Your sales, accounting and payments

• Sales and Accounting breakdown
• • Digital Distribution Sales
  • Social Video Monetization Royalties
  • CD Baby Direct Sales
• Unit and Quantity
• Download and Streaming 
  • Why are some Spotify and Apple Music streams $0.00?
  • Artificial or Manipulated Streams
  • Why do I see an Artificial Streams Penalty Fee?
• How do I see my payment history?
• Why were some past payments split into multiple deposits / transactions?

Sales and Accounting breakdown

You can look up a summary of the sales of your music in your CD Baby account.

To do so just follow these steps: 

1. Log into your account
2. Click on the Sales & Reports tab located on the main Dashboard page
3. Click on Sales & Accounting
4. To the left hand side of the next page is a menu for Sales History

To see your digital distribution partner sales (i.e. iTunes, Amazon, Spotify):

• Click DD SALES (BY ARTIST) or DD SALES (BY PARTNER). Clicking the green PLUS sign next to the artist name or partner name will expand that section to show individual track data. Select VIEW SALES to break down your earnings in even greater detail. You can also click FILTER YOUR SALES in the upper-righthand corner to designate a specific time frame.

To see your Social Video Monetization Royalties (i.e. YouTube, Facebook):

• Click SOCIAL VIDEO MONETIZATION EARNINGS (BY ARTIST) or SOCIAL VIDEO MONETIZATION EARNINGS (BY PARTNER). Clicking the green plus sign next to the artist name or partner name will expand that section to show individual track data. Select VIEW SALES to break down your earnings in even greater detail. Click FILTER YOUR SALES in the upper-right corner to designate a specific time frame.

To see your CD Baby direct sales:

• Click CD BABY SALES (CDS) to see physical CD sales. CD BABY SALES (DIGITAL) shows historical digital sales from CD Baby's now-retired retail store. CD BABY SALES (ALL) combines both categories. Click FILTER YOUR SALES in the upper-righthand corner to designate a specific time frame.

Unit and Quantity

The number in the “QTY” column refers to number of streams, downloads, or monetized playbacks per song or album. The number in the “Unit” refers to your takeaway per quantity. “Payable” is the amount owned to you (after the partner and CD Baby cuts). You can multiply the QTY by the Unit = Payable.

For example, if you see 3 under the QTY, that means that particular song or album was downloaded or streamed 3 times during that sales period. The amount under “unit” is the amount payable to you per download or stream, let’s say it’s $0.63700000. That’s the amount per download or stream. Now if we multiply that by 3 (3 downloads times the unit price of $0.63700000) = $1.911 and that’s your take-home per that line.

Beginning in September 2020 you will see more detailed Spotify earnings with a greater number of different "unit" (amount payable) amounts. Because Spotify has numerous plans listeners can enroll in, you may see more than one unit for the same song.

Downloads and Streaming 

You'll see a few different types of sales in your account.

Downloads: A download is a purchase of your music where the actual audio file is transferred to the customer's computer or mobile device. Every time someone downloads your music, you'll get paid.

Most of your download partners pay a standard rate for each song sold. However, some of our subscription-based download partners' payout rates change month to month based on their revenue for that period

Streams: A stream is basically the same thing as a "listen." The customer is able to listen to your song on their computer, in their car, on their mobile device, but they are not purchasing the song to own. No file is downloaded. Payments for streams vary from fractions of a penny to a few cents per play.
Streams fall into two categories:

1. Tethered streams, where your device/computer must be online in order to hear the music.
2. Non-tethered streams, where your player can stream songs while NOT connected to the internet, as long as the streaming service has verified the customer has paid their subscription fee for the month. No pay - no play.

Why are some Spotify and Apple Music streams $0.00?

In most cases, Spotify and Apple Music streams that show $0.00 actually do represent payments of a small fraction of a cent that has been rounded to $0.00. To see the actual amount of the payment past the second decimal place, please click the "Details" link to the right of the payable column.

Artificial or Manipulated Streams

If you notice an earnings type labelled "Artificial Streams" with a zero dollar amount ($0.00), this means that the partner determined the stream to be Artificial or Manipulated. 

For more information, please read: What happens if I use a service that promises more streams, or I play my own music on repeat?

You can also find Spotify's Artificial Streaming Education at this link. 

We can not appeal this determination on your behalf, but this determination by our partner does not mean you can't earn money for your legitimate streams in the future.

Why do I see an Artificial Streams Penalty Fee?

You are being charged because CD Baby was assessed a fee for distributing your content that was fraudulently streamed. We have passed that fee to you.

How do I see my payment history?

You will now see your payment history in the Payment History section within your Accounting Overview and in the Payment and Tax Info section under Payment History. 

We are currently unable to send payments to people in Russia, Belarus, the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the regions of Zaporzhzhia and Kherson in Ukraine. We will continue to process payments to all other regions of Ukraine for as long as we are able, but there may be extreme delays.

Our banking partners have also suspended currency conversion to UAH (Ukrainian hryvnia), RUB (Russian Ruble), and BYN (Belarusian Ruble); all of those routes will now use USD Swift Wire.

A USD account and SWIFT account number will need to be set up in your artist account in order to receive payouts. Please note: Fees in this case are much higher than other payment methods ($25 per payment) so we suggest setting a minimum payout of $45 - $65.

From Accounting Overview

1. Click on the Sales and Reports tab located on the main Dashboard page
2. Click on Sales & Accounting
3. Click on Payment History under Accounting

You will see a chronology of all the payouts

From the Payment and Tax Info section

When your payment is processing, you will see the little flag "On its way". Once it's complete, you will see "Delivered". It can take a few hours to a couple of days for the information to appear in your Accounting Overview. 

If you need to download payment history reports, the instructions are here. 

Why were some past payments split into multiple deposits / transactions?

In the past, you may have received a payment broken into multiple deposits. Rest assured, you were only charged one fee per payment and the issue has since been resolved.