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CD Baby to stop distributing Cd's (bad deal)


hsmx

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Pity, I made some $$$ over the years starting when Derek Sivers created it. I wonder what they'll call themselves now?

"Today, we’re announcing that CD Baby will stop distributing physical products on June 22, 2023. Digital distribution to places like Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music will continue, as will our support for artists at any stage of their journey. We will even have some exciting new features and offers to help you manage your music career coming soon that we can’t wait to share with you."

 

Edited by hsmx
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I stopped producing my music on CD a number of years ago. Unless you play 150 shows a year and your audience is over 40 it's a waste of resources. I always used CD Baby and DiscMakers both for replication and digital distribution for my clients and me but for the last couple of years I've used DistroKid. $30 p/year for full unlimited digital distribution. Each release through CD baby is an individual charge. If they no longer make CDs I wish them luck.

Edited by Tommy Byrnes
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10 minutes ago, hsmx said:

Pity, I made some $$$ over the years starting when Derek Sivers created it. I wonder what they'll call themselves now?

"Today, we’re announcing that CD Baby will stop distributing physical products on June 22, 2023. Digital distribution to places like Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music will continue, as will our support for artists at any stage of their journey. We will even have some exciting new features and offers to help you manage your music career coming soon that we can’t wait to share with you."

 

Yeah, I got the email too...

 

Very sad. I'll bet Derek will be disappointed to learn this

 

Funny but true about the name. Will they rename themselves now that they're completely disassociating from CDs?

 

For many of us this is very sad. I hated seeing the reduction of artwork forced from Vinyl to CD and now the new limitation....

 

Ever try to print anything artistic on black thumb drives? <sigh>...

 

I know it can contain lots of art but unto itself just looks like a thumb drive. I've printed some labels for some as well as ordered with printing but at that minuscule size it does little to appeal to me.

 

I know there are thumb drives that have larger surfaces enabling such but they're very inconvenient for users to plug into many situations...

 

I am very sad to be seeing this change during my lifetime. I love the convenience digital offers, but this is a point of loss to me. It removes the art of Album Design completely!

 

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It's surprising that they've kept making CDs for this long considering that the CD market greatly declined years ago. As someone noted, unless you're targeting your music to an audience that is 40+ years old CDs really aren't likely to move. There are a good deal of Gen Z'ers now  as old as their early 20s that have never even owned a music CD. I put myself through college playing drums and handling the printing of posters and CD inserts for indie record labels if I really want to age myself (one of those bands was named Nirvana)! 

Edited by PavlovsCat
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2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

It's surprising that they've kept making CDs for this long considering that the CD market greatly declined years ago. As someone noted, unless you're targeting your music to an audience that is 40+ years old CDs really aren't likely to move. There are a good deal of Gen Z'ers now  as old as their early 20s that have never even owned a music CD. I put myself through college playing drums and handling the printing of posters for indie record labels if I really want to age myself (one of those bands was named Nirvana)! 

Yeah... I know...

 

...but it's such a letdown handing a thumb drive compared to a CD or better yet, a vinyl abum! The art is impressive before any device gets near it....

 

Not so with thumb drives but as fewer people buy dedicated artists work anymore. They simply subscribe to a service allowing them to listen to anything as often as they choose. No piles of media to store (and appreciate)...

 

Oh well... The good with the bad. One small solid state memory device now stores more in inches than the analog world stored in yards

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2 hours ago, Keni said:

Yeah... I know...

 

...but it's such a letdown handing a thumb drive compared to a CD or better yet, a vinyl abum! The art is impressive before any device gets near it....

 

Not so with thumb drives but as fewer people buy dedicated artists work anymore. They simply subscribe to a service allowing them to listen to anything as often as they choose. No piles of media to store (and appreciate)...

 

Oh well... The good with the bad. One small solid state memory device now stores more in inches than the analog world stored in yards

And most of us are using plugins to get things to sound as if they were recorded on tape. Progress! But it has made it a lot more challenging to sell your music through live shows., I too miss the days of musicians able to sell records , tapes and CDs at shows and cool mom and pop record stores.  I performed back in those days. 

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36 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

And most of us are using plugins to get things to sound as if they were recorded on tape. Progress! But it has made it a lot more challenging to sell your music through live shows., I too miss the days of musicians able to sell records , tapes and CDs at shows and cool mom and pop record stores.  I performed back in those days. 

Yeah, me too. As well as long before it (I’m old)

I'm old enough to not really care about sales. But for me it's the "art of album creation" which is getting lost in the current paradigm . It’s back to single after single instead. Too short-attention for  me. I enjoy an album or a symphony to a song or a movement. Too short. My interest is in connecting the short ones into long ones! 🙏👽🎸🎶

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16 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

And most of us are using plugins to get things to sound as if they were recorded on tape. Progress! But it has made it a lot more challenging to sell your music through live shows., I too miss the days of musicians able to sell records , tapes and CDs at shows and cool mom and pop record stores.  I performed back in those days. 

Yeah, I laugh at that a lot. I began my career as an engineer long before digital arrived or computers in music in any way for that matter.

A main goal of developers back then was to make their' gear as sonicly transparent as possible. Now we pay extra for the "color" they each offer. Paying tribute to those sounds. Probably a passing fashion of the changeover that will dwindle over time, but who knows?

I guess now I'll have more time to devote to making videos to add to the thumb drives?

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On 5/22/2023 at 10:31 PM, PavlovsCat said:

It's surprising that they've kept making CDs for this long considering that the CD market greatly declined years ago. As someone noted, unless you're targeting your music to an audience that is 40+ years old CDs really aren't likely to move. There are a good deal of Gen Z'ers now  as old as their early 20s that have never even owned a music CD. I put myself through college playing drums and handling the printing of posters and CD inserts for indie record labels if I really want to age myself (one of those bands was named Nirvana)! 

When was the last time you saw a new laptop being sold with an optical drive? Most Gen Zers have no optical drive, therefore no CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays. Give a young'en a device with a non-touch screen and watch the fun begin! 🤣

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A number of newer cars don't include a CD player anymore.  So people are being forced to use digital media (whether ripping CDs or streaming), unless they want to listen to just the radio.

I know of people who still buy CDs, but that audience has shrunk so much, so I understand why CD Baby is doing it.

An ironic point to this is that CDs still have better audio quality than streaming audio... so it's not like when cassettes or VHS were discontinued.

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