The indie distributor and publisher has also passed $600 million in payouts since its 1998 launch, according to the company
When indie distributor and publisher CD Baby first opened itself up for business in 1998, the record industry was booming, on its way to a high-water mark in terms of overall revenue that it would reach by the end of that year. What followed, however, would be a near-catastrophic decline that cut the biz in half within a decade, before modest gains from streaming exploded into a massive growth opportunity that has finally returned the record industry to health -- and, most importantly, to growth.
Throughout those ups and downs CD Baby endured, and now, celebrating its 20th year in existence, the company has unveiled a few significant milestones: in 2017 alone, CD Baby paid out $80.1 million dollars to independent artists, a 33 percent increase over 2016; and over its two decades of existence, it has paid out more than $600 million worldwide. According to the company's statistics, it distributes 650,000 artists and more than 9 million tracks and publishes 140,000 songwriters and 875,000 individual songs, representing artists in a total of 215 territories across the globe.
Key to these recent growth metrics, it should come as no surprise, has been streaming.