CD Baby

Who are we?

The Short Answer:

CD Baby is the largest online distributor of independent music. CDBaby.com is our quaint little record store where we hope you will discover your next favorite artist.

[In•de•pen•dent: (adj.) Not having sold one's life, career, and creative works over to a corporation.]

The Long Answer:

From our humble beginnings more than a decade ago as a small, one-man operation in a garage, to our current standing as the world’s largest online distributor of indie music, CD Baby has always been a company run BY musicians FOR musicians. Inside the fortified walls of our warehouse (a virtual Wonka-world of music) in rainy Portland, Oregon, we listen to every single album we carry before it is posted for sale so that we can help you find other new artists you’ll love, too. No distributors. No major labels. We only sell music that musicians send us directly. We ship CDs from our warehouse. We sell downloads from our site. And we also deliver our artists’ music to other download retailers, as well (iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, and many more.) We sell you the music and then we pay the artist right away. Cool thing: in a regular record deal or distribution deal, musicians only make $1-$2 per album, if they’re ever lucky enough to get paid by their label at all. When selling through CD Baby, musicians make $6-$12 per album and get paid weekly.

Current Numbers:

278,510 albums being sold on CD Baby
5,339,025 CDs sold online to customers
$107,769,092 paid directly to the artists