What's the point of cdbaby?

I recently heard talk of a group called the Section Quartet, that does string covers of rock songs. It's always nice to hear re-imaginings of "familiar" tunes. So I checked out their website, listened to some samples, and decided to buy the CD. The bad news: it turns out it's only offered at cdbaby.com, and not at any of the CD stores I usually use, like Amazon. That sucks. I hate creating new accounts. And while their prices aren't horrible, they are higher than I expect to pay for a one-off, independent CD. $14 (off an alleged list price of $19) plus $2.25 shipping. That gets you a slim manila envelope (with $0.80 in postage) and a cardboard CD case. No jewel case. Talk about cheap. It feels like a $5 package. At least a real CD from the mall feels like some cash went into it at some point. I really hope the artist gets most of that money.



But the CD is pretty good. Not going to hold my interest for months, but nice background music. So I can deal. Plus cdbaby has a monopoly on the artists they distribute, so what are you going to do?