cdbaby

The end of Digital Noise

All albums eventually come to an end--even super-gonzo triple live CD sets--and the time has come for this blog to end as well.

I've had a great time exploring the intersection of music and technology for the last three-plus years. And even though the music industry is going through some wrenching changes, the public's interest in music has, if anything, gotten stronger.

I was at Coachella this April along with a record sold-out crowd of more than 90,000. Some of them were there for the party, but the musical lineup made the party happen. I've seen … Read more

No up-front costs to sell music on Audiolife

Update, Thursday 1/30: Today, I received a followup e-mail from Audiolife CEO and co-founder Brandon Hance. Audiolife has changed its cut on digital album downloads from $3.50 to $3.00, and on digital singles from $0.35 to $0.30. The company has also posted a detailed price list, including prices for different configurations of t-shirts. I've modified the original post accordingly.

I stumbled across a new service on Wednesday that, at first glance, seems to trump CD Baby for selling CDs online.

Audiolife not only lets you create an online store to sell CDs and digital … Read more

MSN Unsigned seems half-hearted

Covering Microsoft for the last eight years, I've seen this pattern time and time again. Internet trend comes along. Microsoft watches. Trend picks up steam. Microsoft watches. Some other company--usually a start-up--creates a site that perfectly crystallizes the trend and achieves a surprising spike in traffic. Microsoft creates a product team somewhere in the bowels of its online organization to come up with an answer. Six to eighteen months later, the imitation launches to general yawns in the press and perhaps some temporary spikes in traffic thanks to Microsoft's massive online reach. (400 million-plus registered users--that's the … Read more

World's first "record label replacement" service

Most musicians want to concentrate on writing, performing, and recording. The first two are like breathing and eating, and the third has become much easier in the last decade thanks to the ongoing revolution in digital technology--you can set up a decent computer-based recording studio for a few thousand bucks. But once you're done recording, then what? For artists without a record label, promotion and distribution are two of the thorniest tasks--they take a lot of time, and you learn a lot of lessons (and meet a lot of rip-off artists) in the process.

Launched today, HyperDIY attempts to … Read more

TuneCore vs. CD Baby for digital distribution

Hip hop giants Public Enemy will release their next album via digital distributor TuneCore, according to a story in yesterday's New York Times.

As a musician who's recorded a lot of CDs with unsigned bands, I'm a longtime fan of CD Baby, which provides an online store for selling physical CDs, as well as digital distribution through iTunes and other online services. How do the services compare for digital distribution?

CD Baby charges a one-time $35 fee for each album you want to sell through them (digital or physical), and takes a 9% cut of each download. … Read more