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Friday, September 25, 2009

Luc Sez: "Time to Pony Up!"

I love this guy! He has a good way with words.

Do I sense the pressure's on (CD Baby) in the blogosphere?

CDBaby@Wikipedia

This updated entry at Wikipedia has good info about the technical side of the relaunch . . .

Moses Muses on State of CD Baby

Check out this piece from Sept 2008 for musings on Derek's sale to Discmakers and his relations with Tony van Veen. . .

Luc weighs in on CD Baby's mess

Check it out. . .

Pony's Back?!

But what does it mean? I think he's obviously a loyal CD Baby employee who, even if the executive suite doesn't have a clue, is still committed to the "core values" of the old CD Baby which he referred to here a couple months back. His may be a voice in the wilderness, however.

That Pony is meeting with the bigshots at Discmakers is perhaps encouraging--possibly the dupe giant crunched some numbers and noticed "consequences" to its bottom line? After all, one of the recently unveiled "new" services since the bungled launch is an instant duplication service. Certainly I would be hesitant to use anything associated with the new Baby until we can see where the chips fall. So with CD sales absolutely flat since Derek sold out ("bought in"?) in 2008, who would want to stock the Portland warehouse with more?

It's very difficult in this era to remain uncynical about the bigger fish in the capitalist pond. Maybe I'm better off investing in shares of Corinthian Capital because I sense that CD Baby eventually will turn around and start making big bucks again--by screwing its massive artist base!

So until we see results of the kind Pony has urged us to continue waiting for, realistically I don't feel all that encouraged.

Eight weeks ago I dropped a comment at cdbaby.org pointing out that for a technophobe like me, it was a helluva lot easier to build this blog than it was to navigate around the "improved" CD Baby website. I appealed to executives to hire someone to read Jeff Jarvis's book What Would Google Do? (check out his blog BuzzMachine.Com, linked here under "other resources"). Or, failing that, call Google and ask them to send an EMT unit to Portland immediately!

I still feel the same way because this new website is so unfriendly and unnavigable as to be virtually useless to me. CD Baby needs to take some lessons from Google. And I think heads need to roll as well. Whether it's a totally new management team or a new tech team supervised by consultants from Google, how 'bout hiring some new faces upstairs and show us that you're serious about relaunching this awful relaunch?

Friday, September 18, 2009

Felsen: Hits Counter Returns!

Check out yesterday's update. Don't know about you, but I can't get excited about "Hits Counter Returns!" Why did they have to drop it in the first place?

It's all too typical of these Web 2.0 "renovations." Ditch perfectly good features, then claim that you're giving us a new and "improved" version. Arrgghhhhhh. . . .

Please stop doing things that way!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Moses Article Analyzed by Luc

Here's the original piece that Luc analyzed. . .

Friday, September 11, 2009

Brian Felsen's Latest

Here's yesterday's update from CD Baby's president. For the record, he says he's still sorry about everything. . .For the record, so am I!

New Links to the Competition

Check out WaTunes and TarniusMusic, both of which I've finally linked at "the competition" on the lower left. Also check out The Indie Show.Com.

As always, this blog doesn't endorse any companies but accepts all reviews from readers. . .

More on "this Moses fellah"

This is Luc's thought-provoking analysis of a recent Moses article. . .

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Moses Avalon Comments

Derek Sivers has requested that I disable the link to the 2003 Moses Avalon article, and I have reluctantly agreed to do so.

Before I explain why, I'd like to offer a little about my own background and my reasons for starting this blog. Although I have nearly 30 years behind me as a professional musician, these days I consider myself to be more of a semi-retired indie performer who is currently much more involved in music education. I have been a CD Baby artist since 2004 with just a couple discs on its pages, but have had only modest sales there, and until July 2009 I've had only the most tangential interest in CD Baby and its connection to the rapidly changing music industry. All I've really known is that CD Baby was a great company, and I was proud to be on its roster.

So I come to this debate with a remarkable amount of ignorance. I have spent many hours the past five or so years reading current books about e-commerce, the internet, and the music industry, but have to admit to still being pretty much stuck back in the last century. Although I hate to admit it, I don't own a computer, and I don't have easy access to the internet, but even if I did, I don't really have the time to do thorough internet research about the many issues that pop up in the course of this, or any other, internet debate.

So when an anonymous reader of this blog provides a link to an article, my tendency is to link to it first and foremost because I know that even if I'm the most ignorant person out there,I can be sure that there are others who may be just as ignorant, and who would be interested in any information that comes up.

I want to note, too, that my research on an item is necessarily a kind of playing catch-up: I can do so only when I can get access to a borrowed computer, or one at the library or at a cybercafe.

Accordingly, I have done some belated research on the Josh Melville/Moses Avalon vs Derek Sivers internet spat. And I came to the conclusion that any reasonable person could read about both sides of that debate (which was about CD Baby's deal with Apple iTunes) and come to their own conclusions--as many people did on several threads that I found over many internet forums. This is why I was reluctant to de-link to the Avalon piece. The reason I did so is because one of my anonymous posters provided what I felt was an apropos quote from the piece plus its url. For those, like me, who wish to read entire piece, I refer you to the first July thread in this blog and the recent comment by the poster.

I have zero interest in internet catfights, and I don't consider myself to be an internet "journalist," muckraking or otherwise. But the reason I started this blog is partly because of my own ignorance about the current state of the indie music industry. Although Derek may be right when he says the Avalon piece has nothing to do with the disastrous CD Baby relaunch, I believe that anything from the historical record may be germane to the discussion. For people who are worried that the new CD Baby is going the way of MP3.com, and for those like me who are only now learning about what's been happening the past half dozen years, the Avalon piece is highly relevant. Again, reasonable people can make their own judgements. And some people might not kneejerk react: "Avalon--scumbag! Derek--God!" Reasonable people know that Derek's not a god and Melville/Avalon probably isn't a total scumbag either.

I started this blog only because I saw a need for a central clearing house of sorts for information. Several posters to this blog have posted bits and pieces of info, and it seems that most of them have done their homework. For that I am grateful because my homework is necessarily tardy.

But I don't detect, in the few readers/posters of this blog, much sign of ax-grinding or internet sniping. So I will continue to post anything people here provide, including Derek's rebuttal to "Avalon", if it ever comes.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Unpaid Artists at Sound Exchange

I've changed the link above so you can go direct to the "unpaid artists" page.

Better Late Than Never!

Brian has just released what he calls a "weekly update" over at CDBaby.Org.

Never mind that the last "weekly update" was a fortnight ago! Better late than never, I guess.

Maybe we should thank him for finally starting a new thread. ("Thank you, Brian!") At 800 plus posts of the usual "Help me with my emergency, Cd Baby" and "Email us at help@cdbaby.com and we'll get to work on it right away, we love you", the last one was getting a wee bit long, wasn't it?

Anybody wanna bet on when's the next one? Vote in the poll to the left. . .

Forum at Sivers.Org

Also, lately there's been much comment at one of the threads on Sivers.Org, linked above.

This is especially interesting if you've been wondering what little Derek has had to say about the current CD Baby tragedy.

"CD Baby is Dead!"

More CD Baby discussion at LiveJournal.Com above.

Click it & weep. . .

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

CD Baby Artists & the War on Terror

Click the link and check out one of the many subsidiaries of CD Baby's creepy owner, Corinthian Capital.

CD Baby artists support the global war on terror! Yea!

Post your comments here . . .

Followers