Poughkeepsie Live
host:
My first interview. A cable TV show some time in 1998, shortly after I started CD Baby. Thanks to Vito Petroccitto for finding this.
listen: (download)
watch: (download)
Transcript:
host
Our segment tonight's guest is Derek Sivers. He is from CD Baby. Welcome.
Derek Sivers
Thanks.
host
First of all, I want you to tell me a little bit about yourself.
Derek Sivers
About myself? Sure. Alright, I'm a musician first and foremost that was touring around the country just making a full time living as a musician ever since the age of 18. I think I had a job once for a little while. But other than that, I've just been a full time musician for 10 years touring colleges, had some really good gigs as a guitarist, playing for a Japanese pop star, and things like that that would fly me around the world and playing in front of 15,000 seats at the age of 21 and things like that.
Derek Sivers
I ended up taking my own band around the college circuit and really learning how to not just be somebody else's sideman but how to really control your own business or run a band like a business. My own band called Hit Me was doing so well with our own CD that we needed a place to sell it online. I was getting so much into the internet then realized there was no good place online that would sell your CD. So I started this little thing, not meaning for it to be a business, called CD Baby, just to sell my CD. It took off. A couple dozen friends told a couple dozen friends and -- kind of mushroomed. It mushroomed and now it's, you know, every waking moment I'm working on the web, one of those kind of typical kind of dot com startup stories where nobody sleeps and we all live off of Diet Coke and stuff like that.
host
So now you've got 2,500 artists?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, 2,500 artists on CD Baby. All of them like these guys, completely independent artists who have just released their own CD themselves, have no record deal, just doing it themselves. Some of them don't want a record deal. If Warner Brothers calls they say no thanks and hang up because they want to... Like Ani DiFranco is the best example of somebody just that knows that there's a good life to be had doing it yourself. So those are the people we deal with.
host
Terrific. Now what are your criteria as far as getting a band and being on? Criteria, I mean, do you like screen anybody? Do you like to accept everybody?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, we accept everybody. When I first started it, I thought about playing A&R guy and deciding what was good and what isn't. But the only problem with that is whenever I really love a CD that comes into the store - because we still listen to every single CD that we sell - whenever I really love a CD, sure enough, you know, I can't get anybody to buy it. And the ones that didn't even catch my attention on the way in become top sellers. So it's probably a good thing that I don't screen.
host
Okay.
Derek Sivers
If there are any musicians out there who have released their own CD and think that there's somebody out there who wants to buy it, we'll sell it for them.
host
Okay. All right. Now is there a cost for this or anything like that? Tell me about that.
Derek Sivers
35 bucks. We still do everything by hand. We make a web page. Somebody sends in their CD. We make a web page for them. You know, look at the color scheme on their album. Try to match it. Make a good web page. No advertising anywhere. And it takes about 30 minutes.
host
So CD baby, look at that.
Derek Sivers
18 Juniper Lane, Woodstock, New York. The phone number is 1-800-448-6369. You can also email at info@cdbaby.com.
host
And it's www.cdbaby.com.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Any music fans watching this show, every single CD we sell out of all those 2,000 plus, you can go listen to sound clips. You can listen to about half the CD online. It actually sounds pretty good. You can get more info about the band. Click to their website. See where they're playing. So yeah, it's an amazing way to just go through and check out new music.
Derek Sivers
We have it divided by category if you want that. There's also an album art gallery, kind of like the old experience of just walking through the aisles of a record store, you know. You can just look at the album art and go, oh, that looks cool. What is that? So yeah.
host
Sounds very exciting. What's in store for you in the next five years? Tell me about that.
Derek Sivers
Next five years? I should be doing my laundry a little more often. Let's see. I should sleep a little bit. I'm going to start sleeping next year. That's my plan for next year. No, I don't know. Five years, I don't know. It's five years. I hope that in five years we still have no advertising on the site and I hope I'm still hanging up the phone on investors and I hope I'm still running it right out of Woodstock, New York.
Derek Sivers
It's hard running a website that's getting popular and you're surrounded by people that are trying to sway you into doing all these other different things. Or hey, why don't you include this feature? Why don't you hook up with our company and give a link to us and we'll give a link to you? It's hard to kind of stick to your original mission and say no, we're a record store. We sell CDs. Yeah, we don't want to get clogged and I don't want to start selling advertising or forgetting what it's really all about in the first place.
host
Well, I'm going to check out your site.
Derek Sivers
And yeah, if any musicians watching this show, if you guys have a CD out, just go to CDbaby.com. It tells you how we can sell it for you.
host
Fantastic. Excellent. Okay, we want to welcome you back next time.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, man. I love it here. I'd be glad to come back.
host
All right, great.