Good Record labels with a good reputation will get the CD'S distributed quickly and hopefully to a wide audience. My wife Kathy and myself started our own independant record company- firstly because she wanted to record and sell her first children's recording. Knowing nothing about selling recordings or distribution, we had product to sell. The big distributor's of kid's music in stores up here were not interested (and are still not interested) in even talking to us - neither was Festival Distribution who handle folk music recordings. The only way to get product into stores is to take it to each individual store and get it there yourself - hope they want some, and hope they pay when they sell the product - ridiculous!! We now have 4 children's recordings, and 2 old time banjo recordings produced. It has taken a few years of personally sending out copies for review, radio airplay, weeding out the paying distribuors who want your product from the non paying ones, to get this record company into a money making venture - which it now is. The kid's music distributor's in Canada still won't talk to us, but they're going to be a bit surprised that we just struck a deal on Kathy's latest recording for over 250,000 copies in Ontario in one order. It takes a lot of business work to flog your product all by yourself, and it can work if you have the time and inclination for it , but in general a lot of musician's don't. If you get on a decent record label it means that you probably have good stuff (which is firstly the main thing), and you hopefully have all the business part of selling the product already in place - which is a good start!