedly you get faster service from itunes if you go through the right online distributor. We are scheduled for Sept 12, the day the CD is released.

We sent 40 to CD baby, as the label has dealt with them before. We went to get some sales going before the Sept 12 release.
 
RAMI said:
I thought it was 5 CD's first time around. Unless it's changed. Either way, I get your point. But I wonder if they changed it from 5 to 2 for the first shipment.

ah....yeah it could be 5. it just seemed like a pain in the ass.
 
You're better off selling the CD yourself and using PayPal. Only use CD baby if you expect to sell a lot and can't deal with the S&H.
 
JoeBannon said:
You're better off selling the CD yourself and using PayPal. Only use CD baby if you expect to sell a lot and can't deal with the S&H.

I dont own the CD, the record label does.
 
JoeBannon said:
You're better off selling the CD yourself and using PayPal. Only use CD baby if you expect to sell a lot and can't deal with the S&H.

i don't agree with this. we actually do both and sell more through CD Baby than paypal. not by much, but we do. i think more people like to go through a store front that looks semi official (although their site is god awful and looks like it hasn't been updated since the dawn of the web, but i digress...) than essentially giving money to some random person or band that you don't know if they actually will send you a CD or not. We're quite glad we have both as it's nice to make a bigger profit through PayPal, but cd baby's hooked us up with all those digital places like iTunes which is selling 4-5 times the rate that CD Baby and Paypal per month put together. I say you'd be crazy not to do both.
 
Robertt8 said:
i don't agree with this. we actually do both and sell more through CD Baby than paypal.


Let me ask you this.... do you send people to CD Baby to buy your CD? By looking at your site, it looks like you do. Take the link down and see how many CD Baby would sell for you.
 
JoeBannon said:
Let me ask you this.... do you send people to CD Baby to buy your CD? By looking at your site, it looks like you do. Take the link down and see how many CD Baby would sell for you.


i'm not totally getting your point.

if you don't point people to places to buy your cd, your not going to sell crap. how the hell are they supposed to know where it's available for sale if you don't point them there?

are you asking what CD Baby does to promote my CD? Practically nothing, but they're not supposed to. we do get some cross over sales from people that use the "SOUNDS LIKE" search, but i'm guessing not much. I think what you are referring to is promotion...CD Baby doesn't really do it, iTunes doesn't do it (unless you spend mucho bucks)...hell, none of them really do it...like i said, i'm not really seeing your point. Nobody's going to push our CD for us (at least not without paying them). i mean just having your CD is a CD store on a shelf does next to nothing.

if you know a place that will promote, sell and still give us a solid profit, i'm all ears man.

or am i not understanding the question?
 
paypal

How easy is it set a account up with paypal, and then sell cds with it?
Does it cost anything?

(sorry this is probably somthing i should know)


thanks!
 
hrwmusic said:
How easy is it set a account up with paypal, and then sell cds with it? Does it cost anything?

Takes a few mins and it's free to setup. When you use their service, they take 3%.
 
JoeBannon said:
My point is why give them a commission when you do all the promoting.

you don't get it do you...

we're not paying them for promotion. we're paying them to have a viable store front, take care of all the shipping hassles, keep decent records of sales and get us digital distribution. If you think CD Baby is paid to promote you more than setting up a page with your CD for sale (and some reviews if you're lucky to get them) then you are seriously misinformed.

every CD we sell through CD Baby is one less we need to send out ourselves. In the average day we'd sell anywhere from 1-8 CDs, and i'll tell you, it's pretty damn nice to let someone else do that shit for the CD Baby ones. we'd rather go through PayPal and make a slightly larger margin, but some people don't want to (more or less) blindly send money to people who they don't know if they can trust or not. CD Baby is an established company that has been doing this for years and years. That is all. they are not...and were never supposed to be promoting us.

i think if you have a problem with their cut of the deal, then CD Baby is not for you. let me know if you find a service that takes less off the top and provides a better service or some kind of promotion. as far as i can tell, nothing like that exists.
 
Robertt8 said:
i think if you have a problem with their cut of the deal, then CD Baby is not for you. let me know if you find a service that takes less off the top and provides a better service or some kind of promotion. as far as i can tell, nothing like that exists.

I'm not aware of any. There are some pretty hefty acts on there too, they do CDBaby in addition to other avenues.

I am in the music biz to make music, not stuff envelopes. They can take their cut. My CD took about 4 days to put up on their site. Thats pretty damn good. :cool:
 
Robertt8 said:
you don't get it do you... we're not paying them for promotion. we're paying them to have a viable store front, take care of all the shipping hassles, keep decent records of sales and get us digital distribution.


And that is WHY I said only use them if you can't handle the S&H. Read my posts again, YOU are not getting it.
 
JoeBannon said:
And that is WHY I said only use them if you can't handle the S&H. Read my posts again, YOU are not getting it.

There are a lot of other reasons for using a service like CDBaby. As Robert pointed out, it brings a perceived legitimacy to the product, some people wont buy it from you directly.

The MAIN one is inclusion in things like Soundscan and statistics. Roberts band actually sells CDs, I have heard their stuff many times. Record Labels, Venues, TV/Film people etc. watch places like CDBaby VERY carefully, you would be surprised. They watch numbers like mad, and its a small biz where everybody knows everybody. If you are moving units, SOMEONES gonna know. When you get into the 5 digit numbers, your phone is gonna ring a lot.

You cant do this from home. As Robert stated, CDbaby puts you on a number of other sites, Robert's is now on Amazon. Again, its REAL hard to do that alone.

The money doesnt matter, seriously. The NUMBERS do. One can make more money at burger king. Hell, one can make more money finding pennies on the street. It's all a game of numbers: once you hit a certain number, sales probably quadruple.

If you are concerned with making $120 instead of $100, so be it. I dont know many serious musicians whose goal it is to sell 12 records. Inclusion in any kind of Charts, or other things like ASCAP/BMI is very difficult to get if you are mailing CDs out of your house.
 
JoeBannon said:
And that is WHY I said only use them if you can't handle the S&H. Read my posts again, YOU are not getting it.

damn dude....now i see why your popularity rating is the lowest i've ever seen.

we can handle it. it' just nice not to do all of it. we still ship out a bunch of paypals everyday. you also seem to miss all the other really kick ass points that CD Baby does do for you. if we only had PayPal, we'd have lost a lot of business.

i'm done bikering with you about something you can't seem to grasp. if you think Paypal is the only way to go, then fine. you've made an excellent point.

just out of curiosity, what is your band?
 
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