Greatest Music of All Time
host: Tom Cridland
music industry changes, touring musician challenges, Prince’s influence, music consumption habits
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Transcript:
Derek Sivers
The way you always dive right in. I just assumed you’re recording already.
Tom Cridland
Yeah, Well, it’s 6:45 where you are, right? Or no, 6:30.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I’ve been up for hours. I’m good. I’m a morning person. I don’t know why. Ever since I was a teenager, I wake up at 5 a.m. and I’m at full energy when I begin my day, and then it falls off as the day progresses.
Tom Cridland
And you’ve always been that way. You’ve never been like a night owl?
Derek Sivers
It’s funny, we assume certain things. We assume musicians are night owls and we assume that certain interests in life correlate with personality types. But sometimes we [crosstalk]
Tom Cridland
I think I’ve met too many night owls, but then again, I do know many people who, like you, favor an early start. And surprise, surprise, they tend to be the ones who are doing well for themselves and managing to stay on top of things. So anyway, what I wanted to ask, first of all, is for people who aren’t familiar with you and and don’t know the breadth of your achievements. How would you introduce yourself if you were in charge of writing podcast notes? If you’re writing your own liner notes, how would you do it?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, well, it depends for the audience. It’s funny for your audience. If I’m talking to somebody in music, then I would say that I was a full time musician for 15 years, 15? Yeah. After 15 years of being a full time musician,a professional musician in New York City. Bought a house in Woodstock with the money I made touring all that kind of stuff. After doing that for 15 years, I was selling my CD on my own website because this is back in 1997 when Amazon only sold books. There was no PayPal and there was no way to sell your music as an independent musician.
Derek Sivers
So I built my own little thing just for me. Then my friends in the music business in New York City said, “Hey, dude, can I use that to sell my CD too.” So doing this favor for friends turned into CD Baby, which with lucky timing, became the largest seller of independent music online in its time. So I did that for ten years from 1998 to 2008, and then in 2008 I was just feeling done. So I left. I sold the company, put it in better hands, and since then I’ve been a author, speaker, random dude at large. How’s that?
Tom Cridland
Yeah, that is great. I know that many people listening to this will have used CD Baby and many people in this audience will be familiar with your achievements already. The way that I heard about your achievements, I was actually using CD Baby already, but the way I heard about your story and the story behind it, was through Tim Ferriss and your appearance on his podcast. Were you in talks with [unintelligible] his book.
Derek Sivers
Yes, I think so. Yeah.
Tom Cridland
It’s always difficult with these companies to think of the person behind it, because obviously there are now so many distributors for streaming services and it’s just really nice to be able to speak to someone about this minefield. Because at the moment the music industry is going through so much change. But going back to what you said about the start of CD Baby, was this very much a case--how much would you put down to timing in terms of this becoming so successful, and in terms of you deciding to abandon what is a pretty successful music career? If you’re touring and buying a house in Woodstock with the proceeds.
Derek Sivers
The timing was everything. I couldn’t have done it two years later. I get questions from entrepreneurs that are wondering, “Hey, how can I call attention to what I’m doing?” They want to use my story as an example like, “Hey, you started this thing and made it big, so how can I do that too?” If have to tell them in 1997, if you were an independent musician that wanted to sell your music online, the only way to do it was a guy named Derek, and was in New York. There was literally no business on the internet that would sell your music if you didn’t have a record deal.
Derek Sivers
These online companies didn’t feel that independent musicians were worth dealing with. So I had this kind of instant monopoly, even though I was just a guy in my bedroom doing this thing. Because it didn’t feel worth doing, to these other companies. I had this lucky head start. But there is something else that should be mentioned, is that I think early on, it became really clear to the musicians that I was just a fellow musician that understood what it was like. I had been doing it myself.
Derek Sivers
I’d been beating on locked doors in the music industry myself for 15 years, and I knew what it was like. So even right after I started CD Baby, all these well funded Silicon Valley competitors came along and they just didn’t catch on. Because musicians just liked CD Baby better. Because it was clear that it was done by this guy Derek, that’s also a musician, and knows what it’s like. And I think just the way that I communicated with musicians and let them know that I knew where they were at. I understood them. I was them. You know what I mean? It was the timing, but it was also the spirit of the thing.
Tom Cridland
It was the way you did it and what you uniquely brought to it. Which is a dual thing. It’s like, okay, the Beatles could have only existed in the sixties and trying to do Beatles is a stupid, redundant thing to try and do, in my view.
Derek Sivers
Or trying to start another Facebook, or trying to do another Virgin, or any of these things. They were a product of their time, right?
Tom Cridland
Exactly, and that sounds like such an obvious point to make. But you said yourself that you get quite a lot of people, entrepreneurs saying, “Oh, well, you did this, so how can I do it too?” But I really do think that must be a huge proportion of people’s problems. Like aspiring creatives and business people. It’s recognizing that the timing and the originality and authenticity and everything needs to be right. So with that in mind, what do you say to the advice of, be yourself? How important would you say that is?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I don’t know. Wait, Tom, I’m dying to ask you a question. You’re an Elton John aficionado, do you think there could be a new Elton John now? Somebody like that?
Tom Cridland
No, that’s why I do an Elton John tribute. Because, that’s just a good way of funding my road trips and my holidays. Whether or not I would see that as being the new Elton John, I think if you were to try and become a piano based singer, songwriter and basically make similar type of music as Elton, and record in the same way as Elton, and say, “Oh, we’re going to do this analog just they did it in the old days. We’re going to record the tape, and we’re going to try and make records.”
Tom Cridland
You could probably make records sounding relatively like those records done in 1973. Are you going to go multiplatinum with that? No, because everybody who is listening they’re like, Bad Bunny, J Balvin and Harry Styles. So trying to be the new Elton John is redundant. Can you go and play Benny And The Jets in a beer festival and get paid relatively well? Yes you can, but legitimately trying to be the new so-and-so I think is, is actually a mistake. Definitely a mistake that I’ve made in the past.
Derek Sivers
But what would be the modern equivalent of saying, “Okay, we’re not going to imitate the past, but somebody of that caliber.” Or who had that place in the culture at that time, how could somebody have that place in this culture but with that talent? Is there a--
Tom Cridland
Well, they do. You look at that in terms of the numbers, you go onto the streaming platforms and you’ll see people like Drake are pretty up there. Because Elton John above all is a commercial artist. So he was at his most [unintelligible] during the 70s. I personally happen to like his music, but over the years I’ve realized--when I was 26, I very much had the attitude, “Anybody who doesn’t have an obsession with Elton and the Beatles is crazy.” Those guys have bad taste. My music taste is so good that everybody else is crazy. I’ve now come around to realize, actually everybody else’s taste in music is legitimate and I just have my own taste in music. But again, I think a lot of people are very firmly entrenched in their thing. It’s a bit like how Oasis, when they first came out, they were like, “We hate Bill Collins. We hate Sting, we’re so much better.”
Derek Sivers
You know what’s funny, two days ago I didn’t get enough sleep and I was really tired in the morning. I was sitting in the kitchen and I started singing. I’m so tired. I haven’t slept a wink. I started singing the whole song and my girlfriend just looked at me like, “Are you making that up?” I said, “No, you don’t know the song from The White Album, I’m So Tired?”
Derek Sivers
She goes, “No.” I said, “Oh my God.” So I go and I put on the original. I’m like, singing along. I wonder, should I call you? And I’m loving it, right? And she’s just looking at me, and when the song was done, she goes, “I think the Beatles are kind of overrated”. I was like, “Overrated?” She goes, “I just don’t think that was a very good song.”
Derek Sivers
I was like maybe it’s just because of the time when we heard it. If that’s some of your earlier introduction to music, it blows your mind. But somebody who’s been listening to music for 20 years but for some reason hasn’t heard the White Album, maybe it’s not so impressive. I don’t know.
Tom Cridland
What about the introduction? It’s about--there are so many things that are going into--I was introduced to it through the anthology series, where they’re talking about themselves, and they’re so likable. I was just a kid when I was watching it, and I was just like, “These people are awesome.” This is so larger than life and brilliant. Does that mean that when I went into school in the nineties and started talking about the Beatles--I got pretty mercilessly mocked for it. Because everybody in England is busy listening to Spice Girls, Craig David, Artful Dodger and things like that.
Tom Cridland
Very often it’s a difficult thing to realize, or it has been for me, and I think still for many others. And I’m actually hijacking somebody else’s point as well, because somebody said that on a podcast, I should note. But that really resonated with me. What I wanted to ask you is, so obviously CD Baby is definitely at the top of your achievements in terms of a lot of people ask you about that because it was phenomenally successful, but how difficult was it?
Tom Cridland
Because music is not something that you go into just to make money. In fact, it’s quite the reverse. A lot of people care so deeply about it that they lose money on it. They certainly lose time on it and all the rest of it.
Derek Sivers
As they should.
Tom Cridland
It’s so intertwined with your emotions. So how difficult was it for you to transition away from your career as a musician, given that--
Derek Sivers
Oh, right, sorry. You asked that before we got on a tangent. No, for me, it was--it’s tough to talk about. There are certain things in life that we start to feel done with. It could apply to anything. Something you’ve loved for many years, and at a certain point you feel done. The best comparison I could make--actually, wait sorry, I’ve got two comparisons. I’m going to go in reverse order because the same thing happened with CD Baby, right? CD Baby was my whole life, every waking hour of my life. 7:00 am to midnight, seven days a week. All I did was obsess on making CD Baby the best it could be for ten years of my life. And after ten years, I just felt done.
Derek Sivers
Some people think that’s strange. But I think about those painters that make these giant murals that fill the side of a building and they sometimes work for years on it. Like Diego Rivera style. And I’m sure there’s at some point when they put a brushstroke on and they step back and they look at it and they think I think it’s done. And they look at it a week later and they go, “Yeah, I can’t do anything else. That’s it. It’s finally done.” That’s how I felt about CD Baby. That felt like done and complete and I was ready to leave.
Derek Sivers
My music career, I think I was lacking intellectual stimulation. I had been a touring musician for 15 years. I’d been touring pretty much non-stop for 15 years. When I started this little hobby website called CD Baby, it was really just meant to be this tiny side thing I do in a few hours during Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday when I didn’t have any gigs. But it was so interesting. I was learning HTML, then I was learning about databases than I was creating this thing that people wanted so badly. Whereas as a musician, sometimes you go and do these gigs and you often get a cold reception. The world is usually not thanking you so much for making music. Some people do, but most don’t. Whereas as soon as I started CD Baby, just so many musicians were like, “Oh my God, thank you so much. This is amazing. There is no other way to sell my music. Oh my God, you’ve changed my life.”
Derek Sivers
And that kind of feedback you can’t help but steer towards that. When the world is giving you a clear indication of what it wants you to do, you should heed it. So I just started giving CD baby my full attention and just started saying no to some gigs. I’d get a request to do a gig in upstate New York or Ohio or something like that, and I’d say, “How much? No, I’m sorry. I just can’t.” Because this website was emotionally satisfying from all the musicians that loved it, but really intellectually satisfying for how much I was learning.
Derek Sivers
Whereas getting on the road and holding that steering wheel for another 6 hours on the highway to get to a gig where you stand up, you play the songs that you’ve been playing for a couple of years, you get off stage, you get back in the van for 6 hours and drive home. It’s just not as rewarding. So it was weird identity wise to stop doing music, but it was an obvious decision intellectually and emotionally. It was just hard identity-wise to let go of that.
Tom Cridland
How grueling was your touring lifestyle?
Derek Sivers
It was the worst. I think if you’re super famous, you can book the ultimate tour. You can plan a tour. You can tell Ohio and Florida when you’re coming. But if you’re not to that level, then you just have to get the gigs where you can get them. So I’d very often be driving 10 hours to do a gig this way, 8 hours to drive a gig that way. I was always the one driving the van since I don’t fall asleep at the wheel.
Tom Cridland
My God. So you’d have to drive all the way and play them?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Then get back in the van and do it again. There’s a cute story you might like. I use it as a metaphor for the pricing and business as creative. That pricing has meaning. So there was a university in Ohio that asked me if I could come perform for a two hour show. And I said yes. And they said, “What would be your price?” And I said, “1500 dollars.” And she said, “Oh, that’s that’s a little much. 1500. What would it cost for you to do only a one hour show?” And I said, “$2,000.” And she said,” No we want you to perform less, not more.” I said, “Yeah, I’m going to charge you more to perform less, because performing is the part I like. It’s the driving that I hate and the setting up of the driving. So you’re paying me to drive there. Once I’m there, I’ll play music for free. You’re paying me to get there.” She laughed and thought that was great. So she came up with the 1500 bucks. But I think it was an accurate way to price what we do. The playing music’s the fun part. What you’re paying us for is to get there.
Tom Cridland
Yeah, well, it’s very true. It’s difficult to quantify in exact terms, but would you say more regularly than not, you’d finish a gig and think that was worth it, all that travel, all that grueling effort that it takes to get there and all that time as well, 8 hours behind a wheel.
Derek Sivers
It was like one out of four gigs that would feel worth it. How about you? I’m sorry, go ahead.
Tom Cridland
Well, it varies. It depends what for. I’ve not been playing and performing music for that many years of my life. So it’s really depended on the tour. I’ve only done some tours around the UK for a bit when I quit drinking. Just in casual venues like the Troubadour in London and pubs. So that was such a novelty and I was quitting drinking, so that was fun. The only other tour in the UK I’ve done was supporting The Stylistics. Those crowds were so much bigger than what I was used to. That was awesome. That was only 19 gigs and very easy and only half an hour per gig. And all made [sense]. Then I’ve done three trips around America. One was a bloody disaster because it was just no planning, really tiring and we were trying to play a gig in every state, which we accomplished.
Derek Sivers
Oh God.
Tom Cridland
It was crazy.
Derek Sivers
Oh, you did it? You did every state. That’s amazing.
Tom Cridland
Yeah, but, shitty gigs that anybody could do it if they were crazy enough. Then this year I’ve done the Elton tribute stuff, which basically pays for--it was like correcting the effort, the error of the past. I want to go around America playing music and cool places with a good plan. And that Elton thing is like cheating. So I’ve had very varied things. Have I really toiled and put in the effort to tour for 15 years and bought a house with the proceeds, No I haven’t. I haven’t treated it--I’ve had other things, so I’ve cheated as well. It’s really difficult. It would have been different back then, but it would have been equally difficult to give it your all. Who did you want to be? Did you have someone who you wanted to be like, the new Elton John or the new Beatles? Or did you want to be yourself?
Derek Sivers
Oh, Prince. Prince was my hero. I was really into, well, Prince, Stevie Wonder and Trent Reznor to me were three examples of people that would go into the studio by themselves and play some of everything. So Prince would play all the instruments himself. To be clear, I really loved pre-1990 Prince. So from his first album through 1990, to me it was just like all gems. He was a great role model at the time too, because he had this incredible work ethic, right? Like he would record in the studio for like 30 hours straight and they’d have to send in three different engineers in shifts to work with him.
Derek Sivers
That he just had this drive, but also this innovation that he would just--he was experimenting with the whole arranging of music and the production of it. And what you choose to include and cut out. Only music nerds that dig into a range of instruments notice things like his big first giant number one hit with When Doves Cry had no bass. It was just a drumbeat and his voice and then his song Kiss came out. It was just no reverb at all. It was just this shockingly dry recording and things like that. I loved how he was creative at every step of the process. It wasn’t just words and music, it was the whole production. Yeah, Prince was my hero musically. James Brown, Stevie Wonder, these were my big heroes. But Prince in particular. If I was trying to be one person in particular, it was Prince.
Tom Cridland
Who produced Prince’s records? Did he produce them himself?
Derek Sivers
Him, Oh God, yeah. He was a little--he started when he was 17 and there was enough negotiating power for his first solo album that he demanded full creative control. So even from his very first album, at I think 17 or 18. Maybe not the first, maybe it started with his second, something like that. But at least by his second album, it was written, produced, everything by Prince.
Tom Cridland
Because I’m not being funny, but if you came up with something as--because Kiss is an amazing song. If you came up with that with the wrong producer, obviously he was Prince already then he’d had that eponymous first record and he was already clearly bloody talented, so he’d proven himself already. But a wrong producer, I’m just saying, in England sit down and you start singing in that voice, dry as a bone, I could imagine a producer being like, “What on earth are you thinking? We’re going to have to scrap all of this? We’re just going to go again.” And he can’t have had any people around him sort of saying, “No, don’t try this. We need to do it this way.” He was so out of the box, as you say, with When Doves Cry as well. But so many of his things just had [unintelligible] unto them.
Derek Sivers
I love that you’re mentioning this because you’re right. It’s like the product of a singular vision that is, what do you call that? I want to say rebellious, but no, it’s more like independent. There must be a word for somebody who like answers to no one. Who feels no obligation to adhere to norms or to fit in, but makes a deliberate decision to stand out? I was--
Tom Cridland
You say vision, but it doesn’t really quite cut the rebellious part of it, because it’s like I really [unintelligible] about recording convention. I don’t care about the way that they make pop records on the radio. I’m going to make Kiss. I’m not going to make anything that sounds like derivative.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, Tom, I love that you brought this up because I think sometimes people who are coming at life from a go to college and get a job and have the courage to start your own business, those types that--I don’t love the fact that I fell into these entrepreneur circles, right? To me I was doing CD Baby to help musicians, but once I sold CD Baby for a bunch of money, people went,” Ooh, he’s an entrepreneur. Hey, teach us how to get rich.” And I fell into these circles where people thought I was an entrepreneur. And I think I tried it on for a bit. But really at my core, I’m still coming at things from the music point of view.
Derek Sivers
And so when I think about the fact that even though I’m not a real musician anymore, that way of looking at life has just shaped the life decisions I’ve made. So this thing we’re talking about right now with Prince, I love that you brought this up. That it’s not just that he’s ignoring what everybody else is doing in the market, but deliberately knowing that it’s a competitive advantage to do the opposite. To deliberately not do what everybody else is doing. To deliberately stand out and not try to fit into today’s thing.
Derek Sivers
And I find that I still do that. I think about the life lessons that come from Bob Dylan or Miles Davis going electric and alienating their existing audience. They did it in the name of personal growth and exploration and avoiding stagnation. The life lessons you learn from Brian Eno’s approach to producing music and his oblique strategies. You can apply that to life. It isn’t just music. It’s the same thing with the Prince thing you’re bringing up. This idea to just say, “Well, I’m going to do what I want to do. I don’t care if it doesn’t fit in with the world.” In fact, I think it would be even better if what I’m doing doesn’t fit in, because then that gives you a unique voice in the world, almost like a reason to exist. If everybody else is doing this over here and you’re doing that over there, it justifies your existence a little more. To be adding a unique voice to the choir of the world.
Tom Cridland
You’re absolutely right. However, there is the aspect, like in your case, that’s been something I’d say that’s served you well and probably will continue to serve you well. Particularly if, as you say, if you’re getting tired of people getting that thing of, “Wow, this guy was so successful with CD Baby. We want to invite him to your 300th conference of the year as a guest speaker to teach other people how to become wildly successful as entrepreneurs.” Maybe if you’re getting bored with that, just not doing whatever you feel like is going to serve you really well. But in terms of the music part, where someone like Prince is going to do what he wants. Or someone like Stevie Wonder or Trent Reznor, I mean, these people, as you said, are multi-instrumentalists, are seriously talented and that type of spirit. What if that is channeled by someone who is, let’s just say not that talented or [crosstalk]
Derek Sivers
I was wondering where you’re going with that.
Tom Cridland
What if it’s someone who genuinely--okay, you probably shouldn’t be a musician. Because of that thing of the independent spirit of Prince or whatever, they’re like, “Well, let’s just keep flogging a dead horse. Let’s keep throwing shit to the wall and hope that something sticks.” That is the worry. So how would you say that--maybe you won’t even have an answer to this, because it’s almost impossible to answer. But how should people know and try and figure out how to channel that spirit and know when to pivot and when to change things up?
Derek Sivers
Two answers Picasso and babies. Picasso’s early work was just realism. Was just learning the craft of realistic painting and drawing. Only later did he push into his innovative style and force himself to try what nobody else had done. I’m going to come back to that. Babies, I love this idea that whenever you talk about the subject of, maybe you’re just not good enough or giving up. I think about the comparison of, if you had a baby, how long would you help your baby learn to walk before you just give up and decide, “They’re never going to learn.” Never, right? You would never give up and just decide, “Fuck it, my kids just never going to learn to walk.” You just keep trying forever. So I think of that with any of our pursuits. I don’t think that you ever need to say, “Well, maybe I just suck and I should just stop?” If you feel it’s worth doing, then you never have to stop.
Derek Sivers
So there’s a little story on my website anybody can look up if you want, about how it took me 15 years to learn to sing. And I’m not just being humble. I was a terrible singer for 15 years, so from the age of 14 to 29, I sucked. But I really, really wanted to get good at this. So I had so many voice teachers. I would practice like an hour a day. I would sing my long tones and arpeggios and I would do odd things with my tongue and singing scales and whatever it took. I was really determined to be a good singer.
Derek Sivers
Even all along the way, even after 13 years, a producer I really admired just said, “Derek, you’re just not a singer. Just quit. Just find a good singer and stop this.” But a couple of years later, I just kept practicing every single day. And so after 15 years, my voice really got good, at least good enough where I was happy with it. I think it could be the same thing with anything. Even if you say you don’t have any natural talent. That’s fine. I graduated from Berklee College of Music, and there were some musicians there that were just not naturals. There was this great drummer, Ernie LaRouche. He was one of the best drummers at the school. I did a gig with him, and I asked him like, “Dude, how did you get so good?” He explained, he was like, “Dude, I’m the opposite of a natural.” He said, “I put in like 6 hours a day of practice just to try to stay afloat, whereas some people just pick things up and they just, they’re a natural. It falls into place right away.”
Derek Sivers
So I think if somebody is feeling like, I’m just not talented or if somebody tells you, you’re just not talented, but if you’re still driven, then you keep at it like a baby learning to walk. You never give up. Then as far as like the--so now I’m going to do the Picasso thing related to Prince and what we’re talking about, this innovative approach. Even if you start out trying to just sound like the stuff you hear on the radio. Trying to imitate it, which can be a great exercise, even as a producer to say, “Okay, let me try to imitate that kick drum exactly.” Let me try to imitate--how do they get that sound or even trying to imitate the song craft of songwriters you admire to perhaps cover their song.
Derek Sivers
Then say, “How can I write something new that’s that good? Exactly what is it that I like about that song? Is it the the melodic range here? Is it the way that they leap to surprising notes? Is that the chord changes?” You analyze that and you use it. You imitate other people’s music the way that Picasso’s early years did. But then at a certain point, when you think you’ve got it handled, this is where I think that Prince was such an inspiration, is to deliberately challenge yourself to do something innovative. Even in the tiniest little ways. He had this odd little track called Forever in My Life on the Sign ’O’ the Times album, where the backup vocals sing the line that the lead vocals about to sing. Usually the lead vocal sings and the backup vocals echo it, but instead, throughout the whole song, the backup vocals precede the line that the lead singer is about sing.
Derek Sivers
Really, it’s to somebody who nerds out on music it’s really innovative. Whereas a casual listener might not notice how cool that is. You can get inspired by little things like that and challenge yourself to keep coming up with these things. So I still think that innovators are a great role model, even if you’re not yet brilliant.
Tom Cridland
I think that is a very uplifting message. I guess it’s true. It’s difficult to argue against. But what if you want to be the Harry Styles of your field. You don’t have the time to go, “Well, I’m a baby here, and eventually I’ll be able to walk.” What if you want to be the best--
Derek Sivers
Are you talking about because of age? Like, because you--
Tom Cridland
Yeah, you’re like 18 or 20 or something. You’re working out what to do with your life. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you and you’re saying, “Oh, I really want to be really successful.” Then you get to whatever age and you’re like, “I’m not Harry Styles yet, but I could be something else.” I could be Bill Gates or something. If I decided to take a career turn, I could be whatever. But I guess all of that’s redundant. If you strongly believe that you should be doing what you love.
Tom Cridland
You’re right. If your intrinsic motivation, the thing that drives you inside, if that’s only around one thing, well then, fuck it. Even if the world’s not rewarding you for doing that thing, but that’s the thing you love, then obviously you keep doing that. Maybe it just means that you need to get your extrinsic rewards in other ways. So if you just feel that you’re the next Robert Frost and you want to write poetry that the world is going to love, like Maya Angelou’s or something, but people just aren’t digging on your poems, well then you’re going to need to make your money in another way. You can keep writing your poetry for hours at night as long as you’ve got your day job that’s paying your cost of living.
Derek Sivers
Some of the happiest musicians I know have taken that approach. Through CD Baby, I had almost 200,000 musician clients and I was really in 1-to-1 direct contact with all of them. So I heard so many stories of people who were really unhappy with their career and people that were really happy with their career. And some of the happiest musicians I know were the ones that just decided that they’re going to do this just for the love of it. They would actually release albums every year or two and take it seriously and even go on tour or do some gigs and do the full release thing and distribute it. But they had something else that was paying their cost of living so that they could do the music just because they loved it. That is a way that you really can have both. That you can never give up on your dreams. You can keep doing this thing, but you don’t have to depend on the world to reward you.
Derek Sivers
But there’s a different approach, which is to throw lots of stuff out to the world, like basically say yes to everything and see what sticks. This is from an old, old interview. I’m not positive this is true, but I’m pretty sure this is true. That Trent Reznor, in his early years as a musician in Ohio, he was that guy in the studio playing all the instruments himself. I heard that he had five different band names doing five different styles of music that were really all just him. So one of them was like straight up eighties metal. Something else was like a ministry styling and something else was industrial and something else was--I guess this is pre-grunge, so grunge doesn’t count. But let’s just say five different styles, and he had five different band names. Then TVT Records said, “Oh, Nine Inch Nails. We like this one.” And he said, “All right, great. I’ll do Nine Inch Nails then.”
Derek Sivers
So he let the other four fall by and he now is Nine Inch Nails because that’s the one that the world had rewarded. So this even goes for entrepreneurs. I don’t know how many entrepreneurs listen to your podcast. I wish they would, that sometimes you have an idea that you think the world needs the next Instagram for snails or whatever your big idea is, and the world doesn’t love it. You should not just wait for the world to reward that one idea. Actually, same with songwriters. I met a lot of songwriters at CD Baby that had one song that they believed in. Like Derek, this is the best song ever. You got to hear this song. I think this is going to be a huge hit. I need to get this song to Mariah Carey or whatever, and they’d play me this song and I would think it was terrible.
Derek Sivers
But they had an emotional attachment to it because they wrote it about their mother before she died or whatever it might be. And they so strongly believed in this one song that it was sad that they desperately wanted the world to reward them for this one idea, whereas it doesn’t work like that. The world doesn’t reward what you want it to reward. Sometimes it’s a total surprise. I mean, you know from all these interviews with songwriters that you’ve met that so often a musician’s biggest hit song is one that they never would have chosen. Sometimes it wasn’t even meant to be released.
Derek Sivers
I just recently heard the history of rock music through 500 songs, that guy. He did the story about the Beach Boys and they had this bit about the song Bah bah bah bah bah bah and bah bah bah. Apparently that wasn’t even meant to be released. It was just a junk recording around the campfire. And they’re messing up the lyrics partway through. And all the Beach Boys hate the fact that it became one of their biggest hits ever. These stories happened again and again and again with so many artists. So you don’t know what the world is going to reward.
Derek Sivers
So I think the lesson learned in this is, if you really want the world to reward your creations, you have to make lots of different things and let go of the outcome a bit. Just understand, I have no idea what will be a hit. So as an entrepreneur, you have to create lots of ideas, see what the world wants. As a musician you have to create lots of songs, keep putting them out there, even perhaps create lots of different bands or artists, different styles and see what the world rewards. But if you really just have this one thing that you personally want to keep doing, you could just decide to do it for intrinsic reasons only.
Tom Cridland
There’s a lot of value in what you’re saying. Also that’s fascinating about Nine Inch Nails. But the Nine Inch Nails first stuff was quite--he’s more or less managed to do that thing of all those different sounds that you mentioned, whether it’s like not grunge exactly it is very different from the downward spiral or what’s the name of the first album with like ring finger and stuff on, which would have been the one that you’re referring to.
Derek Sivers
Pretty Hate Machine?
Tom Cridland
Pretty Hate Machine. Yeah with head like a hole. That record is great. And that does have simpy bits in it, but it’s all got that dark side to it too. But he’s just such a genius, isn’t he? Trent Reznor. So you mentioned for instance--
Derek Sivers
Sorry, the new stuff he’s doing with soundtracks and the Ghosts. Ghosts, one through four, I love that stuff. That’s some of my favorite music. Sorry.
Tom Cridland
Wasn’t he--How many soundtracks is that? Did the Social Network, didn’t he? He’s been doing quite a few.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, a lot. In fact, it surprised me. I went to go see--I have a ten year old son and we went to go see the movie called Soul, the Pixar movie that came out a couple of years ago. We saw it in the cinema and I’m watching this movie and I’m like, “God, this soundtrack is great. Who did this?” Fucking Trent Reznor did the soundtrack to Pixar Soul. It’s so good.
Tom Cridland
Yeah, he’s so productive because, I see that he’s also still touring. There were some posters that I saw up the other day. These type of people never stop. And on that note, because you mentioned Prince and Trent Reznor, but you also mentioned James Brown, which got me thinking about live music. Because he was so notorious for being such a workaholic. He played live so much much. Even towards the end of his career, he was playing like 250 dates or something a year. It was his work ethic for live music was huge. How big a part of your life is live music now?
Derek Sivers
Zero, negative. [unintelligible]
Derek Sivers
No, actually, I want to think about this more deeply someday. But it’s interesting if you get yourself into a position in life where you are creating something that you yourself do not ingest. So for 15 years I made my living doing live gigs, but I never, ever went to live gigs. I never liked going to live concerts. Well, maybe when I was 14. I was really into heavy metal when I was 14 and I would go to all the big 80s metal stadium shows.
Derek Sivers
But since then I’ve never liked live music, which sounds like such an affront. What do you call that? Blasphemy. It’s like blasphemy to say that you’re a musician and you don’t like live music. But my relationship with music has always been this 1-to-1 relationship with the headphones, a very personal relationship. I don’t want anybody else around me when I’m listening to music. This is very personal, and for this reason I highly recommend to you and anybody else listening here, find the movie called 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. Glenn Gould, the Canadian classical pianist. They made a brilliant movie years ago called 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.
Derek Sivers
It is such a wonderful musical look at the creative process. Glenn Gould was the biggest classical musician in his day. He would go on tour and thousands of people would be staring at him playing piano on stage, and he just stopped. He said, “I don’t like this many to one relationship between audience and artist. Really, what I want is a 1 to 1 relationship with each listener.” And he said, “And in fact, I think the ideal relationship between audience and artist is 1 to 0.”
Derek Sivers
Meaning I wish that there was no artist, that the audience could just have a relationship with the music itself and let go of this idea of the persona, and needing to know who is creating that. Where are they from, and what are their sexual preferences, and what do they look like. Can we just remove that so people can have a relationship with the music itself? I love--see these kinds of thoughts are way more inspiring to me than the extroverty-socially thing of going to a big concert with hundreds of people pushed together and that stuff. I thought that was kind of regrettable, but I did it because it paid. But really, what I always loved most was the 1 to 1 relationship of the studio.
Tom Cridland
So it’s very much you’re a fan of music itself and not the bullshit that goes with it. So when it comes to that though, what’s your relationship now, if you have one with modern music and the way things work these days. Or how do you consume your music these days? Because of course, nowadays, at least in terms of very famous stuff, it’s all about the identity. Not necessarily 100%. I would actually argue, not that I could produce an academic thesis on the subject, but my hunch is that it’s slightly over 50% or whatever. It is image and Instagram and that sort of thing, actually requires quite a lot of talent and thought as well. But people do very much buy into the persona. Myself included as well. I’ve obviously bought in a lot of persona of Elton and the Beatles and all of the artists that I love. It is about more than the music, I think, in a way. But how do you consume your music now?
Derek Sivers
I have a very high filter for--well, two answers, God. As with a lot of things in life, I deliberately try two very different approaches. I have one that’s maybe my default, and then I force myself to try the opposite. Okay, so my default is to have this very high bar for what I listen to. Because I--pause it for one second. Tom, I’m curious about you. I think that the modern music fans are used to the streaming style where you just let things pour out like a fire hose.
Derek Sivers
Whereas I grew up in this era where you’d actually save up your money to buy an album. Then you’d go down to the store and you’d buy an album and you take it home, and that was it. That was your album for the week. So you would dive into one album. You’d read all the liner notes, you’d read the lyrics while listening to it. You’d sit there and look at every little credit. Look and inspect the picture on the album cover and really get into one album at a time. And then a week later you’d have the money to go down to the store and buy another album and then you’d get into that album.
Derek Sivers
And because of that, I think we dove into each artist deeper. Whereas now I get the feeling, 2022 where music just comes streaming out like a faucet. It’s just going to be pouring out and you might bend your head down to sip a bit of the water that’s squirting out, but it’s just going to keep flowing. So by default, I tend to do things the old way. Like somebody tells me or I read in an article somewhere that this Cannonball Adderley album is one of the greatest jazz albums ever made. I’m like, okay, so I go get the Cannonball Adderley album and I’ll just listen to that album for a week over and over again. To try to get it into my soul.
Derek Sivers
Because a lot of the music that I later loved, like Tom Waits and Stevie Wonder, I actually hated on the first listen. But people told me, these are some great albums. You should know these. And so I got Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, and I listen the first time and hated it. Listened a second time, didn’t hate it so much. Listen to the third time and fourth time and started to love it. Same thing with Stevie Wonder. The first time I listened to Stevie Wonder, between 1972 and 1980. I just thought it was the cheesiest shit ever.
Derek Sivers
But people told me it was great. So I listened again and it had a couple tracks, I always liked Superstition. So I just made myself listen to the whole album and eventually it grew on me. Now I love it. Stevie Wonder is one of my favorites. So I try to do that with albums that people tell me, You should know this album. So then on the other hand, I think I should just try the opposite. I should just try lots of new music. But still, I like to have a filter. I hope someday you meet and interview Ted Gioia. Do you know who he is?
Tom Cridland
No.
Tom Cridland
G-I-O-I-A, I believe, Ted Gioia. Look him up. He’s a music aficionado and writes beautifully about music. He famously listens to something like 500 new albums a year. He believes it’s his duty to culture. To listen to at least one new album every day. So he sits and gives them a good listen. At the end of the year, he puts out his 100 best albums of the year article. Everything he’s heard. So just last year I went through Ted Gioia’s list of the 100 best albums of the year, and they were all things that had only come out in 2021. And I listened to all of them. I went to Bandcamp and whatever it took to just find all of this music, and I listened to it all. And it was weird to not go back and listen to things five times like I’m used to. To just let it keep flowing and just grab on to the next one.
Derek Sivers
So there’s your answer. I do two different styles, but I try to always have a filter. To not just tune it on and just let anything pass over me. I like to have somebody filtering it first to let me know what’s good. Better use of my time. Because I can’t listen to music while we’re doing anything else. I’m such a trained musician, that any time I’m listening to music, I can’t help but analyze the chord progressions, listen to the details of the production. So I can’t just have it on in the background. If music is on in the background, it’s hard for me to do anything when it’s on. So I really have to stop and listen. So I can’t listen to that.
Tom Cridland
Well, you can’t review something properly and tell whether it’s good like music, which seems to be a bit of a misconception. You can’t do that if you’re concentrating on a conversation with other people. So that can happen, you’ll have--I can think of situations where I’ve been hanging out with friends and we’re like, “Oh, what do we think of this song?” And we literally continue talking about other stuff, while laughing, while making loads of noise. The last 20 seconds of the track come on and we’re like, “Oh, that wasn’t very good.”
Tom Cridland
[Unintelligible] been listening to is ourselves, like laughing and talking. And it should be that immersive thing. I do think so. I do get what you were saying about live music. I think it’s impossible to get to the stage or to wind back the clock to that era of saving up for CD. You’re just never going to have that significance from something easily if you haven’t invested that much in it. Because it sounds like you’re still determined to try and get that thing, that pleasure out of suddenly understanding something after a few listens. There are other people like that. But it’s not that many people. A lot of people do just think, “Okay, I’ve worked 8 hours as a estate agent or an insurance or as a barista or whatever. I’m bloody tired. I don’t want to listen Tom Waits more than once, if I don’t like it. I don’t want to give things like Album of Sinatra covers another listen. If I think crap, I’m not going to listen to it ever again.”
Tom Cridland
But that is like anything, trying and doing the hard bit can really be rewarding. What I wanted to ask you is the final thing before I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about what you’re working on at the moment. But what was the last piece of music that you heard that you couldn’t stop listening to?
Derek Sivers
Oh, that’s a fun question. Sorry, give me a second. It’s funny, I really like pop songcraft. I studied it for years. Because I wanted to be a pop star myself. Or to be Prince. I really studied the song craft of what makes a really memorable melody. Why does this melody work and that one doesn’t. What’s the difference? And sometimes it can be the nuance of a few notes here and there can make or break a melody. And so every now and then I hear a song that might not even be current, that I just obsess on it. Because damn, that’s a good melody. So there was this song by Pink. This isn’t the most recent one, but this comes to mind first. There was a song by Pink like ten years ago. It was like, Just give me a reason [song’s lyrics]
Derek Sivers
That melody just fascinated me. And I listened to that song over and over again and couldn’t stop. So recently, just like a week ago, I was in this pizza place here in Wellington, New Zealand, and I heard this song that piped over the stereo. I really liked it. I was like, “What is this?” Luckily my girlfriend knew it. She goes, “I know this song. It’s Vampire Weekend.” Now that I was just singing that pink song, I can’t remember what song was it by Vampire Weekend? But she played it for me and now I can’t get it out of my head. I just find myself whistling it at odd times during the day. Do it over and over again. It’s like sometimes--Sorry, what?
Tom Cridland
Was it an old Vampire Weekend one?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, she said that she was into it in college. So it’s probably like ten years ago, but it just happened to be like over the stereo.
Tom Cridland
Or it was it in Oxford?
Derek Sivers
They mentioned a--What was it they mentioned? [song lyrics] It’s got this repeating guitar riff that resolves. And that’s what’s fascinating. Usually when things repeat, harmonically, they don’t resolve at the end of the repeat. And that’s what keeps them repeating. And it’s fascinating that the guitar riff just resolves. Oops, I’m singing the wrong notes. Anyway, sorry, I don’t know the name of it, but I’ve just been obsessed on that song for like a week. Before that Billie Eilish, Bury A Friend. And again, that was just because this 12-8 rhythm. It almost sounded like old Kurt Weill, 1930s singing. So I obsess on odd music. Not for any, again, it’s pretty separated from the cultural reason. Often, I don’t even know who these people are, but just certain things in a melody or a rhythm that fascinate me. Sorry. I don’t know if that’s an interesting answer or not.
Tom Cridland
No. Also the first Vampire Weekend album, be interesting to note, and maybe it’s [unintelligible], but that is a great album. And a bit of Billie Eilish tune. That is a bloody good song, actually. Well, I don’t know what I’m saying. I actually like Billie Eilish. That was an interesting documentary that I watched on Disney, but I came away from it thinking, they don’t feel like--It didn’t feel to me like she had that much control over the documentary. And that felt to me like it was contrived so that it would--it just felt like very invasive. I wasn’t that big a fan, even though I did find it interesting. It did make me think she’s very talented. I find that stuff would be so nice if they had longer to spend on the music. People like that. And even though not that she needs it. That is the [unintelligible] for a great tune, but just imagine if there was less of the other crap. Selling yourself.
Derek Sivers
Oh man, any time they make a movie of musicians like the Ray Charles movie with Jamie Foxx and even the Charlie Chaplin movie. I always want them to focus more on the art itself, the craft. But because we’re musicians, we’re nerds. We want to hear more about the music itself whereas what most people want is the--not about Charlie Chaplin’s craft, but about how many wives did he have. Not about Ray Charles’ music itself, but how did he struggle with alcohol and all this? It’s like they want to hear this other stuff around it, but I just always want to hear the music itself.
Derek Sivers
That’s what’s so cool about the Beatles thing that long--the get back. It was like no human interest at all. Only music nerds got this. That was fun.
Tom Cridland
That’s very, very true. And also on that Ray Charles, that is the movie that did introduce me to his music. You’re right. It would have been good, but don’t even get me started on--and introduced me to his music when I was like 13 years old or something, might I add, as well? Which shows that it must have done something right. I think that is because of Jamie Foxx and how talented he is. But don’t get me started on Rocket Man with the music stuff. There should be a lot. And there’s limited stuff in the green one, even though they’re successful movies. But, Derek, I wanted to wrap this up and say thank you so much for coming on. But also you’ve done so much and been so successful, and I’m sure you’ve got things that are going on at the moment that you’d like to direct our listenership to. So what would those be?
Derek Sivers
Just go to my website, sive.rs. I’ve written four books now, each of them wildly different. My newest one is called “How To Live”. And it’s weird as hell. But the books that your listeners might find interesting is, I wrote my story of how I started, grew and left CD Baby, and that’s a book called “Anything You Want”. And for musicians listening to this, because for ten years of running CD Baby--what was really interesting, I told you my background as a struggling musician, touring musician. We didn’t even get into all the various stuff I was doing in New York City as a booking agent and working inside Warner Chappell Music Publishing and all that stuff. I worked inside the industry for a while and then suddenly I was running CD Baby.
Derek Sivers
So I saw things from the other side of the counter, you could say. Now I was the guy running the record store. And so I could see what was working for musicians. Why is it that some musicians sold so much better than other musicians? Because it’s not just the quality of the music. You know this stuff, some of the best musicians you’ve ever heard are completely obscure. And nobody’s into them. And sometimes the biggest musicians are not great at all. So I wrote a book called “Your Music and People”, about getting your music to people through people into people. And so those are my two books, and that’s what I really pour in my heart and soul into these days.