CD Baby's 'Capital Punishment' for PBnDeb

I love CD Baby. I really do. CDBaby.com provides a way for independent artists to distribute their music digitally, sell physical CDs, stream music and collect payments worldwide. Their customer service has always been responsive and patient with my questions. I've tried other music distribution websites with no results. Even better, I don't have record label overhead, I can make more than 50% on my music sales. I think many artists with labels and record companies behind them make a few cents on a CD sale. Maybe $1. But you'll have to ask them.

Now it's not to say that CD Baby doesn't have it's quirks.  I ran into one with the name of our band name. As you know an independent artist has to work super hard at gaining recognition. An artist agonizes over a picking a band name. Once that name is chosen you market it everywhere and you don't change it. If you hit, you are happily stuck with that name. Unless you are the artist formerly known as Prince now known as Prince again. So pick and stick.

Here's the 'agonizing' part. How did I get to PBnDeb? Well, it started with the fact that I write with the bass crazed Philip Bynoe, who is currently touring worldwide with guitar virtuoso Steve Vai.  My name is Deb Snyder. We write children's music. We need a kid-friendly name but Laurie Berkner, Banana Splits and the Wiggles were taken.

Philip's initials being PB brought back a childhood memory for me. I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a kid. I used to ask my Mom for a 'pbandj' sandwich. She would make one and cut it into delicious edible squares for me. But my name is not jelly it's Deb...bummer. Almost perfect. Anyway thanks to a little burst of imagination I put my first name in place of jelly. Watch out world of retail -- we have a band name!  It was time to start marketing.

On our first album I made a mistake by spelling our name with an ampersand PB & Deb.

And then I built our first website.  Did you know that ampersands can't be used in websites addresses. Hmm...

But pbndeb can be used which is okay for a link.  But for marketing I will use PBnDeb. Love it.  So with band name in hand, I proudly load up our content onto CD Baby.  When I go to see our artists page I notice something strange.  Our band name under each album and song is listed as Pbndeb. WHERE ARE MY CAPITALS?  Did I load them incorrectly? What a mess.

I wrote a customer help ticket immediately.  A very helpful customer service person notified me that there is a policy that band names can only have a capital letter at the beginning of each name. So you can have Laurie Berkner.  But I CAN'T have PBnDeb. Have you ever heard of the band Inxs?

Marketing your music is difficult enough. But in going through the punisment of losing my capital letters, I realized I didn't really care how you spell our band name. Just spell it.

What's in a name...nothing. What's in a song...everything. PBnDeb's music is just as exciting, entertaining and imaginative as Pbndeb's music. Well, you go be the judge.

Click here to go to Pbndeb's artist page on CD Baby