| CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast |
 Nov. 13,
2008
Ep.38 : Pandora Radio
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| An open letter to CD Baby artists from Tony van Veen |
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By now you’ve probably heard or read that the Baby has a new
papa. In case you haven’t, it was announced on Monday 8/4/08
that Audio & Video Labs, Inc, parent company of Disc Makers, is
the new owner of CD Baby. Music blogs and forums are aflutter
with buzz about what this means for CD Baby.
First, a bit of history. Being the new owner of CD Baby has been
a dream of mine for quite a few years. I’ve always felt that if I
could work anywhere else but Disc Makers, it would be CD Baby.
Derek and I have been friends for about 8 years, and have a
huge degree of mutual respect for each other. Every few months
we’d have hour-long conversations about business, and about
the state of independent music. For a few years now I’ve been
whispering in his ear that if he ever got to the point where he
wanted to exit, I was interested in stepping in and continuing to
drive CD Baby forward. Early this year he reached that point, and
we started discussions in earnest.
Derek could have sold his business to a number of other suitors,
all of them more corporate than Disc Makers. He could have
gotten a sum substantially greater than he did. The reason he
chose Disc Makers is because our interests are 100% aligned:
both CD Baby and Disc Makers make their living by serving
independent artists. We will not make any business decisions
that screw the artist. That was important to him, to ensure the
continued integrity of what CD Baby is about, and is something
to be respected. Many others would have shaken hands with the
highest bidder and walked away.
Derek is a larger than life figure in independent music circles.
His talks at music conferences are the stuff of legend, and he’s
always swamped by excited artists with stories of how CD Baby
helped them make more money from their music than they could
have imagined. I know I have big shoes to fill. In fact they’re
unfillable. I’m not going to try to be Derek. I’m going to be Tony.
(Please, enough already with the Mr. van Veen stuff on some of
the posts. My dad is Mr. van Veen, I’m Tony.) Let me give you a
bit of history about myself, so you know what drives me.
I like long walks on the beach in the sunset… j/k
But speaking about the beach, I grew up on the tiny Caribbean
island of Aruba, and came to Philadelphia to attend college in
1983. While in college I began playing drums in some hardcore
punk bands, and really bought into the old hardcore DIY ethos:
write your own damn songs, book your own damn tour, release
your own damn record. And that’s what I did. Wrote songs (bad
ones, mostly), gigged, and released a few 7” singles and an
album.
After college I wanted to work in the record biz, but I needed to
pay the rent, so I couldn’t afford to intern for no pay at some
record label. I found Disc Makers, and – long story short – over
the past 21 years I’ve worked side by side with Morris Ballen,
whose father started the business, to grow Disc Makers from a
small regional vinyl factory to the largest CD and DVD
manufacturer for independents, with 500 employees and offices
in 10 cities around the country.
How did we get this big? By focusing on building a great team,
and always remembering that we’re here to help the customer.
Our job, as we say at DM, is to make the little guy look big – to
allow today’s artist to “stick it to the man,” so to speak. We’ve
done it by delivering a great quality product, fast turn times, and
the friendliest customer service in the business. Clearly, that
formula has worked pretty well for us.
Overseeing a brand as strong as CD Baby comes with
responsibilities – to the team here, and to the clients (that would
be you). The full team at CD Baby continues to be in place. I’ve
been in Portland all week, meeting with every person in every
department to pick their brains about changes and
improvements they want to make to the services CD Baby offers.
So far we have hundreds of suggestions – most of them
fantastic. It’s a great way to get us started on this new phase of
the journey. We won’t be able to execute them all tomorrow, but
over the next year or so we hope to make many small and not so
small improvements to how CD Baby works for you.
The team at CD Baby has been delivering to you. They will
continue to do so. I’ve made a public pledge that the core values
that drive CD Baby will continue to do so (see
http://www.cdbaby.org/stories/08/08/07/6923442.html) I’m
excited about the opportunities ahead, and look forward to
sharing the journey with you.
Sincerely,
Tony van Veen
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Here here, well stated Mr... I mean Tony :)
Thanks for the head's up. Onward to victory!
Colie Brice
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My greatest fear is that a "corporate" buyer will come along and buy out CDBaby like other companies in the past, pushing out the indie/home artist who simply needs an outlet for their creativity, and the work CDBaby puts into their company has never been surpased in my view - not for the trivial amount it costs to list a CD...Including digital, itunes, napster, etc. CDBaby is an indie/music hobbyists dream. May it always remain that way.
peace and de colores
Phloide
http://cdbaby.com/group/phloidesroom
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Cheers, Tony! It's lovely to hear your words.
A client of mine and I were discussing this last night, both hoping for the best and naturally feeling anxious that CDBaby might be at risk. I feel quite comforted to read your letter. Here's to a bright future for you, CDBaby, and all us independents out there. :)
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We all knew Derek wouldn't sell to just anyone. He's always got our backs! Wish he kept his Derek's corner up on the site though. Maybe you'll start one Tony? Maybe Derek can come in from time to time as a guest speaker, "The God Father" or something?
Anyways, Welcome Tony. Don't mind us all for being scared. It's human nature. Your letter was well written but only time will prove you worthy our new friend! I for one, am looking forward to the new future with you helping us along on your new BABY!
It's been ignored and it's a shame. Please except our apologies..... CONGRAT'S ON YOUR NEW BABY! "Do what you do best" ----- wasn't that a quote from Derek LOL?
dang. too excited I guess. Can't even lay a few links down properly. LOL
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kellypettit
http://www.myspace.com/kellypettit
http://www.kellypettit.com
http://www.meermusic.com/kellypettit
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My fellow CD Baby associates, affiliates and ect. ect.
Let us give Tony a chance... Derek wouldnt have sold us out, Tony isnt gonna ruin us and I aint gonna stop making music or waste time worrying over a new owner.
It might be like that "Who" song... "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss."
Heck... he might even be better!
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Now that Disc Makers owns CD Baby does that also mean if we have a digital distribution deal with CD Baby we would be able to also have a in-store deal? Meaning that we could get Disc Makers for those who only have digital CD's selling on CD Baby pressed and released via Disc Makers would supply the pressing capabilities for CD Baby customers at a reasonable rate?
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Ah... a really good question! Things are still a bit new and fresh
with all of the CD Baby crew working with DiscMakers and nothing
has been announced yet. But Tony will make sure everyone in the
world knows about all the little perfections to come now that CD
Baby and DiscMakers are in cahoots!
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I can't wait to see what cool things are going to happen at cdbaby. I've already read some really good suggestions and I am sure there are more things being hatched right now, maybe it'll give cdbaby that push again.
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We're definitely looking to give it an extra push ... or a bunch of pushes. Stay tuned...
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Congrats and welcome Tony!
The future awaits us all. I believe in you and sincerily think you will do a great job with your new baby!
Punk band back in the day huh? COOL!
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Thank you sir. Look forward to working with you!
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hi tony !ever been to sarasota florida? got a pic?
is steve jobs still involved. im probly steves biggest fan.
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Never been to Sarasota (but it sounds lovely.)
Here's a few pix: http://www.discmakers.com/community/resources/pse/2007/tvv.asp This is from an interview I did 18 months ago with Disc Makers' Pro Studio Edition newsletter.
And as far as I know, Steve Jobs was never involved with CD Baby (though he invited Derek to participate in iTunes as one of the original aggregators).
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| by
on Friday August 15 2008 @ 01:55PM PDT [ reply | parent ] |
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Greetings Tony,
Welcome to our little corner of the musicical universe. I had a great run with Derek for
over 10 years at CDbaby. I have a great deal
of respect and admiration for Derek. I hope you
too will earn the same from all of us here at CDbaby. Many Cdbaby artists fear changes that could adversely effect their business. That said,
I know that if CDbaby continues to follow Derek's " Good To Great " formula, we will grow and prosper even beyond Tony van Veen's tenure.
It is a wonderful thing to hear that CDbaby employees are being retained. I hope you will have an open door policy. I would love to see a page dedicated to and about Tony on CDbaby.net Great communication is a big pet pieve of mine.
Welcome & Congrats Tony.
Peace,
J.T.
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Welcome aboard and kick ass !
www.myspace.com/dougcashrock
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Wow! Good news for all, I guess. We'll miss Derek, and why wouldn't we? So, hello, Tony - glad to know you're on our team. Let's keep our winning steak going. I like your DIY experience - many of us have that in common with you. That said, we indies have learned that together we can build greater things.
and for those who miss "Derek's Corner" - he hasn't disappeared - he has tons of cool stuff at his website. (And he's moving on to another level of good stuff - keep in touch with him!)
Peace & Harmony!
Michael Scott Smith (The Band of Brothers)
http://www.thebandofbrothers.net
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HI Tony,Glad to meet you also ,and to have you working with us cdbaby artists.Thanks for responding to my comment about Cover songs,and you saying that licens adminastration service is around the corner.I believe that it will be one of the best things to happen for cdbaby artists.
Wishing you all the best!
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Uhh....what about the website. Hasn't been working for a while, and it is hard for people to buy CDs when they can't get to the web site.
Not to mention that the members area is suddenly wrought with database errors.
Nothing against you or Discmakers, Tony, but this isn't a great way to start off. :)
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CD Baby is an ecommerce site. If the site is down we make no sales, which mean artists make no sales. That's unacceptable to me.
We're in the process of upgrading some of our servers and connectivity, and moving them to a secure colocation facility. This will happen over the next several weeks. The end result will be a more stable site, but while we do the move there may be some brief outages (hopefully minimal).
I'm not happy about that, but we've inherited some infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. We're doing so, but it can't be done overnight.
Bear with us. We'll make things right.
Tony
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as a programmer, I understand the frustration and the sometime "lack of speed" in which it takes to upgrade. I know I, as many others, will be patient if we must to make this a greater tool for indie artists. We know CDBaby has the independant artist as its heart, and know that any glitches that come our way are works in progress to make this a better site for indie artists, and not some corporate screw.
I am glad to hear of the talk about Mech Lic, since I (as many others) am interested in doing covers, but have NO idea about the legal/financial specs...
peace to you
De Colores
Phloide
http://cdbaby.com/group/phloidesroom
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Welcome to CD Baby Tony!
I've been a customer of Discmakers for some years now and I've
always been very satisfied with their customer service, quality of
products, and overall efficient performance!
I've been selling my music at CD Baby for a few years now and
CD Baby is by far the BEST retailer for indie artists. Everyone at
the company is so cool and considerate when it comes to artists'
needs.
So I think Tony coming to CD Baby is the best possible scenario
we could have! Of course, I'll miss Derek and his funny e-mails.
But I think this will be a wonderful new partnership!
Let's sell some music folks!!!
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| by ed
on Tuesday September 02 2008 @ 04:31AM PDT [ reply | parent ] |
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Hi, new papa. Can you tell us children why the site has been down all weekend? Thanks.
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The site was down for a few hours this weekend so that we could move the servers for CD Baby and HostBaby to a secure offsite colocation facility. We chose labor day as the weekend to do this because we figured most folks would be at the beach, visiting family, barbecuing, or too drunk to click a mouse.
The old server room was hot and somewhat inadequate. Now we have shiny new digs for our servers, and they're much happier in a cooler, earthquake-proof (well, to an extent) facility with a redundant power supply. You may not notice much difference right now, but the increased stability is good for CD Baby and HostBaby artists. Look for other improvements as well in the future.
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Has this moving process also interupted accounting? I have seen no change in any of my numbers for at least the past couple of weeks. Granted, I don't sell a whole lot--I'd like to sell more, but this period of inactivity seemed odd looking back over the months and years.
Thanks.
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Not that I'm aware of. Artist payments were held up for about a week at the start of August as we switched bank accounts (for many reasons, bank rules didn't allow us take over the prior CD Baby bank accounts). However, artist payments have been going out weekly again, and your account statements should be up to date.
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Same here. Accounting numbers have not changed in several weeks. Was wondering what had happened?
-Dave
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As an affiliate with sending lots of buyers to CD Baby every month again I haven't noticed any changes to the numbers on my affiliate account anymore since August 8th. It seems to be the same problem like Jim is talking about... Will everything work normal again soon?
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Hello Everyone, There is a conversation on the digital distribution thread about the same topic, digital reporting and
sales. heres the link.
http://cdbaby.org/stories/08/08/18/5480814.html
Read the post from Joel@CDBaby.com discussing the upgrade
of the digital system which is delaying digital sales and reports.
There is also a post from Warren the programmer for the digital
system upgrade with a more detailed explanation.
Today, we noticed the first update to our digital sales since July
27th. Not a complete report, but hang in there as it looks like
the new system will be up soon.
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Hope to see some 'forward motion' and great ideas with the takeover, Tony. CD Baby has gotten a 'bit' stale over the last few years.
I'm liking what I see so far....
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| NOTE: If you need a reply you should email CD Baby directly instead of posting here. We don't often read old message board postings, and have no way of replying to them!
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