Story by Jamie Hershman
Photo by Alex Cornell
Video by Ivan Lafollette
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Dozens of wooden cases brimming with colorful stacks of CDs pack the white cemented   oversized warehouse. Clad with a myriad of piercings, tattoos, and alternative-style haircuts, four men chat with well-groomed, denim-wearing Tracy Maddux, while simultaneously sorting the bundles of CDs into cardboard packages. Folk music flows through the stockroom creating a calm amongst the collection of records that lie in the scene behind them. The warehouse is reminiscent of a musty hardware store with wood workshop tables where men maintain a steady flow of loading boxes. The song comes to a slow stop. A moment of silence passes, and a sharp beat emerges as the playlist transitions into an upbeat electronic song. An employee with a long ponytail and graphic tee bobs his head to the beat. Tracy Maddux smiles and nods along, tapping his loafer to the quick track before continuing his conversation about the latest shipment of CD Baby music.
As CEO of CD Baby, a record label based in Northeast Portland that caters to independent artists, Tracy Maddux oversees 122 employees in their office and distribution center. CD Baby encourages independent musicians to sell their albums to the company for about 50 dollars. The company then distributes the artists’ music to big sellers in the music industry such as iTunes and Spotify. Maddux joined the company in 2010 as Chief Operating Officer, and became CEO in 2011. CD Baby was founded in 1998, long before Maddux joined the ranks. The label continues to be one of the nation’s largest distributors of independent music, dispersing music from popular artists such as Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Bareilles, and Macklemore.
Maddux is passionate about creating an even playing field for all musicians. He believes that independent music artists deserve the same chance as artists from big record labels to have their music heard. CD Baby gives artists the opportunity to see their names on the charts without a huge price burden. Even though he isn’t a practicing musician himself, working in the music industry fosters his passion for discovering new music and finding new employees for the CD Baby family, filled with spirited professionals looking for the next name in the music industry.
Q: Where did your passion for music originate?
A: My passion for music probably originated somewhere around the seventh grade where we were listening for the first time to different instruments to choose to play, and I heard the trumpet, which is the instrument that I eventually started playing in junior high and high school. I got really emotional; I got choked up just listening to the tone of the music. My mother was a music teacher growing up, so it probably goes back to great parenting and my parents’ love and engagement in music.
Q: Were you involved in the music industry before CD Baby?
A: I was involved in the high-tech industry. I used to work for Intel, and I used to have my own CD/DVD manufacturing company and we did pressed records or pressed CDs. Years ago, back in 2006, we pressed all the CDs for a band called the Presidents of the United States of America, which is a band out of Seattle. That’s probably as close as I ever came to working in the music industry, but we were really in the manufacturing segment, so not really. This is my first time really dealing and engaging with artists and it’s been a great three years.
Q: Is your company a collaborative company? Does CD Baby discover the new music as a company or do individual employees seek out new artists?
A: Artists call us! We sign up 200-300 artists a day who, for instance, want to get their music out on iTunes. They generally find CD Baby on the web. We spend a bunch of energy and money on search engine optimization and web marketing. We’re an Internet business. We want to make it easy for clients to find us and transact with us on the web. But we also have a call center that an artist can call if they get stuck in the signup process or want to know, for instance, why CD Baby is the best and fastest path to iTunes.
Q: What do you look for in an independent music artist?
A: CD Baby is kind of every man’s record label. We don’t make judgments about music. There isn’t a good or a bad. We never say no. If you’ve got music and it’s original–something that you’ve written and that you own the rights to—you can come to our platform and distribute it whether I like it or not. When I think about anybody, I think about a concept of a long tale of artwork. The long tale being if you think about the distribution of all content over time you have those things like Mumford & Sons that you listen to a lot all over the world and things like Slovenian folk music that might not get listened to very often. CD Baby represents that whole spectrum of the tale. Our job is to really create a platform that enables anybody to distribute music—kind of the anti-record label.
Q: What has been the most exciting encounter or experience you have had with one of the CD Baby artists and who was that artist?
A: It’s every day in every way. I mean, I get starstruck, so when I meet someone famous who is a CD Baby artist, like Ingrid Michaelson or Ryan Kelly, for instance, I probably forget to communicate like a normal human being. But I have been in many situations, twice recently I can think of, once at an eye doctor I was visiting and once with a guy who was doing work for me at my house where they say, hey, my band is on CD Baby. Check us out. And I do and they are pretty damn good. It’s just so great to have this huge, diverse community of artists who all use one word when they describe what we do for them: “Love!” And we love doing it for them!
Q: What is your favorite aspect about working in the music industry?
A: I think my favorite aspect of the music industry is always learning something new. There’s something about music or new music that I’ve never heard before that’s really intellectually stimulating. The other thing is that there are a lot of young people in the music industry, and it keeps you young to work in music.
 

Gallery • 2 Photos

Tracy Maddux oversees the day-to-day operations of CD Baby. He signs hundreds of artists using their internet-oriented business methods.