OK,
First off, I am an Independent Contemporary Jazz recording artist.
I decided to release my first CD with CD Baby and they have done incredible things with my music. So much so, I am now loyal to them and look to them as "my label".

Secondly, I am humbled and amazed by this success.

Lastly - My prefaced statements will, hopefully, soften the blow I am about to deliver.
I have listened to other Indie, Smooth Jazz artists catalogued at CD Baby and I have yet to find ANYTHING worth a buy - let alone, a personal, forceable listen to these 'artists' samples...
BUT - I KNOW great Smooth Jazz Independent artists are there, and I have found a way to find these
http://www.stumbleaudio.com/#jamesranka/2
STUMBLEAUDIO!
It's the most incredible website I have found for culling the bad and finding the good... AT LIGHTNING SPEED!

I can remember (just a few decades ago) going to the local music store to audition new albums. A soundproofed room, complete with a turntable and headphones served as a 'try before you buy' audition. I would bring 10-12 albums to that room and listen away. More often than not, I would buy 1 or 2 of those albums.

This site is the same, but you are able to do the same thing at LIGHNING SPEED!

It's nothing for me to audition 500 CDs in less than an hour - UNLESS or UNTIL I find that new, until-now-unknown artist that makes an impression. When I find that artist(s), I can then listen to every song on his/her CD - AND MOST OF THESE NEVER-WOULD-HAVE-BEEN-DISCOVERED artists are catalogued at CD Baby!

Check it out!

Cool tool. I have, however, found quite a lot of deserving artists at CDBaby.com. Just have to take the time to listen to soundbytes and weed them out. I know it's quite time consuming but I have found some gems.

Gotta be honest, while checking through Funk artists, there's quite a lot of artists listed that are clearly NOT Funk artists. Sounds more like smooth jazz to me.

To say NO talented Contemporary Jazz artists reside at CD Baby would be presumptious and dead wrong.

StumbleAudio eliminates the time challenge, making the good, solid Jazz artists possible to find. And yes, there are MANY good Smooth Jazz artists in the CD Baby catalogue!
Using this website, we now don't have the problem of taking what seems like forever to weed out the many VERY GOOD Contemporary Jazz music at CD Baby!

Just curious. I see we have two threads referring to CD Baby. Is this appropriate for this forum?
I'm glad James is finding some success promoting his music there, and I'm glad anyone who is seeking good music to buy is finding a good selection there.
I'm just wondering if advertising CD Baby is appropriate for this forum.

To be direct about this, I have not "said" anything about this and a similar thread in the Musicians forum.

The reason? If a person participates in active discussion... and contributes to the board, then it's not exactly self-promotion. We're all active- whether it's making the music, selling the shows or reviewing - so it is a judgement call about the moderation.

If someone does a hit and run, and never comes back - or only returns when there's something to sell - that's self-promotion.

So I'm OK with there being 2 threads which mention CD baby - because the discussion was slightly different. However, Woody -you're correct - let's keep the number of threads to a minimum.

I was expecting this sort of response - sooner, rather than later... but, I joined this forum because:
I immediately liked what I saw and my first post was STRICTLY to thank Mark of Cenla for mentioning my music - period.

My music will stand on its own - you will either like it or not. No amount of marketing verbiage on my part will convince anyone to purchase my CDs or downloads.

I will screen future posts more carefully, but think about this: If not for Mark's comments concerning James Ranka, I probably would never have discovered The Magic Island... I self-promote ONLY where it's allowed. To do otherwise is wrong, and readers accurately decipher illegal self-promotion.

Finally, if my past posts are 'out-of-bounds' I would rather be removed than know readers are wrongly detecting my intentions.

Peace,
James

Ease up, James. No one's criticizing you. We welcome your comments.
I did question what appeared to be a promotion of CD Baby because its name appears in the subject lines of two threads that were created within days of each other.
But as Kat pointed out, it's not a problem because you participated in the discussion instead of simply plugging your CD and leaving, never to be heard from again.
Mark did a good thing in mentioning you, and I do hope your participation here continues long after this topic disappears off the radar.

I actually liked the site, although I thought it sort of missed on the categories of jazz. There were times when I clicked on a category, I felt like I'd married Rachel and woke up next to Leah (to use a Biblical analogy).

The thumbs up thumbs down rating system was cool, kind of like the "Siskel and Ebert Meets Smooth Jazz" concept we discussed some time ago in the contemporary jazz general section. Too bad the site doesn't show the ratings everyone has given each CD it throws atyou.

I know everyone's tastes are different, but I do think there is merit in screening music for people now that there is so much music available. And further, that radio can't be relied upon as much to expose people to material it thinks are hits (notwithstanding people's belief's that music is entirely personal, I still believe radio does provide some level of screening that saves us time, and often, does play songs that are truly better than the pack).

The only thing is that I'm not sure I'd go back there again, as I'm pretty content with all the artists I listen to now, the retro-experiences YouTube gives me, and the steady stream of material that comes from signed artists like Dave Koz, Michael Lington, etcetera. Open to new artists, but still lovin' all the stuff I have in my collection, or get exposed to at the library...but I think the site is useful for people who are hungry for new arrows in their quiver of artists.

OK, I give the site a 7 out of 10....it seems the categories are basically random, or maybe picked out by the artist themselves, and I have some serious doubts about some of the listings under the categories...like claiming a "smooth jazz" sound, to get noticed, but being clearly old school jazz. One fun category, tho, is the jazz wierd one... wide range of styles under THAT heading. Otherwise, to be honest, it sounded like a lot of under produced stuff, very amateur-ish in spots. Apparently (as usual) the categories don't really mean anything.
Honestly, I'll re-visit it, there were a couple of interesting ones in there, and it is somewhat easier than CD Baby to find good music. The catch is the "good" part...a lot of the music on either site is pretty low quality, and clearly not "stand out" artistry. But for those with patience, the gems can be found, as james ranka said to start it off.
Thanks for the diversion...like bward, I have a ton of music already, and rarely get to listen to what I have now very often, so hunting down new artists isn't real high on my list right now.

Just went to CD Baby, clicked on styles, jazz, contemporary, and began to drill down the list of styles to find something I liked. The Modern Groove Syndicate caught my ear, very funky....but why was it under acid jazz? Why not Jazz-funk?
Goes to show, the categories aren't defined very well, at least to my mind....jazz-rock should be like the Rippingtons, etc.
Oh well- later.

Tony

I think it's the artists themselves as they have to list their music themselves. If they mis-categorize themselves, it's not a good way to go about marketing. I'm a pretty patient guy so I really take the time to search and I've found quite a few gems. Really good production and quality songwriting in many different styles!

Search out Sonny Emory and tell me what you think.