I've suggested CD Baby as a place for hard-to-find titles from small-label artists but I am no longer doing business with the Web store and urge you to do the same.
I was browsing the titles CD Baby offers recently, looking to make another purchase, and came across disks from the Racist Redneck Rebels and Johnny Rebel. These CDs are typically sold at neo-nazi and white supremacist Web sites. The RRR CD cover includes a picture of a black man being lynched with a hooded klansman looming behind him. I will not even repeat the disgusting song titles.
I raised the issue with CD Baby and was told that, although they find the CDs abhorrent, they feel obligated to offer them since the idea of CD Baby is to be a place where any musician can sell her or his CDs. I also was told that CD Baby contributes more money than it could ever make from the sale of the disks to the NAACP in recompense.
I applaud CD Baby for the latter but it doesn't solve the problem. Perhaps the only thing I believe in absolutely is freedom of speech. I think the only proper remedy for bad speech is more speech. I would never advocate silencing the people who make these CDs despite their shocking ignorance. However, my belief in free speech doesn't require me to put their disks on my stereo, crank up the volume, open my windows and share it with the neighborhood. Likewise, CD Baby's philosophy doesn't, in my view, mandate that it offer the CDs for sale. The people who make these disks have an outlet to sell them, at the aforementioned racist sites. CD Baby doesn't need to provide them another outlet and one which may even lend them a slight air of legitimacy.
I made these points in a follow-up e-mail and have heard nothing further from CD Baby in more than a week and the CDs are still for sale, hence this post. I think the folks at CD Baby are well meaning but badly misguided and I am sorry to have to be an ex-customer.
2 comments:
Follow the money ... if for some reason many took the same stand and $ influence were felt, I suspect they'd remove the offending CDs.
I agree that they can do whatever they want, and I posit that they'll do what will give them more $.
Obviously, at some point they would have to bow to economics or go out of business.
But I honestly feel at this point they are losing some money on these CDs in order to adere to the principle that the site is for "any" musician to sell her or his CDs. Admirable, but misguided in this case I believe.
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