CD Baby boss Molly Neuman has delivered a message to artists using the platform and given her verdict over Virgin Music Group’s acquisition deal for Downtown Music Holdings.
Music Week’s reigning International Woman Of The Year, Neuman was named president of CD Baby – Downtown Music's direct-to-creator division – last June following the alignment of the firm’s operating businesses. She previously served as chief marketing officer for parent company Downtown Music Holdings.
The LA-based executive, who began her career in 1991 as the drummer in all-female punk band Bratmobile and co-publisher of the Riot Grrrl fanzine, observed the changing needs of artists CD Baby is geared towards.
“It’s one thing to distribute and have the music available, but if people aren’t engaging with that music, that’s not a sustainable effort," she said. "So, their needs are either to be more focused on distribution, or they have to work harder at developing their audience. And, you used to be able to go to a show and there would be X number of people all the time because it was a community experience. There are fewer and fewer of those spaces now."
Speaking in the March edition of Music Week, she continued: “What’s amazing about being part of Downtown – and we have two other distribution companies, Fuga and Downtown Artists & Label Services, which is meant to focus more on the businesses and artists who have a lot of momentum – is that we can see some of the tools, resources and ways to develop an audience and market a release at a higher scale.
"Up until now, CD Baby has been more of, ‘Here’s a tool; you can go see if you can figure it out,’ and that’s probably fine for a lot of our artists. And then, there are some that really have potential. If we can scale."
Billie Eilish grew a lot scrutiny-free. She was playing sold-out theatres, all 15-year-olds, who discovered her on SoundCloud or whatever. It’d be great if we could support that path
Molly Neuman
Neuman offered her take on the issues preventing more emerging artists from breaking into the mainstream.
"There are still very few opportunities," she said. "The other issue from the building-an-audience side is the concerts. I know this because I have to try to buy tickets for them. First of all, they’re extremely expensive. And second of all, they sell out. I’m not opening the can of worms around ticketing, but it is prohibitive to discovery at a different level.”
Neuman brought up the example of US singer-songwriter Gigi Perez, for whom CD Baby served as distribution partner as she launched her 2024 breakthrough track Sailor Song (808,126 sales, OCC), which topped the UK singles chart last October.
"[Perez] put out a single in the spring and then a second one in the summer and ended up signing to Island," explained Neuman. "So now she’s on Island and doesn’t have an album out yet, but she’s been putting out singles and she toured with Girl In Red, and then she set up her first tour. And so I was like, ‘I’m going to buy a ticket because I love this story. It’s somewhat organic, but she has a strong management team and she has strong infrastructure around her, but she’s also driving a lot of it on her own.’
"Then, on the day they went on sale, the $50 tickets were gone, so I had to get the $100 tickets. We’re going to go with three girls from my daughter’s class, so [you’d hope for] maybe $25 or $50 tickets so there’s a zone of discovery, a place for a different audience to come to the party and be connected to artists as they’re developing.
"[By contrast,] Billie Eilish grew a lot scrutiny-free. She was playing sold-out theatres, all 15-year-olds, who discovered her on SoundCloud or whatever. It’d be great if we could support that path.”
In 2025, we’ll hopefully reintroduce ourselves more actively as a partner to musicians
Molly Neuman
Neuman, who has nearly three decades of experience in various leadership roles, including as president of Downtown’s publishing administration company Songtrust, head of music at Kickstarter and interim president and VP of the American Association Of Independent Music (A2IM), also gave her backing to Virgin Music’s proposed acquisition deal for Downtown Music Holdings.
In December 2024, Virgin Music Group, the global independent music division of Universal Music Group, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million in cash.
“Personally, I’m really excited," she said. "That might be surprising for some of my colleagues. I was the president of the A2IM for about six months, as an interim position; those are my people and my community. I think that the investment is in independent music and strengthening some of those opportunities.
"Now, there’s a cynical take that we’ve observed in the news, and I’ll leave those discussions because there is a lot of scrutiny that is way above my level. Until the deal closes, there’s so much uncertainty. But my hope is that we are strengthening the opportunity for independent artists and companies to continue to have the best-in-class support that they’ve had from Downtown.
"That combining of forces certainly does give us that opportunity. We have strong pockets in different parts of the world; they have strong pockets in other parts of the world.”
Neuman went on to share her goals for CD Baby in the year ahead and beyond.
“In 2025, we’ll hopefully reintroduce ourselves more actively as a partner to musicians," she concluded. "We’re going to be investing in the experience for our artists fundamentally, so that the platform is more user-friendly. CD Baby has got the tools and the things that artists might want at any appropriate point, whether it’s mastering or other creation capability, pre-distribution... It’s about reimagining how we present what we do.
"We also have so much insight into what’s happening with the music once it is distributed, that we can really help support those artists who have that momentum. Those are just some of the things that I have my head down working on!”
The full Music Week Interview with Neuman features in our latest issue, which is out now.
