Comprehensive CD Baby Review 2024: Pricing, Features & Everything You Need to Know
Top Reason to Choose CD Baby
Music stays in stores. Unlimited distribution for a flat annual fee sounds great, but you’re renting distribution. If the day ever comes where you can’t afford to pay rent, your music gets evicted from all stores. That threat is always there as long as your distribution is on a subscription. The pricing makes it seem like an afterthought. $20 or $30 annually isn’t much and I’m sure most people don’t envision a time where they wouldn’t be able to pay such a small amount, but as the saying goes “ish happens”. I chatted with an artist whose music was removed while he was in a coma fighting for his life because his debit card couldn’t be charged. Peace-of-mind goes a long way. The way CD Baby secures distribution is to take 9% of the revenue generated by your releases in perpetuity after you pay a $10 one-time-fee for each release. How does it stack up in that offer?
CD Baby vs. Distrokid vs. Ditto vs. Too Lost Distribution
You pay $10 one-time than 9% of your revenue and that gets punitive the more you earn. $10K in royalties would have you paying $900 annually. Compare that to Too Lost distribution and its 15% that would have you paying $1,500 annually. With Ditto, you’re effectively coerced back into a subscription by being prevented from accessing your royalties until you pay the subscription fee which, if you were earning $10K annually would cost you less because you’d only pay $35 to get $9965. Distrokid would cost you $29 per single and/or $49 per album and allow you to keep 100% of your revenue so the cost there is front loaded. You’d pay upfront for each release at a rate exceeding that of CD Baby’s $10 but get to keep 100% of what you earn. What’s good about Distrokid’s offer is you have the ability to let releases pay for their permanent spot over time, whereas with CD Baby, you have to pay upfront and hope the releases recoup the cost. CD Baby is clearly a better option to keep your music in stores than Too Lost Distribution but Ditto and Distrokid… Though Distrokid’s costs are front loaded, it’s not an initial fee. You can distribute a release and if and when that release earns $29 pay for Leave-a-Legacy. You wouldn’t have to pay $2.9K to distribute 100 releases, but you would be required to pay $1,000 to CD Baby to distribute that number of releases. Ditto beats CD Baby as the option here because it’s effectively a $35 charge to withdraw your funds.
Top Features
Stages
As I’ve previously stated, percentages become punitive the more you earn where distributors must justify the growing cost for artists to make sense of continuing to use their service. CD Baby addresses that with their Stages program which offers more expansive services the more an artist grows. At the Plus Stage artists are no longer required to pay upfront fees per release and are only subject to their 9% royalty split. At the Label Services Stage they open up actual editorial playlist pitching, fast tracked approval for Pandora radio, and video delivery to Apple Music. Whether that makes it worth it, comes down to how much you value those features.
Transaction fees
CD Baby allows you to avoid all transaction fees by using ACH and having your funds sent directly to your bank account. PayPal is provided as an option but comes with an uncapped transaction fee of 2.9%. Most distributors cap transaction fees but do not eliminate them.
Tunecore - capped at $0.25
Distrokid - capped at $1
Ditto - No transaction fees and only sends funds directly to your bank account
Trending Reports
Daily updates on the performance of your releases are provided through Trending Reports on CD Baby. This is a feature common with other distributors but CD Baby provides more information than they do showing the sources of your streaming activity where you can see if it’s coming from searches, radio, etc. This is information you’re not even allowed to see in Spotify for artists. The value of the information comes down to what you can do with it, so what can you do with this info? Things like a notable performance, a mention by an influencer, usage of your music in an influencer’s content, tv show, or movie could all spike activity from search. If you have those things happen and no spike happens from that source, it informs you of the value of the influencer, tv show, or movie. Paying for sponsored posts from an influencer that doesn’t move the needle isn’t the smartest thing to do so the information can save you a lot of money there.
Details
CD Baby
Price - Annual fee
Price per release
Price - Revenue split
Stores
Beatport is a very important store for EDM aritsts and not all distributors send music to it because of the level of set up. Some distributors charge a monthly fee to send music to the store while others roll it into their standard service. The difference between the two options is that a monthly fee will get you a dedicated Label account on Beatport exclusive to your releases. Distributors that send your music to Beatport as part of their service have their distribution companies registered as Labels with the platform and will list your music under their Label.
Beatport
New Stores
Pre-orders
Digital booklets allow you to add something extra to incentivise sales. You can provide buyers with a PDF document containing images, lyrics, thoughts about each track, etc. The PDF would come attached with downloads on iTunes.
Digital Booklets
Dolby Atmos
Custom Label Name
Some distributors restrict you from distributing music for more than one Primary artist. This is a rule to prevent users from building a distribution service on top of the one they're using. When collaborating with other artists you may want to list them as Primary artists while not functioning like a label where you don't plan to dsitribute music for them, you just effectively want to feature them on the release. You shouldn't have to pay for that, but some distributors will charge you. Make sure you view our blog for detailed reviews
Primary Artist
Content-id is a process where an audio fingerprint is created of your song file and a system is ran that scans YouTube and other platforms for matches. If matches are discovered on YouTube, ads are placed on the content and the revenue from the ads are paid out to the distributor, which pays the artist. It's primarily for third party content that's unauthorized but artists commonly use it to monetize channels that don't qualify for the YouTube Partner Program. Check our guide for the best way to monetize YouTube Distributors normally charge a fee between 20 - 30% of revenue and the feature can discourage the free promotion that you'd get from users sharing your music on the platform so it's arguable as to whether it should be activated.
Content ID
Will the distributor remove your music if you cancel your subscription or no longer can afford to pay?
Music Stays Live
Split Pay
Classical
Music Video
Customer Support
A transaction fee is charged every time an artist withdraws their funds. It's a percentage of the amount withdrawn that's charged by the payment gateway that processes the transaction. Different payment gateways charge different fees. The most common gateway is PayPal which charges 2.9% of each transaction.
ACH direct bank transfers usually have reduced fees or no fees at all. These fees can work out to be an additional subscription fee. For example:
Artist withdraws $1,000/Month
Artist pays 2.9%
That amounts to a $29 subscription fee on top of the subscription fee paid to the distributor.
In this scenario, the artist would end up paying $348 in additional fees.
Capped fees means the distribute imposes a maximum where you'll never pay more than that amount. If the distributor says 2.9% up to $0.25 like Tunecore does, it means you'll never pay more than 25¢ in transaction fees.
Transaction Fees
Payment Threshold
Minimum amount required to receive a payment
Countries without a US Tax-treaty are subject to a 30% tax withholding. View your country's tax status here
Tax-Treaty
Requires taking a photo of your ID + a Selfie (less likely). This positions your distributor to doxx you to DSPs and could result in bans being tied to your personal identity if you're ever accused of streaming fraud or any other violation.
KYC
What you're charged per accusation of streaming fraud
Artificial Streaming Fee
Some distributors have Exclusive agreements in their Artist Agreements. These terms allow the distributor to dictate where you can place your music online and strip away your independence. It's advised you seek to avoid distributors with Exclusive terms.
Exclusivity
Does the distributor have to pay a third party for facilitating distribution? If yes, this means you don't keep 100% of your royalties. Instead, your royalties are split between you, the third party, and your distributor.
Direct Deals
We rate distributors on a scale of 1-5 based on transaparency, customer support, how they handle payment, stores, features, and longetivity.Visit our Blog for all music distributor reviews
Payusnomind Rating
Details
None
$10 - Single/EP/Album
Keep 91%
Unlimited
No
Yes - Included
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Free
30% of Royalties
Yes
No
Yes
No
Email- General
No dedicated customer support rep
ACH: Free (US)
Paypal: 2% Uncapped
$10
Yes - Subject to 30% Tax
No
Yes
No
Yes
