Portland, OR - CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com) announced today the details of its distribution partnership with MP3.com. MP3.com has chosen independent music retailer CD Baby to facilitate the fulfillment and customer service backend for artists who wish to sell their already existing CDs from their MP3.com artist pages. MP3.com artists will be given the opportunity to place their music in CD Baby’s popular online store as well as have the CDs warehoused in the company’s Portland headquarters alongside the 11,500 independent titles that CD Baby currently distributes.  MP3.com will continue to aggressively promote and sell music from the 180,000 artists on MP3.com.

The arrangement will give MP3.com’s existing membership an opportunity to join the ranks of the 11,000 plus artists that already call CD Baby home.  At the launch of this new service, over 1,500 artists who are already affiliated with both organizations will have their official CDs automatically linked from their MP3.com page to their page within the CD Baby store.  CD Baby will handle all transactions, shipping and customer service for CDs purchased on CD Baby.

“Many artists were buzzing on the MP3.com message-boards, requesting the ability to sell their CDs from their MP3.com artist page. Since CD Baby is a popular outlet for independent artist CD sales, it was a heavily requested company for MP3.com to use,” said Derek Sivers, President and founder of CD Baby. Sivers, who founded CD Baby on $500 in 1997 and has run it profitably since added  “We are pleased to be able to offer our artists more income and exposure to an ever-increasing pool of independent artists and music fans.”

“We’re excited about our new partnership with CD Baby”, said Mike Matey, Vice President of Product Development at MP3.com. “It’s always ideal when we can provide our artists with a service they want and that also supports our business objectives”.     

CD Baby currently has an ever-increasing customer base selling over 4,000 CDs per week, one third of which are international orders.  CD Baby pays over $20,000 weekly to independent artists for CDs sold, and has paid out nearly  $1,000,000 to independent artists in its four-year history.

This announcement comes on the heels of several other high profile partnerships for CD Baby including similar arrangements with www.Garageband.com and IUMA. CD Baby has also formed partnerships with CD manufacturers DiscMakers and Oasis CD Duplication.
 

About CD Baby:

CD Baby is an online record store that provides CD sales and distribution to over 11,000 independent musicians. Founded in 1997 by Derek Sivers, as a means to sell his own CD, word-of-mouth has quietly made it the largest independent-only CD store, paying over $20,000 per week to its members and selling over 4000 CDs weekly.

CD Baby is a division of Hit Media Inc, a privately held company offering services to independent musicians, including Hostbaby web hosting for musicians, and the Agentbaby booking agency.
 

About MP3.com:

MP3.com, Inc. has created a unique and robust technology infrastructure designed to facilitate the storage, management, promotion and delivery of digital music. As the Internet's premier Music Service Provider (MSP), the company is dedicated to providing consumers with access to music when they want it, where they want it, using any web-enabled device. The company's web site hosts what MP3.com believes is the largest collection of digital music available on the Internet, with more than 1 million songs and audio files posted from over 180,000 digital artists and record labels. Dedicated to growing the digital music space, the company's products and services include on-demand Subscription Music Channels, an innovative Business Music Services program, a Syndicated Radio program and others. Additionally, through the company's MSP technology initiative and its music InterOperating System, MP3.com is partnering with a variety of forward-looking businesses to expand its digital music strategy. MP3.com and MP3 Technologies are trademarks of MP3.com, Inc. Other trademarks or service marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Universal (NYSE: V) and is based in San Diego, California. For more information on MP3.com, visit www.mp3.com.

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For more information please contact Susan Mainzer at Green Galactic at 323-466-5141 or susan@greengalactic.com.