Good Measure

Spreading some good news about good music and good service from CDBaby.com.

It was a custom shopkeepers used to follow religiously when weighing or measuring quantities for their customers — they meted out the requested amount, then included a bit extra “for good measure.” It was considered “good business” because you just never knew, really, if you’d made a mistake while measuring and as a business owner you really didn’t want to get a reputation as a cheat. “Good measure” became synonymous with going the extra distance — you gave a little away because you knew it would bring the customer back, to spend more money, in the long run.

In these modern times when “customer service” isn’t, it can be difficult to find a business owner who’s even heard of “good measure” let alone being able to define it or willing to practice it. When I find a business like that, I tend to stick with them loyally, even if it means I end up paying a little extra for their goods and/or services. Most of my friends are the same way, and we pass along the word about these companies to do our best to help them stay in business.

Enter CDBaby.com. It is, in the words of Derek Sivers, the president and founder:

CD Baby is a little online record store that sells CDs by independent musicians.
[In•de•pen•dent: (adj.) Not having sold one's life, career, and creative works over to a corporation.]

Sure, that’s basically what they do — sell CDs by folks you’d otherwise never hear about. But wait, ’cause it gets better.

I was shopping for some spoken word Rumi and ended up on Derek’s site to listen to Lovedrunk, by Shahram Shiva (a CD I will be reviewing here shortly). CDBaby lets you listen to extensive snippets from each song on the disc, a really helpful feature, and gives some pretty thorough “liner notes” for the artists themselves as well as the music on the disc. In addition there are suggestions about other artists you might like to hear based on the selection you’ve made — I followed one and liked what I heard there so much I decided to order both discs. The two discs totalled about $26 before shipping, which isn’t bad. In doing some research I discovered that the artists were going to keep anywhere from $6 to $12 of what I was paying. That seemed like a very good deal to me.

Then I braced myself, because in previous experience with small online record shops, the ordering process was something of a nightmare and the shipping costs were marked up enough to take the breath away. Imagine my surprise when, after typing in my information (CDBaby does not keep your credit card info for security reasons, a decision I respect after having come close to having my credit card number hacked from a supposedly secure site) the shipping came to a puny $4. The total was right around $30, and I felt pretty good about that.

I got the automated email from CDBaby confirming my order almost right away, and another email the next day confirming the shipment. Now, if you shop online at all you’ve seen dozens of these emails by now, and they’re basically the same boring old thing over and over again. Not from CDBaby.com! Here’s what they send you after your order ships:

(Order information deleted)
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Sunday, May 20th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh…

–
Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little store with the best new independent music
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

By the time I got down to the paragraph about the packing specialist, I was giggling uncontrollably. At the end I was laughing out loud and sending a copy to my husband, who needed a giggle that afternoon too.

So, okay — a little tongue-in-cheek confirmation email isn’t a whole lot to invest, but to me, the point is that CDBaby went ahead and invested it anyway. Mr. Sivers went just that extra mile, for “good measure,” to see to it that I was entertained, for a minute or so at least, while I waited on my new music to arrive. The CDs got here in four days as promised, in pristine condition, and have been listened to many times since. I forced myself to wait through that step to write this review though I already knew that CDBaby.com was a business I would be sticking with for a long, long time.

My sole complaint is that they don’t appear to have any affiliate program available, nor banners or buttons or text links to grab for cross-promotion. As with DrakNet (you’ll see their banners all over the site now), when I find good people running good businesses, I tend to spread that love around as widely as possible.

For good measure, you see…