TRACY MADDUX, 50
CEO, CD Baby

CD Baby -- which distributes 750,000 artists and over 9 million tracks while publishing 170,000 songwriters and more than 1 million individual songs from acts in over 200 territories worldwide -- reported stellar 2018 results in April. Its member artists earned $106 million, an increase of nearly 25% over 2017. “Scaling the global CD Baby team” is his greatest recent accomplishment, says Maddux. “We took our team outside the U.S. from one person to 14 people. We now have people in nine countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Singapore and the U.K.” In March, Downtown Music Holdings spent a reported $200 million to acquire CD Baby’s parent company, AVL Digital Group. “This transaction will allow us to take the services we offer the independent music community to the next level,” says Maddux, who will oversee all AVL holdings for Downtown.

Indie Hero: “Alison Wenham, outgoing CEO of WIN. She is a giant within and champion for the independent music community.”