Moby Pixel
host: Nick Culbertson
my early musician days, creative process, getting unstuck, music industry changes, handling criticism, transition to writing and public speaking
listen: (download)
watch: (download)
Transcript:
Nick
Hello there. Recently, I got to have a chat with Derek Sivers about his life as a musician before CD Baby, how he processes negative feedback and how to get unstuck creatively. Derek has done a lot of interviews and in them there are hooks to his past of being a musician and programmer, but those branching paths are rarely taken. Well, today we’re going to go back in time as Huey Lewis in the news would say, and take those roads less traveled. I think I’m mixing metaphors, but you get the point. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Derek Sivers.
Nick
Hey, folks, Nick Culbertson here. And today I’m talking with Derek Sivers. If you’re not familiar with Derek’s work, then you’re in for a huge treat. Also, if you know his work, you’re in for a huge treat too. Since Derek is often extremely concise in his writing, I’ll try to make this intro super short. Derek Sivers circus performer and full time musician accidentally started CD Baby, the largest online distributor of independent music, then sold it a decade later, giving the proceeds to charity. Derek then became a writer, speaker, thinker guy, releasing the four best books ever for musicians and entrepreneurs and or humans. He gave those proceeds to charities too, rather than blowing it all on a vintage Yamaha CC 80 synthesizer as I would have done. Derek, welcome to the show.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Nick. I like the and or humans bit.
Nick
Yeah, I think it’s for everybody, right?
Derek Sivers
Now, it’s funny, when I was at CD, Baby, I spoke almost entirely to musicians. I almost just didn’t speak to anybody that wasn’t a musician or in the music business. Then after CD Baby, the TEDx conference asked me to speak. So what do you say but yes, so I spoke at TEDx and suddenly I was hearing from people that had nothing to do with music. And then people wanted me to tell my story about how I sold CD Baby, because entrepreneurs love to hear that stuff. Tell me how to get rich, right? So I told my story and then I started hearing from people that were just entrepreneurs that had really nothing to do with music. They just wanted to make money. So now it’s like, I don’t really know who I’m speaking to anymore because it’s just so broad. I kind of liked when I had this narrow focus of just speaking with musicians.
Nick
I feel like the groups have kind of homogenized into just being content creators now. You might not like that term. Any of these terms are like a little loaded, but an author is a content creator, a musician is a content creator. I feel like at this point, if I’m creating music or I’m making a YouTube video, it all sort of fits under the same umbrella.
Derek Sivers
Does the term work without the word content? Can we just say creator? Would that be something different than a content creator?
Nick
Well, I have tried to say that what I’m doing now is I’m a creative generalist, but then I heard someone else say creative entrepreneur, and I was like, “oh, that’s even better”. So I’m at a little bit of a loss for words of how to describe what I do. What I like about saying that you’re a creative X is that then you’re not limited, you’re not pigeonholed in doing just this one thing, which is counter to the advice of niche down the path to mastery is to do one thing over and over again. I want to do many one things over and over again.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I also like the idea of instead of creative being an adjective, it can be a noun, you can be a creative, you know, you could be a professional creative, you could be a practical creative. You could just be like, I’m a creator. Anyway, sorry. Terms, Who cares?
Nick
So for those who don’t know, Derek has his own podcast and the second season of it, the entire format has been that you’ve gone on to independent content creator shows and it’s really cool. It’s great getting to see the work through that lens. I think it adds to the story of the work by hearing it from different angles and you’re always gracious, you show prepared and you know, even whenever you have to recite Hell yeah or No for the 10,000th time, you’re still gracious with it and you play ball. Then again, I’m not dogging on any of the interviewers because like, they’re doing an amazing job. If I were interviewing Paul McCartney, I’m going to ask him about yesterday and he’s going to be like, “oh here we go again”.
Derek Sivers
I always thought that the record producers have a better job than performing musicians. I always admired Brian Eno or somebody like that, that would just stay in the studio and keep inventing. You’re inventing new music constantly in the studio. Then I feel a little bad for the band that finishes making the record and has to go out on stage every night doing the same stuff every night and showing up to radio stations or media outlets in various cities and. Having to do the same interviews. Answering the same questions, whereas the producer gets to just go right back into the studio and work on the next project, you know? So I think it’s always part of it. You think of how many times Ozzy has played crazy trade, Paul McCartney has played yesterday, whatever it may be. They just have to do that again and again and answer the same questions again and again. That’s just part of the job.
Nick
That’s true. Do you also think you might have that viewpoint because you did do the thing where you played a ton of shows. I heard you say on Brian Funk’s podcast that you’ve played over 1000 shows on college campuses. And so I’m sure with that you’ve had to show up, you’ve had to do interviews for them, You’ve had to have your stage call and showing up in a new town every night. So then maybe it seems like, “oh, you know what? The grass would be greener if I could sit at home and just have these bands show up and come to my studio”.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, isn’t that true with a lot of things? It’s like most people that call themselves minimalists are people that used to have too much stuff, and then they felt the pain of having too much stuff and got rid of it. And they say, “oh, now I’m a minimalist. I finally got rid of my crap”. Whereas somebody who never had any stuff. It’s like minimalism fuck you, I want stuff, right? Maybe you you have to feel the pain of something to know that you want the opposite.
Nick
Yeah, I have to admit, a fault I’ve had recently is Facebook Marketplace. I have gone on there and I’ve been looking at vintage synths lately and just gotten into it and it’s just navel gazing. I’m not going to buy one, but I’ve wasted so much time looking at it, which is hence mentioning a Yamaha CS-80 before. Also I know that was Brian Eno’s favorite, so I’m paying attention here.
Derek Sivers
CS-80, I thought he was into the DX7. Was CS-80 his thing? I didn’t know that.
Nick
Now the CS-80 was from the late seventies. It was polyphonic synthesizer. The DX7 uses FM synthesis.
Derek Sivers
Of course.
Nick
Yes. Did you ever have a DX7?
Derek Sivers
I think I had a DX7. Did I have a DX7? I don’t know. Or were they just everywhere back then?
Nick
Well you know, the thing is, people love the DX7, but they actually got better after that. So chances are you had a better one. But the DX7 is just the original.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Maybe I didn’t have the DX7, but just know that sound from the mid eighties that everybody had, but I think I had the ensoniq. Oh man. What’s the name of that. Like an early early sampler. I saw the review you did of this soft synth that put things through a VHS tape. Then back out again. That was very nostalgic because I just felt like I was kind of in that era in the eighties. I’m 52 now so like in the eighties, I was there with those super early synths and it was just so cutting edge with floppy disks. And little tiny samples that you’d stick in and trade floppy disks with friends and load them into your ensoniq sampler and all that. Anyway, sorry, I forget how we got on that tangent. Oh, the DX7, I don’t remember if I had one, I guess I didn’t, but they were just everywhere.
Nick
You know? You could treat yourself and get one. No, but actually you can. I don’t know how you feel. How does a minimalist feel about accruing massive amounts of software? Because then it’s not taking up physical space because you can get so many digital libraries of all these vintage synths. Now, many of them open source and then other ones you could pay for. For example, there is a open source software called Dexed, which is basically a DX7 that has the FM synthesis where you have a carrier wave and then you have the other little wave that’s going along with it. It’s what makes Danger Zone, Kenny Loggins kind of sound or Take my breath away bass. And I think Michael Jackson used it and stuff. All that stuff was cool. But the way we got to it was this was my poorly worded segway to talk about you doing 1000 shows at college campuses.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, a lot of my musician friends have done way more than that. That was that was ten years of my life. Over ten years I did about 1000 shows and particularly in a few years. It’s a few gigs a week for ten years.
Nick
But also you did other things too, like you sold 1500 copies of your album. When I was in indie rock bands, this was not what my hustle look like. My hustle was if we were selling albums, it was to add our shows to our friends. I feel like the accomplishments you had as a musician are pretty substantial. Maybe not compared to some of your top acts that you had on CD Baby, but in terms of all the bands that I was rubbing shoulders with, even the bands that I felt like made it at the time, you know, I was a musician, indie musician, doing the rock circuit in the early 2000s. And a lot of the bands I felt like made it. I look back at now and that was the height of their career. They they might not have gone on beyond that point. Music drastically changed, I think not in small part to CD Baby and then digital downloads becoming popular. I remember at the time we felt like Napster was going to be the the end of music. But then YouTube came out and now you can get any music for free, basically.
Derek Sivers
Which has changed the feel of things. I mean, it has changed the economics. It also has changed how people treat music. It used to be a thing where you would save up your money and buy an album because that was the way to get music. So you saved up your $15 or $18 or whatever it was. When I say saved up, I’m talking like I know when I was 14 I would do things to earn my $14, $15. Then I would go buy the album and it’s like, okay, I’ve bought it. So now you’d give it considerable time. You’d just sit and listen because you just spent money on this thing, hard earned money, so you’d want to get your money’s worth. You’d pore over the liner notes, you’d listen to every song, all 16 songs on both sides. You wouldn’t just go for the one hit. That’s not what you spent $15 on. You really wanted to get to know it, and you’d get to know these things as complete works and give it more attention because of the economic situation of buying it. Now when music is free and just streaming albums aren’t getting that attention.
Derek Sivers
But I think even the music itself, people aren’t giving it that much attention because it’s just unlimited. It’s flowing, it’s streaming, the metaphor of like it’s streaming out of a tap, right? Like if you try to drink from a hose, you’re not getting every drip. You’re just letting it spray out and you’re getting some of it because it’s streaming who cares, you know? I see a very different focus on music now.
Nick
Yeah, I’m glad to hear your perspective on it because I feel like a lot of people have asked you about what you saw happening with CD Baby and how the music industry was changing with it, and you’ve kind of said that you were sort of focused on CD Baby at the time and not really too focused on what was happening in the industry at large. I feel like in large part it gave way to this indie music movement that happened in, you know, the late nineties, early 2000. My band had a MySpace page and suddenly anyone in the world can hear your music. Whereas before that, if I wanted to sell an album, I remember we would just take it to the local college CD store and they would sell it there for five bucks. I don’t know if we ever even went and picked up the money after we sold that, but I did have some amazing mentors. One mentor during the time told me that you should try to have five income streams at any given time in the music business. Now five might be pushing it a little bit, but then for him he was a session guitarist. He had his own record label. I didn’t realize that at the time, but I think I was going to be one of his income streams. In preparing for this conversation I’ve got to sort of think of all these things that I used to do, and I realized that at some point in time, most of my mentors, they gave me great advice, but also they were looking out for their own interest at a certain point in time. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Which you can you can glean good wisdom from anywhere. You can glean the information you need. Shit! I don’t know if I’ve talked about this before, but one of the people that gave me so much wisdom. Was a producer that was straight up hittin on me the whole time. He was trying to get me into bed or something like that. I learned so much from him just by keeping him at arm’s length. He kind of kept hitting on me, but like I had learned a lot about the industry from him and then he’d like overtly hit on me. I’d be like “ha ha ha”. I’d push him away a little bit, I don’t mean like physically push him away. But I just kept learning from him. I know the reason he was spending so much time on me is because he had a crush on me or whatever. Which was a really weird dynamic to be in, but learned a ton from this guy. I was clearly a target in his sights. It doesn’t matter you can learn great stuff from anywhere. Even dubious sources can teach you a lot.
Nick
Wow, that’s so interesting. I’m sure there’s a like a really good point that someone could make from this, but we’ll leave that to someone else. Let us know in the comments.
Derek Sivers
Back to the multiple streams. You said when we emailed before we hit record today, that you wanted to talk about my early musician days. That’s exactly what I was doing, because I was living in New York City. So anybody listening to this, if you’re living in the middle of Norway or Virginia somewhere. Let’s not even use Virginia, let’s say Wyoming. If you’re living in the middle of Norway or Wyoming, there might not be a lot of money to be made locally in person doing music. So you might just have to adapt this to an online only version. But I was living in New York City at the time, because I was in New York City and I desperately was focused on being a successful musician. I was really focused on being a solo artist. Prince was my role model, I wanted to be Prince. I loved his music. I loved going into the studio by myself and playing all the instruments myself. But I also just wanted to be successful by any definition. I wanted to be a full time musician. First I had a day job in the music industry. I got a job in the tape room at Warner Brothers, Warner Chappell Music Publishing, technically. It was right there in the middle of New York City, midtown Manhattan, in the music business, meeting everybody.
Derek Sivers
Even having that credential helped open a lot of doors. Just the fact that I was a tape room guy people knew I was in. So I think sometimes people would hire me to play guitar on their record instead of somebody else because they knew that I was connected. Like, “hey, play guitar on this thing. Do you think you can play it for anybody that you know?”. You know? So that helped a lot. I was doing everything. The whole idea of the hustle is you just you say yes to everything. You comb through the classified ads and you look for anybody hiring for anything. Somebody said, “I need a Jazz pianist for an art gallery”. I said, “I play jazz piano what does it pay?”. They said, “150 bucks per gig”. I said, “yeah, I can do it”. So then that night I started trying to learn how to play jazz piano quickly, before the gig began. Somebody said they need a classical guitarist, they need a heavy metal solo. Whatever it takes, I would find a way to say yes and do it. I’d play bass on people’s records. I’d produce people’s records in my little home studio, booked a lot of gigs in the college market at first just for myself.
Derek Sivers
But then I found other artists who said, “hey, how do I get into that scene?”. I’d say, “oh well, you’re really good. I can probably book you some gigs”. Soon I was booking gigs for other people. All of this was just to do anything to pay my rent, doing just music and nothing else. And I did it. That’s where CD Baby came from too. That was like me selling my album in person at shows. Then I did a radio promotion campaign and soon it was number one on a college radio station in New Mexico. People in New Mexico were emailing me saying, “where can I get this album? I can’t find it at the local store”. I wanted to find a way to sell it to them. This is before PayPal existed. That’s where CD Baby came from, it was me just selling my thing on my website. I think there’s two different approaches you can take to a career in music. You can do the day job thing where you keep a simple like 9 to 5 kind of job that doesn’t drain your soul, doesn’t exhaust you, you keep it in a box, you keep it limited. So it’s like, don’t let them make you stay till 9 p.m. You just punch out at 5:00pm so you can do your thing and focus on music. I think that’s actually an amazing way to live because then you can just let your music be music.
Derek Sivers
You don’t have to whore yourself out to everyone that needs a dancing circus performer to sing Christmas carols or whatever. Then the other approach is to to do anything that makes a buck. That’s what I did because of the situation I was in, in New York City. I did actually put on a big teddy bear costume and go sing Christmas carols at shopping malls and whatever I could get that would pay 150 bucks, 300 bucks, 80 bucks. If it paid something more than 50, I was there doing it. I did that for ten years. Along with all those college gigs that you mentioned, the thousand shows and touring with my band, I would just kind of do anything to make a buck.
Nick
Yeah, the people that I know that are still in the music business are all hustlers, and I mean that in the best, nicest way possible. How they are still picking up all these gigs and whenever opportunity shows itself, they’re there ready to strike. You also did a lot of a big side gig. I don’t know if Ryuichi Sakamoto was the biggest artist you played for, but it sounded like he was the artist who played for maybe the longest consistently. You said in the blogpost with it, “I did okay, but as the youngest, I was definitely the punching bag for other band members. It was rough”. I had a very similar sort of thing happen when I was playing with Joe Diffie. It was one of the first bigger professional gigs that I had, and I was bullied a little bit and I didn’t back down from the bullying, but it certainly took my focus away from the playing.
Derek Sivers
Well, the band members were worldwide, but I was the least experienced. I mean, we’re talking like the bass player was Victor Bailey, who was from Weather Report and played with Miles Davis and he’s on the cover of Bass Player magazine, three times or whatever. So Victor Bailey was a legend. Then it was Manu Kash on drums, who was the drummer from Peter Gabriel and Sting and then me. I was so out of my league and I was also much younger than them. Ryuichi Sakamoto himself was this legend in Japan. He was a famous composer and pop star but also even just like a media star, there was a big Time Square billboard of his face, with a watch or whatever. He was also just kind of famous for that level. I was 22 years old. I had nothing to my name except I was damn good at playing funk guitar and I got the gig. I was out of my league but the percussionist in the band also didn’t have a lot to his name. He wasn’t famous like the other guys, but he was an asshole. The percussionist kind of would bully me a lot, and then the other guys would just kind of join in because he was. Also I was the only white guy in the band. Being white, being 22 when they’re all in their mid/late thirties, yeah it kind of sucked. I’m glad that I did it. It was a great experience career wise. It was a great experience.
Derek Sivers
To just be on stage in front of 10,000 people like walk out to like a 10,000 seat auditorium of everybody roaring and screaming. And I’m standing on stage in front of all that was just lifetime experience and amazing. The bullying was fine in the big picture. Life’s never perfect. You walk down the street and somebody spits on you for no reason because they’re crazy and you can’t take any of that stuff personally. It’s it’s about them, not me. I don’t think we can take cruelty personally. When somebody is being cruel to you, that’s their own weird shit they’re going through.
Nick
Yeah, I think it takes a while to build that resilience to feel that way. As an app developer, I get a lot of reviews for apps and at first I would take what people were saying personally towards me because it’s like, Oh, I’ve put my whole life into this thing. I think if you are a developer or a creator and you’re putting things out there, you’re a little more sympathetic to other people. I was just watching a video on YouTube yesterday and a guy mentioned me in the video and it was great. Then I was looking down in the comments to see what people are saying. Somebody said, “I just clicked on this video a couple of minutes in and your voice is so irritating. I don’t want to listen to a 1950s car salesman”. I wrote the guy and I was just saying, not the troll, but I wrote the other guy saying like, “hey, man, just so you know, you’re awesome. I think your voice sounds sweet” and all this other stuff. Some people show up and they just are just I don’t know why they’re mean, but I do think you have to have a tool kit to have it where you’re not taking it personally. At first, oh boy, did I take it personally. It does feel like someone spits in your face. I took it so personally at a point where with reviews I felt like it was making people not download the apps that I was making. So it was directly taking money out of my pocket and taking food out of my daughter’s mouth. Now you’re coming into my home and you’re stealing a meal from my daughter, which is kind of blown out of proportion. Instead, now I think I have more of the attitude you have where it’s not you, it’s not me, it’s you asshole.
Derek Sivers
But also, you realize that it’s human nature that if there are 99 comments that are nice and glowing and one that’s mean. We just go like, “hey, what the hell,” you can’t help but focus on the one mean one and ignore the 99. You’re like, yeah, praise, praise, praise. I know, I know. Wait a second, somebody doesn’t like me. How dare you? It helps, I think, especially online to know that the public you is not the real you. That anything you do in the public is just something you’re creating and putting out there. Even if there’s something that you’re creating, is you, it’s not really you. It’s like a side of yourself that you’re putting out into the world. It’s a sliver of yourself. It’s something based on you but it’s not the real you. So when somebody criticizes it, they’re not criticizing you, they’re criticizing this avatar that you’ve made of yourself and you can just take it as feedback. If somebody says, “you’re a jerk, you’re evil, you’re a bad person”. You can just go, “huh? Okay, they think that person I put out into the world is bad”. That’s interesting.
Derek Sivers
That’s interesting. You can also just have this knowledge that if you’re pleasing everyone, you’re doing something wrong. That’s just muzak, that’s background music. You’re not meant to be completely non-offensive. I’d almost say that there should be a good rule of thumb that if less than 10% of the people out there dislike you, you’re doing something wrong.
Nick
Less than 10%. Okay? So just hope you don’t just get one comment and it’s one person like I don’t like your voice.
Derek Sivers
Some people go online just to troll. And God, I had somebody remind me a few years ago when I got like a really weird email out of the blue from somebody that was just ranting. I told a friend and my friend said, “maybe she’s drunk”. Oh, right. Some people actually do that. They get drunk and go online and the same way that somebody stumbles down Beale Street or whatever it’s called at midnight on a Saturday, just drunk and yelling at strangers, not even knowing who they’re seeing. Some people do a version of that online. I think they just get drunk and they’re upset. They just go type things at people and they don’t even know they’re doing it. In fact, I had one guy who used to send me these weird, abusive emails, and after two years he apologized. He said, “hey man, I’m sorry I look back at my outbox to you, I don’t even remember writing that stuff. I was really fucked up, I’ve stopped drinking now, but, hey, I’m really sorry about that”. It’s nice to remember that these people that are leaving comments are not always in the right state of mind.
Nick
Yeah, I feel like you have probably heard from more people in your audience than perhaps anyone ever. Mainly through whenever you answer all the people that email you, you have written back to them. I think you must have trained some kind of muscle for that not to take a cognitive load because if I’m writing just “oh thanks” back to somebody, I’m still thinking of the word thanks.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, me too.
Nick
Thank you so much. You know, so it’s been like time. It takes time out of the day too. Then I feel productive because it’s like I replied to one comment.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it is draining, it’s exhausting. It’s socially exhausting to exercise that muscle of being considerate, always trying to think of things from the other person’s point of view.
Nick
Since we’re talking about tech, whenever you stop CD baby, you were deciding what to do next. We all know that you became the Derek Sivers 2.0, which we all know and love. For a while you thought about changing your name and getting into open source software. Why open source software? Was there anything you were really into? Are you into open source software now, or was it just more about going incognito mode?
Derek Sivers
Exactly. It was incognito. Imagine you’re just a regular person and you start a thing and it grows and grows even though you didn’t want it to. Suddenly you have 85 employees whose lives you’re kind of responsible for and 85 people that are telling you their problems or 85 people that are kind of making their life into your problem and all that. It was a lot of responsibility. I probably should have set things up with more hierarchy or something so that 85 people didn’t answer to me directly, but I didn’t know that at the time. When I sold CD Baby, when I left, I just felt so relieved to have no responsibility for the first time in years. I just wanted this life of no responsibility. But I wanted intellectual stimulation. I didn’t just want to sit on a beach with a drink or whatever people imagine retirement looks like. I thought, “God, wouldn’t it be fun to just disappear, like change my name, move to. Europe somewhere, use my savings to pay my cost of living, get an anonymous name. You know what I mean? Just some alias, get an alias. Then just program”. Just contribute to whatever I feel like doing. I don’t need to earn any money from it. No particular project in mind. Just look at the various ruby things I was using or JavaScript or Python or whatever, just like open source projects and see how I could improve it, make it better, but to have no obligations.
Derek Sivers
This was in theory more than in practice. Even I was kind of surprised for a second that you knew that I was like, “oh, I must have talked about that in an interview once”. But but to be clear, this was something that I thought about for a couple of days and did nothing about. It was just one of my counterfactuals, one of my possible futures that could have been and I did nothing about. I realized around that time that while being a little bit famous, has some downsides, some responsibilities. You get more attention, not always in the best way, but it comes with so many upsides for the people that you can meet, the doors that open. The people that are eager to talk to you or happy to meet with you or whatever. The upsides are worth it. So I decided to lean into the spotlight instead of out of it. And it was a very deliberate decision of like, you know, I could do that anonymous life but then I would just be some anonymous guy in Slovenia and nobody would want to meet with me because I would just be some nobody that has nothing to my name. Whereas it’s a little bit of a pain in the ass having the responsibility of people wanting things from me. But the plus side is, it opens so many doors. That’s where I doubled down on it, leaned into it. That’s when I did my TED talks was right after realizing that and just decided to kind of blog more, post more, share my thoughts more, but even then only to a certain point. Right?
Derek Sivers
I’ve got friends that are much more famous than me that really lean into the spotlight more and really want to be more famous. I kind of think I reached a certain point where I found a nice balance for myself and this works for me.
Nick
I think that’s great. I do notice that you don’t try to get back on some of those really big podcasts or you’re not putting yourself out there. I mean, I feel like just putting your books on Amazon alone would lead to more sales of, of your stuff.
Derek Sivers
Guess what, I did just do it last week.
Nick
Oh, you did! Congratulations.
Derek Sivers
It’s half hearted. They’ve been they’ve been out for more than a year now. Even my newest one came out a year ago this week, actually I think. The How to Live book, that was about a year ago. I’m like, “okay, now people have been getting them from pirate sites instead of for me. So as long as it’s on all the pirate sites now”.
Nick
The physical copy or the MP3 audio book?
Derek Sivers
Oh yeah, getting the audio book or the ebook off of pirate sites, which I guess if you’re listening to this, you could do this. You should buy it from me directly because the money goes to charity and then we can have direct communication. But anyway, I reluctantly put it on Amazon but I don’t announce it and I’m not proud of it.
Nick
The one that I’ve been the most into is Your Music and People recently. So many surprising ideas in it, but you’ve had these ideas for a long time. This is a pop quiz question for you, “every breakthrough comes from someone you know”. When do you think you wrote that?
Derek Sivers
1999.
Nick
Pretty close, its 2000. Maybe you wrote it in 1999 and then posted it in 2000.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, that was actually a technical thing for the dates. I started City Baby in 1998. Actually, this is a bit of a fun story. I never wanted or meant to be a public speaker, but I grew up in Chicago and when I went back to visit Chicago for my first time after being away for ten years. A group called the Chicago Harmony and Truth Group asked me to come to one of their get togethers. I said, “sure, I’d love to come”. That’s all it was. I was like, “that sounds cool”. So I showed up. They said, “yeah, we’re getting together from 7 to 10 on Thursday”. I said “cool, I’ll be there”. I showed up at like 7:15 and everybody was acting weird as soon as I walked in, they were like, “oh my God, you’re here, you’re here. Okay, great. Here, come with me right this way”. They led me down this hallway of like what? Why are you acting weird? Then they open this door, and there’s like 50 people sitting in chairs looking my direction. They said, Ladies and gentlemen, “Derek Sivers is here”. Everybody clapped, they said, “okay Derek, go”. I was like, “what?”. They’re like, “go ahead, talk”. They assumed that I was coming to speak. I thought I was just coming to a party. Suddenly I’m standing on stage and 50 people are looking my direction.
Derek Sivers
Wanting me to say something, and they’re all musicians. I went, okay, all right. Let me quickly think of things that musicians need to know because I was sitting in that chair ten years ago listening to visiting speakers come, tell me how I can get famous. Now I’m the guy running CD, Baby, I’ve seen how some things are working. So I just kind of started talking about things that I’ve learned, that I thought that musicians should know. It was all off the top of my head. That year was around 1998, 1999. Yeah, sorry, it would have been 1999. That’s where I started saying like, here’s the things I’ve learned. For one it was a common saying, at least I heard it a lot back then that it’s all who you know, it’s all who you know in this business. Everything in this business comes down to who you know. That didn’t make sense to me until I was in it, until I had felt it.
Derek Sivers
That just this random person that came to speak at Berklee School of Music and I got him a pizza and we talked for a minute and he said, “you know, you’re cool. Here’s my number. Let me know when you’re in New York”. I just randomly met with this guy and then he got me a job at Warner Bros. When I was like, moving to New York City. I didn’t know anybody, didn’t know what I was going to do. Thought I might be working at Burger King or something. Then I get this call saying, Marc Freed said we should hire you. It was because of this random guy I knew. Which just came through the most weird random circumstance. Suddenly I was inside the music business. I was just telling this group in Chicago, a group of musicians in Chicago. Like, this is how it really works when you hear it’s all who you know. This is why people say that and this is what it actually looks like. That was the origin of that. But and that’s also how I got thrust into public speaking. So it’s a little bit like when you’re swimming in the swimming hole and you’re scared to go in and somebody pushes you or makes you jump off the branch into the river or whatever, and then you go, “oh, okay, well now I’ve. Done it. It’s not so bad”. You do it again. See, somebody pushed me into public speaking accidentally and I went, Well, I did it once. I can do it again.
Nick
Yeah. I wonder if your background as a musician had already prepared you for that since you had played live to a new crowd all those different times. Do you get nerves anymore now for for public speaking gig or any of these things?
Derek Sivers
Yes and no, depending on what I’m speaking about. If you were to ask me to get up and tell my tale, I could do that to anybody. No nerves at all. I can I can get up and tell my tale and I know I can make it entertaining to a crowd if I need to. I can do that without any effort. But the times when my heart is racing is if you go to ted.com and search my name. There are three little talks on there that are just a few minutes each. In all three of those, my heart is about to explode because I was getting up there to say a very practiced and scripted three minute monologue. That was something I’d never spoken about before, and if I were to miss a single sentence, it would throw off the whole timing and it was absolutely terrifying. And so I still get myself into those positions sometimes where I have to get up and give a talk on something I’ve never said before. I’ve written it, I’ve practiced it. If I mess it up, I’m going to lose the audience. That’s still terrifying. But getting up to tell my tale, that’s not terrifying. And getting up to play music wouldn’t be terrifying either, because I’ve done it so much. Doing the new things will still scare you.
Nick
That’s really cool. I would think that, you talking about yourself would not be something you would be super nervous about at this point because you’ve been doing it for so long. I would think that largely because you said that it’s a avatar of yourself, you’re a little disconnected from how people are going to receive it in a positive way, like you’re not fully invested in “ are these people going to like me”.
Derek Sivers
You know what? Actually, if you don’t mind rewinding, 15 minutes ago when we were talking about negative comments and people abusing you and maybe they’re drunk. There’s one other important point here. Imagine you’re playing a little game where it’s like you get 99 green points and then minus one red point. As long as you’re doing mostly well and you’re doing mostly good for the world and people are mostly liking what you’re doing. Who cares about the occasional downside? I think that’s also like the one negative comment out of 99 good ones that I said earlier, that’s actually something I used to feel. I remember how that felt to focus on the one bad one. Now I just ignore it and I even kind of smile at it. It’s like, “oh, how cute, somebody doesn’t like me”. It doesn’t bother me at all because I know that I’m doing mostly good in the world. So be it. I don’t care if somebody’s not into it.
Derek Sivers
Whenever I send out emails to my email list and these are people who have asked to be on my email list. Every time, there’s always like one or two, they’re like, “you know f*ck you man. You know, you people you’re the problem with this world. Don’t you ever contact me. You know I hate you”. I actually just laugh like, okay delete. It doesn’t bother me one bit because I know that it’s all net positive. So I think that with audiences too, if I’m doing a talk and somebody in the room is not into it, as long as most people are into it, that’s fine.
Nick
Do you feel like whenever you transitioned into becoming the writer, did people like it right away or did it feel like you had to just put this work out there into the world and not force feed it, but persist and say, you know, I’m going to just keep doing this because I believe in it and I believe it will have value at the end of the rainbow. Or was it like right away you had people like, yes, we’ve been waiting for this.
Derek Sivers
Ideally, I would say the the persistence, because I think that’s the right answer and the right message to spread in my personal lucky situation because I didn’t start blogging until I had just sold CD Baby. It’s a weird thing that happens, where people want to know the thoughts of the millionaire. They give your thoughts and your opinions an unfair amount of attention on because of your past success. I know that the reason the TEDx conference had me come on stage is not because I had something so profound to say, but because I had just sold my company for a ton of money. I had proven myself to be in a certain league that was “worth listening to”, which I’m putting, you know, imaginary finger quotes around that because I think it’s kind of bullshit. I feel that I got an unfair amount of attention just because of my past success and still. Although no, maybe these days because my success is so far behind me, maybe these days my words are standing on their own. But definitely in the early days, I felt that they were in the glow of the recent success and people were wanting to know, “how can I be a millionaire too, let me hear what the other millionaires think so that I can do that”.
Nick
Yeah, I can see that viewpoint. But for me personally, the fact that you ran CD Baby is more of just a connection, oh, there’s a person with a music background. It may have opened doors, but then it’s the message that actually caught my attention.
Derek Sivers
Right? Also we’re talking now in 2022 when CD Baby is kind of ancient history. I mean, it still exists, but like in 2008, it was still kind of at the peak. There are times when companies come in and out of vogue, right? So CD Baby was still in vogue at the time when I started blogging. Now it’s like a lot of people just haven’t heard of it. But when I first started blogging, it was like everybody new CD Baby. Maybe it was also because I changed my audience when I started speaking TEDx and now I’m talking to people who have never heard of CD Baby, and that changed too. I’d hope that the words stand on their own now.
Nick
It seems like with Spotify it is not in good graces with the public for whatever reason, with musicians, mostly because of royalty reasons, but from a listening standpoint, I have all music ever recorded for free on my computer. Yeah, but I don’t think CD Baby had sort of the bad public image. There are platforms now that still, you know, are distribution platforms that people love. Bandcamp.
Derek Sivers
Bandcamp is amazing. That was great that we said it at the same time. That was great. That like, that’s what comes to mind when you think of companies that have a great reputation. Bandcamp, that was so cool.
Nick
Another one that I’ve seen that you commented on, I think, a forum post that you were talking about DistroKid had come out and you’re like, “yes, this is what I wanted to do”. Somehow that has become like, you go to DistroKid and it’s like Derek Sivers says. I guess that’s why part of having the audience in reach is your words do carry more weight. I think of other people, their words don’t have the same consequences as someone who has a spotlight on them. It’s just funny that it didn’t seem like whenever you said it, you were making a public proclamation about DistroKid. It was just on a forum post where you’re like, “this is really cool. This is what I would have done if I were still in that game”.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I did end up putting my own music for sale through DistroKid and that was kind of fun. I had also met the founder at a TED conference. He did something before DistroKid that was called *inaudible*company.com. That was really funny. I had met him at a concert, I’m like “hey, you’re the guy that did *inaudible*company.com. How cool”. We got to know each other, well no, I shouldn’t say we got to know each other. We talked for a bit, we talked for half an hour and then a year or two later he did DistroKid. He did it so lean and it was for the new era where like CD baby had come from this nineties background of warehouses of physical CD’s and then added digital distribution later. Whereas like he just made like from scratch a lean efficient company that did digital distribution only. I have to give it immediate disclaimer to say even though we’re saying nice things about them now, I retract my full hearted endorsement. I’m not going to say bad things about them, but I’ve also heard less positive things in recent years. I can’t say that I’m a wholehearted fan anymore.
Nick
Okay.
Derek Sivers
I’m not saying avoid them, but I’m not saying like rah rah DistroKid anymore.
Nick
Regardless, it seems like it opened Pandora’s box of further democratizing the distribution of music and making it where I could go into Logic, record a song and then be uploading it to all these platforms that had gatekeepers before. It’s harder to get heard now, but it’s easier than ever to get your music and message out there. It feels like, with the internets, so check it out. I do have one last thing. I want to skip to this last point and this is me. I think this will be useful to a lot of my friends who are artists and peers who have been having a bit of a hard time with showing up and creating with the same consistency and enthusiasm that they had maybe pre-pandemic or pre whatever major life change is happening. In my case, I just moved to a new city and I’m still trying to find my routine here. I have a five year old at home and man, it’s been hard. I know you write a lot about your kid and I think it’s a great perspective because it’s a counterpoint to other things you hear about parenting. But it’s hard. She doesn’t have a sibling, so I’ve decided I’m going to be your dad and your best friend. It’s a lot of playing and it means basically, since she was born five years ago, I’ve been part time ever since, you know, working from home.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, Same here.
Nick
My wife, she fortunately, she gives me during the day, so I can do sort of from when I wake up to 3:00 pm. I’m working. But then after that it’s just all hand a time for the rest of the day. Since I moved, I have been doing app development for ten years and I wanted to get into something new. I had been doing game development and in moving here I decided to get back into music software development again. I’ve found the open source community behind music software development to be awesome. They’re amazing people. I’ve been creating content there. I’m about to publish my first music app after not doing music apps for like ten years. In the time since I’ve been in developer, I’ve published over 100 apps, mostly shovel where let’s just okay, we’ll just we’ll cut that part but now it’s just hard to show up. I feel like I’ve been creatively stuck and the things that really motivated me before sometimes they just feel alien. I’m just wondering what you do when you’re stuck. Not what should I do, but I’ll listen to what I should do, too. But what do you do specifically when you’re stuck?
Derek Sivers
Thanks for giving the full context for that. That really helps. Where did you move to?
Nick
To Chapel Hill, North Carolina, just south of Chapel Hill. It’s nice. I’m in the Research Triangle area since I have a tech background, even though I’ve worked for myself forever. It’s nice to be near tech jobs. Should I ever need one?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So I always try to look for whatever crazy new thing inspires me. Like if I’m feeling social, I might feel like I want to collaborate or maybe I need to get a group together. Maybe I need to make a coalition of musicians or programmers or whatever it may be or make an event. It also can be really freeing and fun to create a new persona. Like, you don’t even tell anyone it’s you. I guess this is more applicable to music. But by doing something that makes you laugh. You’ve read my book, Your Music and People where I tell the story about Captain T. Captain T was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever done because it was a friend of mine that was in a similar position of feeling creatively stuck. He just put on this new persona of this conspiracy theorist barking out his message to the world, did this like very inappropriate cover version of We Are the World. We were just amusing ourselves. I ended up producing the record for him and we laughed the entire time. Like for the weeks that we made that record, we were laughing our way through it. It is so fun to listen to just for us. At that point it’s like it doesn’t matter if anybody else likes it. If you’re having a blast doing it. That’s a big thing. Also it can help to switch up the scope of what you’re doing, right. Say, if you’ve been working on long, difficult projects for a long time.
Derek Sivers
It can be smart to switch it up and do short, punchy, fun things, but vice versa if you’ve been doing short, punchy, fun things for a long time. It can be more rewarding and inspiring to commit yourself to something bigger and long term. That’s my How to Live book. I had been writing blog posts for ten years. Then my book called How to Live was like a four year long project of just this one mission that I had to see through of making this book that I had in my mind and I did it. But it was four years of full time work to do that one thing. That was super inspiring because it was different than what I had been doing. Then on a practical note, I’ve got one little kind of practical productivity hack that really helps when I’m not feeling inspired. Is to just keep my fingers on the keys. Again, if you’re a musician listening to this, this can be like, keep your hands on your instrument. There’s this temptation to stop. To walk away, and to go look for more input, to think, “oh, like I’m not outputting right now. I’m not doing something inspiring, I’m not inspired to output. Maybe I just need to go find some more input. I need to watch another TV show, I need to watch a thing, I need to surf the net and look for something. I don’t know what. Scroll, scroll, scroll”.
Derek Sivers
In those moments instead, I’ve just found it helps so much to just not allow myself to take my hands off the keys. Keep my fingers on the keys, even just like if I’m writing, for example, you can make your own music comparison if you want. To just write crap and it’s no good, but I’m just going to keep writing. Sometimes I’ll even just sit there writing, like, “what am I writing?”. I have no idea what I’m saying. I don’t even know what the point of this is. What is the message? What is the point? Why do I think this needs a point? I’ll start doing this stream of consciousness, but at least I’m keeping my fingers on the keys. I’m not letting myself stop and get a lemonade and go watch something. I just keep typing and and eventually, every time that turns into something good, that’s what I needed to push through. So the tip is, don’t let yourself switch into consumer mode. Stop with all of the inputs. We all have enough input. We’ve all taken in enough information. When you’re not feeling inspired, just keep your focus on the output itself. I think that output itself is inspiring. Input is almost never inspiring. There’s a rare, rare one in a million chance where you hear or see something that makes you jump out of your chair to create, almost never. Almost always, what you need to do is just keep your hands on the keys and keep creating.
Nick
What do you have going in your headphones when you do that?
Derek Sivers
Nothing.
Nick
Oh, just silence?
Derek Sivers
I’ve tried so many times, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to Groove Salad if you go to somafm.com. Tune in to the streaming radio station Groove Salad. It is the most backgroundy trip hop. Even that, as much as I love Groove Salad, I just stopped. I end up listening to it. I end up analyzing what they’re doing with the high hat or listening to the way it’s mixed. Then it’s taking my attention away from what I’m doing. So no, I write in silence. Programming, working, writing, everything, just silence so that when I listen to music, I give it my full attention, kind of can’t help it.
Nick
I very much appreciate your thoughts on getting unstuck. One final angle with that is do you ever feel like, sorry, I’m laughing at myself. Do you ever feel like you’re like a ship boat captain and then you’re trying to set the point for sail? Like, “okay, we’re going to go over here, set sail”, and then the captain gets down and he grabs the ore, and then you start going that way. Sometimes you have to go back. I think I do a great job of being the guy with the ore, but not always the best job of being the captain. Whenever you’re independent, you have to do the big ideas and then you have to do the hands on keyboard work. I do great job with hands on keyboard work. It’s the why am I doing this? If sometimes I lose sight of the vision, the same thing happened with game development. I still love game development. I’m still going to do game development because I don’t know no better, but I don’t have the same drive for it that I had previously. It’s not that this guy can’t do it, it’s that the guy up here has changed his mind. So I don’t know. Does traveling help or does it taking large breaks? I’m just fishing.
Derek Sivers
No, see, that’s exactly the thing I advise against. That’s that kind of consumer mindset that’s thinking like, “I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it maybe I just need to go consume some more. Maybe I need to go look at Japan. Maybe I need to go watch this mini series. Maybe I need to go read something online”. That’s the consumer mindset. That’s what we default to thinking is that we need more input. I think my main message is that, no, no, no, no, no. Maybe if anything, you need to change tell the captain to change direction because this boat is stuck on a reef. Maybe we need to go a different direction instead of further into the reef. But no, searching for new inputs is not the way, you’ve already had enough input. I think that you can just completely change your tactic. Do it deliberately, even though it doesn’t feel natural. If you’ve been doing things a certain way with game development for a long time, you can say like, “I’m going to create an accounting app or I’m going to stop making mobile apps, I’m going to make a desktop app or I’m going to make a web app”. You could decide that you’ve been solo for too long and like you said, where you’re at in North Carolina right now, maybe you need to just have the experience of getting a job just for the different structure in doing so. But never stopping to travel or consume.
Nick
I appreciate that. I appreciate you extending the metaphor as well. The nautical theme continuing. Derek, thank you so much for your time, man. I appreciate all the stuff you put out there. One of the reasons I wanted to do this was for that question, but also I’m just so interested in the back story of all the stuff you do. A lot of times you incorporate things from your past into the stories that you do, but there’s a lot out there that is yet to be explored, so I’m passing it on to you podcasters as you got to ask Derek some more of these stuff. This is where we find out the stuff that hasn’t been asked. Dig deep, we all know Hell Yeah or No if you don’t know it, for God’s sakes, read the book, buy them, Go to Amazon and buy the book.
Derek Sivers
Don’t go to Amazon. Go to sive.rs. Go to my website and get the book. Fuck Amazon. So know the you know the reason I do these things besides I just thought you were cool. I thought you were funny. I like your videos, I like your persona, I like your style. The other reason I do these is for the people I meet. So, yes thanks for the call out. Anybody listening to this, go to my website, go to sive.rs and email me. Say hello, introduce yourself. It’s actually my favorite part and it’s why I do these things its because of the cool people I meet when I do.
Nick
Derek Sivers Thank you so much man.
Derek Sivers
It’s been fun. I loved our conversation.
Nick
That’s it. Thanks for watching the video, folks. If you want to learn more about Derek or see what he’s up to, go to sive.rs. Be sure to like and subscribe and let me know down in the comments if there are any new insights you gain today. This was a great talk. I think the thing I’m going away with is I’m just going to keep my hands on the keyboard. So thanks for watching and I’ll see you all next time. Pixels. Oh, you knew I had to end it on a dad joke? Yeah.