News By Tom Brownsword

James Brausch has an interesting situation on his hands and is asking for opinions. In short, CD Baby — the company that handles the CD distribution for his "Life Management 101" CD (which you do need to get!), has been running a contest. James wants to win and has applied his considerable marketing skills to the situation with the goal of winning the contest. CD Baby seems to be rigging the contest so that he won’t win it (read the rest of the post for more details, but that just about sums it up).

I went to CD Baby’s home page and looked at the top sellers — and James’ CD is the eighth CD listed. Now when you see a “Top Sellers Now” page, don’t you expect to believe that the page is listed with the most popular being at the top? That means that the lower you go on the page, the less popular it is, right? So that means that James’ CD is the eighth most popular CD on CD Baby, right? Except that if you go to the “Spoken Word” category, his CD is listed seventh — and the CD that is listed first in the Spoken Word category is listed sixth on the main “Top Sellers Now” page. So how can there be five CDs between James and number one on the Top Sellers page for the Spoken Word category when the two CDs are listed sixth and eighth on the main Top Sellers page — and the CD that’s between them on the main Top Sellers page isn’t even listed on the Top Sellers page for the Spoken Word category? This leads me to believe that James’ claims are at least somewhat valid — and worth commenting on. It also leads me to believe that CD Baby is simply slapping up whatever they want to call a “Top Seller” without regard to what’s actually selling — a misleading claim, in my eyes.

Incidentally, I have saved PDF printouts of those pages as they existed when I accessed the page at approximately 2250 Central European Daylight Time today (Thursday, August 30). I won’t post them because I don’t want to get involved in any copyright issues, but I do have the proof I need to back up this claim since it is fairly serious and I’m not about to make it without some evidence. Then again, CD Baby could use it as proof that their Top Sellers system really *IS* messed up, in which case they shouldn’t be running contests, should they?

Before I go any farther, let me point out that there are two sides to this story. I’ve only heard James’ side. On the other hand, from having dealt with James quite a bit over the past 18 months or so, I can safely say that I see no reason why James would misrepresent the truth, so I’m going to take what he says and consider it to be factual (keeping in mind that there is probably some opinion in that post, but that will be quite obvious). Besides, I don’t think that CD Baby will make any public comments about the situation (and their silence will, in my opinion, speak volumes).

Nevertheless, let’s plunge forward…

James mentions three options:

1. Sue the company. Expensive, time-consuming, and the results would be questionable. I’m not a lawyer and haven’t consulted mine about this situation (obviously!), but since this case would most likely be based on contract law, anything gained from this would probably be limited to the monetary value of the contest prize and any lost sales that James could prove were lost, plus possibly court costs. I’m not sure that it would be worth the effort and exposure to negative action.

2. Notify the FTC to let them know that the contest results were skewed. My opinion is that this option would rely on the policies, procedures, availability of resources, and possibly the motivation of an outside entity to gain any results (and I don’t really see the FTC going after a company that sells CDs for independent music groups — you know, the whole “help the little guy” picture. BAAAAD for publicity!). James would also incur some legal costs if the FTC pursued the case and I don’t know if those costs would be reimbursed with an FTC case, nor do I know if he could be awarded any damages. And if the FTC complaint were about the contest, it would seem that he would not be able to make any damage claims based on lost sales by going this route (again, this is my uneducated opinion, not fact).

I’m totally unfamiliar with how the FTC works and what the end result of this would be, so I won’t even speculate on the outcome of this — except to say that, in my opinion, the FTC would probably only pursue the case if it were likely that they could win and get some “we’re protecting you, America” mileage out of it. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but there are too many variables outside of James’ control (again, in my opinion) to make this a viable option.

3. Walk away and forget about it, considering it another hard-learned lesson. This is a viable option — except for one thing (again, I’m trying to think about what I would do were I in James’ shoes, which I’m not — and I know that I don’t think as he does. Remember that these are simply my opinions; I’m in no way insinuating that James should take these actions!): James has already shared his physical CD distribution methods with many people, only to have this happen, plus CD Baby has probably gotten some new business due to James (talk about biting the hand that feeds you!). Given that others are probably selling physical products through CD Baby based on James’ past recommendations, I think that some type of “warning campaign”, at the very least, is worth considering.

So without further ado, here is what I’d do if I were James:

1. Modify any blog posts where I’ve recommended CD Baby to add a warning about this experience and include a link to the blog post.

2. If any of his products include information about CD Baby, I’d send an email to the customer list, explaining the situation and giving a link to the blog post.

Note that I would NOT recommend that they not use CD Baby. I’d simply let them know what happened and let them make their own decisions.

3. Find other channels to distribute my audio CDs. Test a few and see which one best meets my needs, then pull my CD from CD Baby and use that one.

4. Modify the blog posts (bullet point 1) and email the customers contacted (bullet number 2) to let them know about my new recommendation.

5. Modify the product sold to customers (step 2) to, at the very least, include information about this situation, if not completely re-doing the product with new recommendations, based on my test in step 3.

6. Use the same marketing methods that were used to sell lots of CDs via CD Baby to let “the World” know about this situation. Actually, he’s already started doing that by asking for opinions about his blog post. This will get him lots of backlinks with “CD Baby” as anchor text (and there’s another one — you’re welcome!) and get a few pages listed in the search engines for CD Baby that talk about the situation.

There are currently about 2,050,000 results for the term “CD Baby” (with the quotes) at Google. According to cdbaby.net, “CD Baby has helped over 150000 artists sell over $40 million in physical CDs, digital downloads, and live sales since 1998″. So it’s been around for a while and does a little bit of business.

Ah, shouldn’t have done the Google research… I feel a rant coming on!

This link points to Derek Sivers’ blog at O’Reilly. According to that blog, Derek is the “founder, president, and sole programmer behind CD Baby” (emphasis is mine).

Did I tell you that I’m reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber? One of the things he talks about in that book is how many technicians end up driving their business — and themselves — into the ground because they basically focus on being a self-employed technician instead of, in essence, building a system. Sole programmer? What the heck is a business owner doing being the Sole programmer for his business, especially one that has done $40 million in sales since 1998? Could Derek Sivers have fallen for the e-myth, and as a result, his business is starting to crack? Why is he dinking with code in the middle of a contest — “dinks” that seems to have affected the outcome and that are clearly within his Sole programmer control? How many other people has he alienated this way? At the very least, these independent artists will tell their customers and other independent artists who use CD Baby (or who might have used CD Baby); it’s also possible that he upset a bunch of experienced marketers like James Brausch — marketers who can fire up their marketing engine and do something about it.

My gut impression is that they, for some reason, don’t like a savvy marketer coming in and upsetting their little artsy-fartsy community, so the owner / programmer of CD Baby (who desperately needs to buy and implement your Freedom Business System Course, James) decided to find a way to take you out of the running that he could blame on something that is seemingly out of his control — except that it’s within his control. His Sole programmer control!

So heck, James, here’s my final suggestion: start your own CD reproduction and distribution business for independent artists. I think that creating such a business “your way” would be the best way to show your appreciation for what they have done. Of course, given the direction things seem to be heading, doing absolutely nothing — except for pulling your account from CD Baby — might be enough to see this company shift a bit west and subsequently sink deep into the ocean!

And if they backtrack and award you the prize? So what? Remember, today I looked at the top sellers’ page at CD Baby and the ranking of your CD has absolutely nothing to do with actual sales, and this is costing you sales. We all know that social proof and so-called Herd Marketing would lead to more sales for you if you were at the top of that list, so it has cost you money. If you’re in this business to stroke your ego, then the prize might satisfy; otherwise, awarding the prize is not really a factor to take into consideration.

Thanks,
Tom