In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of communities and organizations across the United States have joined together to aid the victims of this national disaster. The music industry is no exception, and events, such as NBC’s Concert for Hurricane Relief, give artists-such as Kanye West (who took the opportunity to lambast President Bush)-an opportunity to aid the relief effort. Well-known artists, however, are not the only members of the music community doing their best to pitch in. Through the help of CD Baby, the largest seller of independent CDs on the internet, independent artists across the nation have found a vehicle to aid the relief effort through their art.
CD Baby, which was founded in 1998, allows independent (as defined on the CD Baby website as “Not having sold one’s life, career, and creative works over to a corporation”) artists to sell their music on a national level, while still making a profit off of each individual sale (as compared to a record deal, where an artist would only receive 1 or 2 dollars for every album sold).
In response to the devastation sustained by Hurricane Katrina, a group of CD Baby artists have teamed up with the Red Cross to aid hurricane victims. Over 5,000 CD Baby artists have agreed to donate the entire wholesale price of their albums to the American Red Cross disaster relief fund. This means that when you purchase a CD from one of these musicians, the artists’ entire profit will go to the aid of hurricane survivors. Artists participating in the relief program range from classical to electronic to metal.
The Vice President in charge of Marketing and Business Relations at CD Baby, Alex Steininger, explained their company’s decision to take part in the relief efforts. “Katrina is a great tragedy and we just knew we had to do something,” he commented. “The government handled it very poorly and the non-profits came to the rescue and did a great job, and we wanted to do all we could to support them. We thought about what it would be like if roles had been reversed and we had lost everything. We knew we would want people to help us so we helped them.”
So far, CD Baby has donated over $100,000 to the disaster relief fund. More information about the relief effort and an entire catalogue of participating artists is available at the CD Baby website cdbaby.com.