Looks like that's it for their physical media side. End of an era: CD Baby stops distributing artists’ CDs, vinyl, and other goods Honestly haven't bought anything from them in a long time but back in the day they were a good source for obscure artists/works. -s1m0n-
They are a local company, located out near the PDX airport in a fancy office building. I'm not sure if that's also their warehouse. There are a lot of smaller artists that use their services, guess they are hosed on distribution services.
CD Baby closed down their download store back in March of 2020. I expected their distribution of physical media to close down sometime soon. And now it has. Their focus now is on giving independent artists a way to have their music get out to the various streaming services and have that all managed by someone other than the band.
What they will be doing is simply being another TuneCore, DistroKid, etc. which is help distribute independent music to digital service providers and nothing else.
Derek is a good guy. I met him before he sold CD Baby. On a related note, I sat next to a guy on th eNYC commuter train one day years ago who was a friend of Derek's and claimed that his CD was the very first CD Baby order...that Derek took to the post office in the basket of his bike.
The main reason, IMHO, for the decline of CDBaby was a failure to update their product and compete with Bandcamp. The consumer-facing site (which was shut down awhile ago) was far behind the times and few updates were made over the years to reflect changes in the market. The whole thing was entirely predictable.
When they went to CD-R’s vs. continuing to use manufactured CDs it when they lost me. The CD-R’s also had no booklets.
I thought the CD vs. CD-R thing was up to the individual artist? Obviously the minimums for a glass mastered CD would be higher, as they are with most plants.
But Bandcamp doesn't handle the stocking and shipping of physical media like CDBaby did. Going with Bandcamp means having the band or some other service stock and ship the CDs and LPs in a timely manner. If the band goes on vacation or is on a long tour they won't be available at home to ship orders. I can see how a band or lone label would choose to have CDBaby handle all that instead of doing it themselves. And now what service is there for a band to have someone else handle the stocking and shipping of physical media and physical goods?
They would have to sign a deal with a record label or quit selling physical products, period. BTW, The Orchard and Thirty Tigers deal with established independent record labels. Smithsonian Folkways does accept orders through Bandcamp as well as their website and other retailers.
