| CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast |
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| Verizon and CD Baby Digital Distribution |
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We recently completed a deal with Verizon to include the CD Baby digital catalog on their new V-Cast download service. This means Verizon V-Cast subscribers will be able to purchase full protected copies of your songs from their handsets. You can read the press release below:
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VERIZON WIRELESS AND CD BABY TEAM UP TO DELIVER INDEPENDENT MUSIC TO VERIZON WIRELESS’ V CAST MUSIC SERVICE
AUSTIN TX, BEDMINSTER, NJ, and PORTLAND, OR – From SXSW (South by Southwest) today, Verizon Wireless, operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, and CD Baby, one of the largest distributors of digital music, announced they will offer a wide array of indie music from CD Baby on Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music service. The agreement solidifies the position of Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music as a leader in mobile indie music with the deepest independent music catalog available for download on mobile phones. The V CAST Music catalog features both independent and major label artists in one convenient locale. CD Baby’s music catalog is available today to V CAST Music customers.
V CAST Music opens up an entirely new way for Americans to get, manage and listen to their music by bringing together over-the-air full-music downloads with the ability to move music from a digital music collection to the mobile phone. With more than 200 million wireless devices in use in the U.S. today, music is a natural on the prevalent mobile device – the wireless phone.
“We are extremely pleased to help Verizon make history by providing the deepest and most extensive catalog of downloadable music to U.S. mobile phone users,” says CD Baby’s head of digital distribution, Gray Gannaway. “This is a groundbreaking development for both the independent music community and wireless phone users – never before has so much independent music been made so easily accessible to this many users.”
John Harrobin, vice president of marketing for Verizon Wireless, said, “V CAST Music has made the ability to obtain music easier than ever – especially when you consider the wide array of indie music V CAST now offers. Customers don’t need to plan a trip to a record store or sit in front of their computers to preview and purchase music they want immediately; with the addition of CD Baby artists we are able to further expand the selection of indie music our customers crave.”
Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music, which runs on Verizon Wireless’ award-winning wireless broadband network, is one of the world’s most comprehensive mobile music services. V CAST Music is one of the few full-function mobile music services that lets customers download music over-the-air, onto their Windows® XP PCs, and transfer their own digital music from their PCs to their phones.
For music lovers who want immediate gratification, song purchases made from a V CAST Music-capable handset cost $1.99 for a copy sent immediately to the phone and a second sent to the customer’s V CAST Music online account for download to a Windows XP PC using Windows Media Player 10. Songs purchased from the PC cost $0.99 and may be transferred to the customer’s V CAST Music phone via USB cable. Customers can also purchase entire albums from the Verizon Wireless V CAST Music Store via their Windows XP PCs; prices vary by album.
For over-the-air downloads, customers need a V CAST Music-enabled phone and a subscription to the V CAST VPak added to their Verizon Wireless calling plan, which is $15.00 monthly access. Customers interested in managing their music from their PCs need Windows Media Player 10; a free download of the player is available online in the V CAST Music store.
Customers can visit the V CAST Music store online at www.verizonwireless.com/music for more information. V CAST Music is available through Verizon Wireless’ 2,000 Communications Stores and Circuit City locations and online at www.verizonwireless.com.
# # #
About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless owns and operates the nation’s most reliable wireless network, serving 51.3 million voice and data customers. Headquartered in Bedminster, NJ, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). Find more information on the Web at www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.
About CD Baby
CD Baby provides independent artists an outlet to sell their music online, and handles digital distribution. Founder and musician Derek Sivers was selling his own CD online in 1997, and he eventually asked a few friends if they’d like to sell their CDs there, too. Friends told friends and now over 125,000 artists sell their music through CD Baby. CD Baby has sold over two million CDs to customers worldwide, and paid over $25 million dollars to musicians. CD Baby’s Digital Distribution program has deals with all major digital outlets such as Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music, Apple iTunes, MSN Music, Rhapsody, Napster, and Sony Connect, making CD Baby one of the leaders in the aggregation of digital content. For more information visit www.cdbaby.com.
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| by da
on Wednesday March 22 2006 @ 07:03AM PST [ reply | parent ] |
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good going Gray, I was really hoping for this.
I hope you guys are having fun
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| by da
on Wednesday March 22 2006 @ 07:08AM PST [ reply | parent ] |
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have any CDBaby artists actually been delivered to V Cast yet? if not, when will that start?
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Yes. Lots. Most.
They can only take G-rated albums, so we had to exclude many for now. (Anything with any foul language anywhere in it, or even HINTING at anything that anyone on earth might be offended at.)
Eventually they'll be able to take it all, I think. But for now we had to start with only our most-safe albums.
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We have 1 release via cd baby there AZIEL- TAKE YOU AWAY
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Great job Derek cdbaby stall .this is so cool. I tip my hat to you all. Hard for me to put in words at times with all you people are doing for all of us. Thank You So Much!!!! walter goulet
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sorry about my spelling that was cdbaby staff
guess I,am overly excited walter goulet
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Just out of curiousity, how are you determining what is G-rated? Surely you don't go through all your albums and listen to all the lyrics. There must be some other method...
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Yes, unfortunately, we had to. It's been thousands of hours of work.
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Derek:
I just listened to a podcast in which Podzinger was featured. The company has developed a search engine for words on video and audio. Might save you thousands of hours of listening.
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(a computer could help us exclude ones that had "bad words" in their titles, of course. that helped. but the rest was by hand.)
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It's done already so my point is moot, but the technology searched for words in the audio stream, not the title.
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Another question: Would Verizon already have shown up in our Digital Distribution list of companies if our music had made the cut?
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Not necessarily : we're still sending them lots of albums every day.
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p.s. to everyone : you might have noticed that the amount of new deliveries to companies have sucked, lately.
this is why.
we couldn't say so earlier, but the last two months have been round-the-clock Verizon encoding. we had to buy 40 new top-of-the-line computers (to add to our existing 85 computers) just to get everything encoded to their specs and delivered on time.
it's been very all-encompassing.
now that it's almost done, regular deliveries will resume.
sorry for the delay.
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I would have guessed Verizon would have taken the same format (WMA) as MSN?
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WMA, yes. But there are at least 12 different kinds of WMA so far:
WMA9PRO -a_setting 64_44_2_16
WMA9-160kbps
WMA9-128kbps
WMA9-20kbps-mono
WMA9-32kbps
WMA9-96kbps
WMA9-192kbps
WMA9-MBR-64_32_20kbps
WMA9-160kbps-VBR
30sec-WMA32
30sec-WMA-MBR-64_32
WMA9PRO -a_setting 64_44_2_16
For each one we need to tell our 40 encoding boxes to re-encode all 900,000 songs from the original WAV files
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I see...hopefully future music services will be able use the encoded files you already have! :-)
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I did notice that my latest CD has only gone to one place since
October, but I figured you had your reasons...usually very good
ones in our interest, so thanks!
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I noticed on my Digital list that I have been sent to verizon, but when I look it up on the Verizon website, I am not listed. ???
My music is typical sexual music, but nothing over the top with foul language, in fact, there is NO foul language in my music. Dont let the titles fool you.
So I am curious to know if my album is in fact on the Verizon list or on hold. Kinda confused here, can someone fill me in?
Thanks
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>> when I look it up on the Verizon website
Nobody is there yet. We are still in the delivery process.
This was just Verizon's initial press release of things to come. Nothing is up-and-selling yet. Of course when there's something specific to tell everyone, I'll let you know.
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| by
on Monday March 27 2006 @ 01:00PM PST [ reply | parent ] |
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Just wondering if all deliveries are in some sort of alphabetical order. (yeah I'm some where near the end of the alphabet and sometimes think that it is why some deliveries seem to take longer - I did get delivered to Verizon today)
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No. There was one small point in history where things were done alphabetically but that was stopped immediately.
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| by
on Tuesday March 28 2006 @ 12:06PM PST [ reply | parent ] |
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Will we be notified if our music was excluded, or does the notification on the Digital Distribution page mean that it was accepted? (Nothing radically offensive: "ass" in one song and a couple of songs generally about sex, but nothing overt.)
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If the digital distribution page says it was delivered, it was accepted. I guess we could someday show which albums we had to skip and why, but that would take a while to build.
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can we preformat our music files for this? we've been setting up Smart Music series, for smartphones..and can tailor it to this spec, if we can find it.
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nope. we have to do all encoding in-house. if we let others do their own encoding, then we'd have to set up an entire VERIFICATION process for every already-encoded file someone sent us, and that would be awful.
so, no. sorry.
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is the verizon encoding almost done? I'm submitting another project for iTunes and can imagine the backlog...it may take and eternity to get delivered?
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It's all done, and deliveries are back on schedule and kicking ass again. The backlog wasn't bad.
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I have 2 CD's at CDBaby and 1 was delivered to Verizon but the other was not. None of my material is "questionable" or "overtly sexual" or "suggestive" or any of that. Pretty G-Rated rock stuff. Was the entire catalog considered?
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I was wondering why there seemed to be no progress with the digital distro. side of things. I guess if I read the boards a little better I'll stay on top of these issues. Congrats on the Verizon deal that's huge...Since I'm a non-G-Rated player & can't get on verizon initially, here's hoping I'll see some listings for the other Digi. Distro's soon. Here's to your tireless efforts...Cheers
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Hey D:
Just curious ... there is no pay listing for the mobile company's on your site. You list how much each digital download company charges and their fees ... can you please do the same for the mobile company's?
Thanks
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If the album is g-rated, will Verizon be picky as to genre?
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so... if are music is gettig uploaded to Verizon .. cool.. does this mean that if I make a CD full of ringtones in like aiff or mp3 format that then you gusy format them to the wma and folks can download them as ringtones> or is that somethign different? I get the fact the I'll still have to pay the $35 to cdbaby, but wondering if it owud be worth it? hmm..
regards
BArb
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er.. to clarify.. I meant it's worth it to pay cdbaby the $35. But I am triyng to figureout how to go about getting a sense of how well froingtones from an indie artist with no marketing dollars woud sell and if I ought to go this route. would love to try it but short on cash right now...so.. fvrom m y experience to not let lack of money stand in my way of building an growing. I think i will try it unless there is some thing technically that derek thinks wouldnot work out here or legally with the verizon deal not accpeting short "songs"?
regards
BArb
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| by
on Wednesday May 24 2006 @ 02:58PM PDT [ reply | parent ] |
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Wow!
Thanks again CD BAby!! Love what you are doing for all us little people!!!
just have one question... Can someone post a link to the actually payout for EACH digital distrobution co. - I have just recieved my 1st payout for songs downloaded off of music net and was suprised at the low pay out - there were 3-4 downloads but I was only payed $.09? is this correct? I was expecting $.40-$.60 per song. I did notice the $.01 per listen (without purchase) is this what I am being payed for?
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There are a ton of posts on here about $0.01 - $0.02 payments. Those are not downloads. Those are streams. Just someone listening.
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Its been a few months now since I posted on this forum and I decided to check out the Verizon website to search for my music and I cant find it. Am I missing something? My distribution listing says I am there, but NO RESULTS come up for my name. Anyone got a direct link in case I am missing or going to the wrong place.
Help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Bylli Crayone
www.BylliCrayone.com
www.MySpace.com/BylliCrayone
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Hey Gray...... I just found my CD at V Cast on Verizon Wireless.........I am so psyche because of that.......CD BABY ROCKS BABY!!!!!!!
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Congrats Derek, and CD baby staff... That's awesome.
listen, I have 5 music videos form the oddcupl, and
also a number of single grated titles, can i submit them as singles for V cast??
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| by
on Sunday July 23 2006 @ 08:50PM PDT [ reply | parent ] |
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Just so you don't feel too alone not finding your stuff on Verizon, I'm not there either... Perhaps you should also report it to cdbaby as it has probably been three months since delivery...SOMETIMES that helps...sometimes it doesn't
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on my last project many of the digital music services had no record of it after 3 months. Thankfully iTunes did..but it seems actually getting up and running after delivery has turned into a crap shoot.
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It is now over four months since CD Baby announced the deal with Verizon. I would like to know if and when my CD "Old Country", which is g-rated, is going to be delivered to Verizon.
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