I released my first album on CDBaby back in 2004, and have been a happy customer ever since.  Until now.

It used to be that you paid CDBaby a fee and they’d house your CD and handle sales and do all the digital distribution.  Now they’ll house your CD, but they let Amazon and some others put your CD online for sale and manage the transaction.  So now you’re paying CDBaby and you’re paying Amazon when you sell a CD.

But apparently CDBaby changed their policy back in 2014, in the fine print – now, if your physical CD doesn’t sell, they’ll charge you shipping to send it back to you… or they’ll throw it away.  Actually they recycle it, meaning throw it away in a planet-friendly way.  Yes, this was in the fine print, but they never actually did this.  Until now.

If you have CD’s sitting in the CDBaby warehouse, eventually they’re going to charge you money to ship them back to you, or they’ll throw them out, err, recycle them.  If your physical CD sells, they’ll take a cut.  If not, they’ll charge you to ship it back to you.  Great for them.  For you?  Well, that great service they used to offer is now shitty.  There’s no reason to send them any physical CDs – you’re better off selling them yourself through Amazon.  But few people are even buying CDs these days.

I’m very disappointed in this once great company that now appears to be stacking the deck in their favor.  When you sign up for physical distribution, they should be putting a big statement out there that says you’ll be charged for CDs that don’t sell.  Ah, but then they can’t sucker independent musicians out of some money, can they?

Sadly CDBaby is still the least expensive (in the long term) way to get your music on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, etc.  Everyone else charges you an annual fee, which is even worse than what CDBaby is doing.

I still remember the days when CDBaby was great.  I miss that company.

One more thing: CDBaby has disabled comments on their YouTube videos.  Gee, I wonder why?

Update – Today, October 26, 2021, CD Baby sent out an email to all of their customers with a link to a newly updated artist agreement, which they will no doubt require customers to sign on November 9.  The artist agreement was written by lawyers and is roughly 55 pages in length.  They have that right, of course.  Heck, they could make it 500 pages, and customers can either accept the agreement or leave.  It could be that the agreement is totally legit, but forgive me for being a little suspicious.  At somme point I’ll have to go over this thing with a fine toothed comb.