CD Baby Is Solving Music Industry Problems One Songwriter At A Time

CD Baby celebrated having published over one million songs for their 20th anniversary.

CD Baby, Inc. is a popular online music store specializing in the sale of CDs, vinyl records, and music downloads from independent musicians to consumers. The company is also a digital aggregator of independent music recordings, distributing content to several online music retailers. CD Baby is one of the few sources of information on physical CD sales in the independent music industry, it was the trading name of Hit Media, Inc., a Nevada Corporation founded by Derek Sivers in 1997. Sivers sold CD Baby to Disc Makers in 2008 for what Sivers has reported to be $22 million. The firm currently operates out of Portland, Oregon. CD Baby allows artists to set their price point for selling physical compact discs: CD Baby retains $4 of every CD sale, and the remainder gets paid out to the artist on a weekly basis. They also charge a one-time $49 setup fee per album and $9.99 per single song. The music industry has gotten used to describing CD Baby as a “distributor” over the past 20 years, but the Oregon-headquartered business has grown far beyond this core service – as a new milestone handsomely proves. CD Baby announced mid this month that they now administer over a million songs, for 160,000 songwriters in over 50 countries. To put the size of this mass of songs into context, it’s nearly half the size of Sony’s entire global music publishing catalog (excluding EMI) – which amounted to 2.3m compositions at the end of June. The firm says it has direct affiliations with more than 30 Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) worldwide. Of the million-plus compositions in its database, CD Baby administers 100% of the publishing for over 750,000 songs. Across all rights, CD Baby has paid out $55 million to artists year-to-date, and around $100 million in the past 12 months. The firm estimates that its artist catalog makes up an estimated 35% of songs available on Spotify – and it reckons it’s delivering almost 50% of the new music self-released by artists in North America being delivered to streaming services. Below, CD Baby’s Head of Creator Services, Jon Bahr discusses the company’s growth in the publishing admin world – and that headline-grabbing million song milestone.

It’s true – the tides of the music business have risen in the past few years as streaming has gained a massive foothold with no signs of letting up. Alongside the rise has been a string of lawsuits, metadata/registration problems, unknown compositions, suppressed content, failed legislation (and current legislation that hopefully may soon pass), missing songwriters, royalty delays and royalties incorrectly paid out. In nearly every situation, the issue surrounds the underlying composition – the song, which was crafted by a songwriter. We are thrilled to announce that CD Baby Publishing Administration is solving those problems globally for over one million songs and 160,000 songwriters in over 50 countries with direct affiliations at more than 30 Performing Rights Organizations worldwide. This groundbreaking milestone – with over 750,000 songs where we administer 100% of the publishing shares – is truly helping solve the industry’s publishing problem one songwriter at a time. Our global Publishing Administration service is getting these songwriters their rightfully owed money globally and emptying the often discussed many “black boxes” at collection societies. At its core, CD Baby’s role is to help music creators both get their music into the world and make sure they collect upon every revenue stream for that music. We give artists and songwriters full choice to layer different services under creator-friendly terms, as opposed to overreaching rights grabs. With 9 million recordings distributed (one million new tracks in 2017 alone!), four million songs with YouTube & Facebook monetization, three million songs under non-exclusive Sync Licensing, one million songs under Publishing Administration, 25,000 new Publishing songs registered a month, and 4,000 new songwriters a month collecting all their Publishing owed, CD Baby is getting money flowing to music creators. At CD Baby, we educate that “No Song Should Go Unpublished.” A songwriter is inherently their own publisher, but knowing what to do usually ended with joining a performing rights organization like ASCAP or BMI in the US or SOCAN in Canada and hopefully knowing to collect as a both a writer and a publisher. In my thirteen year tenure at ASCAP, I met countless songwriters who said ASCAP was their publisher (which is incorrect). Not managing your publishing shouldn’t mean the writer doesn’t get the money owed, but it does within the international framework of how songwriting royalties flow.. In the US, for certain interactive services like Amazon Music Unlimited and Pandora Premium the album or single won’t go live – though completely delivered by a distributor – without a Publisher registration/license of their works via Music Reports Inc. (MRI). We, as well as our artists and songwriters, certainly want their music to be available to as many listeners as they can unimpeded by their lack of publishing understanding.