Rachel's Rambles

My letter to CD Baby today

Hello Good Folks at CD Baby,

I have been a very happy client for years.

Derek and the crew he kept have always been wonderful about keeping the ship running smoothly.

But suddenly I am having problems. I have several issues that need helping:

1) The new cd I sent you (Live: In The Woods) - I haven’t heard from anyone about that in several weeks - when will it go up on the site for sale?

2) Most importantly: My sales have very suddenly totally plummeted. I finally went to cdbaby to see if I could figure out why. That’s when I discovered the new site, which looks great. But when I search my name, one of my cds comes up as the 9th result, behind cds I’m not even on. Then, where I used to appear on the first page of results for top-seller in a few genres, now I don’t show up at all. And, where I used to come up on the first page of results for my “sounds like”s, now I don’t. That all translates into lost revenue for me. I have regularly made $500 a month or more from CD Baby and so far I have zero sales for July. That is half of my rent, and as a full-time artist, my CD Baby income is critical and I rely on it.

3) I only discovered the new Cd Baby dot net accidentally. I never got a notice from you that I now had a bunch of stuff that needed completing (ie the new artist page).

4) And I have been trying to update my new artist page, but it often doesn’t save changes, times-out very quickly, and I have yet to be able to upload a picture. Yes, I’ve tried various dpis and sizes and crops - nothing works so far.

5) Lastly, to the folks who bought cd baby and the folks who are making decisions about its operation: You are trying to improve something that didn’t need much improvement. Unfortunately, your changes interfere with my income, and the incomes of other artists. I would really like you to take that into consideration and, if you wish to uphold the business model Derek set forth, that of being a service FOR artists, you need to stop what you are doing and reassess your direction. What made CD Baby such a unique success in the first place was that its mission statement was about the ARTIST. You change that, and you will see CD Baby turn into just another online store and you’ll lose your artist loyalty and your customer loyalty (I make almost all my cd purchases through CD Baby!), and at that point CD Baby loses its market share. And everyone loses then. We all do.

Sincerely,
Rachel Harrington