Rich Fiscus
12 Feb 2009 11:26
With CD sales in a freefall over the last several years there has been no end to speculation about the cause. Fingers have been pointed at the portable music player market, iTunes, P2P file sharing, and a general apathy toward the format by younger music fans. An interesting announcement from Tony van Veen of Disc Makers, the corporate parent of CD Baby, may shed some light on the issue. That's because his company apparently saw an increase in CD sales last year.
CD Baby distributes music for independent artists. They're not a label. They charge a small fee to setup an initial page for each CD they sell, and also offer optional online distribution through their own download store as well as iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and Amazon MP3. They even have a CD duplication service artists can use.
Somehow with this barebones approach to marketing and distribution they managed a 2% year over year CD sales increase in 2008. By comparison, the CD market as a whole shrank by 20%.
There are many possible explanations for this. It may be the result of increased interest in independent artists, or perhaps a reflection of musicians who are recognizing the reality that you can record, duplicate, promote, and distribute albums without a label's resources behind you.
Whatever the reason, it appears that the people running CD Baby know something the labels don't or do something the labels can't. Or maybe both.