CD Baby Sold to Disc Makers

CD Baby, the country’s biggest seller of independent music, has been sold. Early last month, Disc Makers, the country’s largest CD manufacturing company for indie artists, purchased the popular CD and digital music seller in a deal that was orchestrated after a seven-year business partnership between the two companies.

News of the sale caused trepidation in the independent music community with some fearing that CD Baby’s decade-long support of indie bands could change under new management. The company’s founder, Derek Sivers [pictured here], has stated that CD Baby will continue to offer all the same services even after the sale. “The CD Baby staff, location, name, and everything else will stay the same, but I think you’ll start to notice more attention given to improvements that help you sell more music,” he wrote. According to Sivers’ blog, the deal has been in the works for some time and he hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of CD Baby for almost a year.

At the time of the sale, CD Baby worked with over 240,000 indie artists and its website received over 100,000 hits daily. The company also managed over two million digitalized tracks, making it by far the largest provider of independent music to digital sites like iTunes, Amazon MP3, Napster and Rhapsody. Disc Makers said they are proud to be involved with a company that has paid indie artists over $81 million dollars in the past decade and are confident that by incorporating their CD

manufacturing and web hosting abilities, CD Baby will be even more beneficial to the bands they work with. A press release issued by Disc Makers said that CD Baby will remain its own company and Sivers will continue to work there as a consultant. Sivers said Disc Makers was his first choice to take over the company and with their help it could finally reach its full potential. “Their operational expertise is just what little CD Baby needed to grow up,” he said.

www.cdbaby.com