Originally Posted by Jody Whitesides

I'd like to point out that CD Baby does not require physical product either. So the differences now are that CD Baby's cost is $35 one time setup fee, that can include physical product.


You're only half-right. CD Baby does charge a one-time $35 setup. However, its per CD. So for example, for me to sell 5 CDs on iTunes (and get physical distribution as an added bonus), I would have to pay $175 vs $20 using WaTunes.com. Again the greatest advantage I would say with CD Baby is their physical distribution. Which our customers do use in conjunction with our digital distribution program.


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The Artist/Label gets 91% of the net of the sale or stream (not up to, they get it). How can Wa-Tunes promise 90% of the sale when Apple takes 30% off the top, a little misleading isn't it?


Not necessarily. For you to conjunction something like that is for me to say that CD Baby also misleads their 91% of their sales. Because thick-n-thin, iTunes also deducts 30% of their annuals just like they do with any other distributor. Like CD Baby with their 91%, WaTunes promises 90% of the net sales from the music store services.

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As for paying for the UPC - there may a legal reason for that. The smart artist would get their own UPC setup - it's a costly one time fee, but that allows them track where sales went thru with their own name with the UPC - That includes physical and digital. Don't forget the need for ISRC numbers - again the smart artist would sign up with the RIAA and get their own - that's free to do.


This is why I love working with CD Baby customers. Because once they have their unique UPC prefix, they don't need to buy another UPC just to use for their upcoming album. With our current UPC generation tool, anyone can generate any valid UPC code using their own unique prefixes setup by places like CD Baby, GS1, and the RIAA.

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As for speed of CD Baby's delivery, it happens once a week to any given service. From there it is in the hands of the service itself to get it up in a timely fashion. Thus why CD Baby will say give them 2 to 6 weeks.


That's plays well good and bad. It's good because if gives the CD Baby customers assurance of fast delivery. However, the majority of indie artists wants to see their content on iTunes faster than any other music store service, and to say a minimum of 2 weeks could be quite misleading. Which is why we say 4-6 weeks, because initially it does take iTunes roughly 30 days to make the content available at their store.




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