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Facts About CD Baby

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  • $111 million paid to indie artists
  • 5.5 million CDs sold
  • 2 million digital tracks for sale
  • Over 250,000 albums in stock
  • 1. CD Baby sells more music by independent artists than any other store.
  • 2. The most money paid to artists.
  • 3. The most digital partners.
  • 4. We will inventory and sell your CDs too (not just downloads).
  • 5. We only take a tiny distributor’s cut.
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Welcome to CD Baby

Congrats! You've found the biggest, most artist-friendly independent music store on the web. We work directly with independent artists like you, and help you maximize your music income. In fact, we've paid more money directly to artists than any other music distributor we know. (See numbers in the “Facts” section)

But we’re not just a music store – we want to be your commerce hub. Whatever you want to sell – downloads, CDs, merch – we want to sell it for you (and pay you the lion’s share). Wherever you want to sell it – online, in stores, at your gigs – we want to help you get there (and sell more).

So come on, join us today. We’ll even answer the phone if you have a question about something you see online. Call us at 503-595-3000.

Let’s help you start selling your music!

Sincerely,

THE CD BABY TEAM

Quantity Discount on CD Baby

Customers buying your CD from cdbaby.com will be encouraged to buy more than one copy of your CD in order to get the quantity discount. This is great for encouraging your fans to buy many copies for their friends. If they buy only one, there is no discount. If they buy 2 or more, they can get a discount of your choice.

You can give a discount for this album to people who buy more than one copy of your CD. To set a quantity discount, select a percentage discount from the options below.

Pay When Balance Hits

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Variable Album Pricing for Digital Distribution

iTunes offers a few different pricing options for an album selling in their store. Although we strongly recommend using the default standard price, you can adjust your full album download price in this section.

You can choose to sell your release at a premium, standard, or discounted rate. The choice is yours, but keep in mind that an album’s price cannot exceed the sum of the individual track prices. If the sum of an album’s individual track prices equals less than the album price you choose, the full album price will be adjusted accordingly by the retailer. They do this to ensure that customers don’t pay more when buying your album all at once than they would if they bought all of the album’s tracks individually. The current standard retail price for full album downloads sold by iTunes U.S. is $9.99.

Please note: All prices listed are reflected in U.S. currency, for the iTunes U.S. territory. Album prices may vary in territories outside of the United States due to exchange rates.

Digital Distribution Options

We have many digital partners, and have organized them into 5 groups, based on their pricing structure. You can elect to be sent to all of them or some of them, based on the distribution option you pick here. Please carefully read the information below and choose which option will work best for your album.

You can change your digital distribution choice at any time, but it will not be retroactive, and only affects future deliveries to digital retailers. Your album will not be removed from any services by changing this option.

Bar Code Number

Please make sure that the barcode you enter here is unique to this album and hasn’t been used before.

Enter all digits, including the small numbers on the far right and far left. Be sure to leave out any spaces. For example: 012345678912

Blank Track

Some artists have "hidden" tracks on their disc, with a number of blank tracks before. If we’re ripping your CD, then the blank tracks with absolutely no content (intended to hide a hidden track on the physical disc) may get distributed to our digital partners and sold for $0.99 if we don’t know they’re there. If this applies to you, please check each track that, when being read by your cd player, would be blank.

How we choose where clips start and stop

We choose the start time based on the length of your song:

  • If the song is less than 1 minute long, we start the clip 2 seconds into the song.
  • If your song is JUST over 1 minute long, we start the clip halfway through the song.
  • If the song is a good bit longer than 1 minute, we start the clip 48 seconds into the song.

By default, our clips are 29.5 seconds long. Obviously if your song is less than 31.5 seconds long, we just run the clip until the end of the song.

We also put fades on all our clips; we use a 1.5 second half-sinusoidal fade at both the beginning and end of the clip.

You might hate it, but remember: you can define your own custom start time and duration in your members' account! The one thing we can't let you do is customize your clips to be longer than 29.5. Sorry, but we're just trying to avoid being sued by mean nasty lawyers.

Hope that answers all your questions! Email us at cdbaby@cdbaby.com if it doesn't, OK?

Physical Release Date

The date you enter here should correspond with the past, present or future date your album became or will become available for sale. [Note that we can't guarantee specific future release date]

If the album’s original release date was in the past, enter that date and we’ll make the album live as soon as possible.

If you have a specific date more than two weeks in the future you’d like the album released on, enter it here and the album won’t be made live until the date you’ve chosen.

Digital Release Date

The Digital Release Date should be the day that the album was first made available in the digital format. [Note that we can't guarantee specific future release date]

If the album’s original release date was in the past, enter that date and we’ll make the album live as soon as possible. If you have a specific date more than two weeks in the future you’d like the album released on, enter it here and the album won’t be made live until the date you’ve chosen. (Please note: if you are planning to be included in our digital distribution program, we cannot guarantee any future release dates with our digital partners)

Downloads

We'll let you choose if you want to be sold through our digital partners like iTunes, or solely on CDBaby.com, later in this process

Cover Song

A cover song is a song that was first recorded or made popular by someone else.

CVV Number

CVV Number

Payments Payable To

The name you give us here must match the name on the account that you ask us to deposit payments into; If you choose to be paid by check, make sure the name you put here is the name of the person/business cashing the check. So if your band doesn’t have a bank account in the band’s name, the payee should be someone with a bank account.

Processing Payment

We are processing your payment. Please be patient during this process.

Record Label

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Routing Number

Your bank’s routing number is the first series of numbers on the bottom left of one of your physical checks.

Tax ID / Social Security

If you earn $600 or more in one calendar year, we need your SSN or Tax ID number in order to send you a 1099 form. If you reside outside the US, and are not claiming exemption due to a tax treaty then we need your tax ID number for the country in which you reside. If you do not provide this information now, we may need to collect it from you later.

Composer

What is the full legal name of each songwriter for each track?

If there is more than one composer, please place a semi-colon between each name. (ie. Brandon Roy; Rodolfo Fernández i Farrés; Gregory Oden, Jr.)

Track Names

If you're in our Digital Distribution program (or plan to be), help us get you on iTunes and all the other digital stores faster:

• Don't use ALL CAPS or all lowercase. Especially all caps. The digital stores think it looks "unprofessional".

• Don’t list artist names in the track title (you can enter the artist name for each track later).

• Don't list websites in the artist name or album title. Most digital stores won't or can't put other branded sites' links in their content.

Publisher

Who owns the copyright to the song? If a publishing company does not own the copyright, then the writer is "self-published". List the full legal names of each songwriter in the case of self-published writers.

If you need to list more than one writer, please place a semi-colon between each name. (ie.. Brandon Roy; Rodolfo Fernández i Farrés; Gregory Oden, Jr.)

Also note: Typically the owner of the copyright to the song is the publishing company and/or songwriter, while a record label typically owns the copyright to the recording of the song. For this reason, record labels are not usually publishers.

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