CD Baby Opens UK Office, Creates New Roles to Support EU Indie Artists

CD Baby has opened a new office, its first east of the Atlantic, in London, headed by Rich Orchard.

Orchard joins CD Baby as Director of Market Development, EU. He has more than 15 years experience in music and tech, most recently at Absolute Label Services as Head of Digital, where he worked with a wide range of independent artists and labels. Prior to that, Orchard spent six years at Activision, where he dealt extensively with publishers on games like Guitar Hero Live.

“I’m extremely pleased to welcome Rich Orchard to the team. Given his experience in independent music distribution, music licensing and technology development, Rich is one of the most well-rounded candidates we considered for the role,” says CD Baby CEO Tracy Maddux. “He’s a great fit with the team and understands every perspective on how we make the CD Baby platform valuable to our users. I am sure he will prove a valuable resource to the 40,000+ artists we support in the UK and EU.”

“In what is undoubtedly a golden age to be making music and self-releasing, I am thrilled to be joining a team that embodies the DIY ethos and everything it means to be independent,” says Orchard. “I am hugely looking forward to our deeper relationship hereon with the UK and European artist community, as we support and empower them through our platform and services to grow their audience, maximise revenue streams, and take their career to the next stage.”

Working with Orchard in the UK office will be newly hired Artist Relations and Promotions Representative Steve Cusack. Cusack has a background in artist relations and music promotions across digital and radio. Cusack has been running his own independent song pitching company, PluggerBeatz.com . He has landed many featured placements on New Music Friday and other notable outlets for bands such as Dusky Grey, Newton Faulkner, The Sherlock’s and Allman Brown to name a few. Across Europe, Cusack has deep relationships with both music service editors as well as the radio community.

Cusack joins the newly formed Creator Services department, which brings together Artist Relations & Promotions, Publishing, Sync Licensing, and Music Service Relations. The Creator Services department is an eight member team spread across the US, Argentina, Brazil and the UK.

Head of Creator Services Jon Bahr commented, “We are thrilled to bring Steve onboard the team at the inception of our new Creator Services department. The team serves our priority artists with marketing and label services to further propel their releases. Steve brings an expertise in music promotion and relationships at the streaming services to hit the ground running and be a big asset to our growing team.”

About CD Baby
CD Baby is one of the largest distributors of independent music on the planet, home to 650,000 artists and more than 9 million tracks that are made available to 100+ digital services and platforms around the globe. Artists on the platform are empowered to monetize their rights while maintaining control of their own careers, and have collectively earned over $600 million since the company’s founding. CD Baby’s Publishing Administration service allows over 140,000 songwriters to collect all of their publishing royalties. CD Baby has become the go-to partner for many icons in the new music industry. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Twenty One Pilots, and Macklemore had their start on CD Baby, while others like Ingrid Michaelson and Gregory Alan Isakov have maintained independent and highly successful careers while partnering with CD Baby. The CD Baby umbrella of business units also includes CD Baby Publishing Administration, CD Baby Licensing, distribution platform Soundrop, CD Baby Manufacturing, marketing suite Show.co, CD Baby YouTube Administration, multi-channel network Illustrated Sound, website host HostBaby, the CD Baby Store for downloads and physical sales, promotional tool HearNow. CD Baby is a division of AVL Digital Group, which is also the parent company of Disc Makers.