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A Conversation with Derek Sivers (continued)
PM: Do you think that the whole label idea is going to go away, or change fundamentally in the next handful of years?
DS: No. Some people, like you and me for instance, are wide open to hearing everything that's out there. Lay it all on me, let me decide.
PM: Right.
DS: I want to hear anything. But I think the majority of the world wants to hear only the stuff that's been declared to be the best. They want things filtered for them. I think record labels are still offering this filtering process, saying basically, "We believe in this so much." But as soon as I'm saying that out loud, I'm thinking, well, a magazine can have that same effect.
PM: It's true. Any filter.
DS: Yeah. People want things filtered. I guess you could say that a record label is one kind of filter, where a company says, "We're going to toss X-sum of money at this because we believe in it so much." But the whole idea of that company now owning the sound recordings, the musician not owning their own recordings anymore--that might be a dead concept, but people still need filters.
PM: Yeah, magazines might be more appropriate filters, since they don't want to own your music.
DS: Exactly. A magazine is in a better position to take everything that's out there and say, "Here's what we think is some of the best stuff for you to be checking out." People really love those filters. I mean, I'm glad that CD Baby was set up in such a way that it has no filters. But it's funny, because I think that some filters are necessary. I think that filters are needed right now in the music scene because distribution has become so easy. MP3.com was even a more extreme example of that--anybody could just fart into a mic and upload it. It was free. It's just an MP3, you don't even have to burn a CD. You don't have to press up a CD, just fart into a mic and upload it. And all of a sudden there were just hundreds of thousands of MP3s up there--how do you possibly sift through all that?
PM: Yeah. A guy from the online part of MTV said at a symposium the other day, "If nothing else, MP3.com showed us there are an almost unlimited number of marginally talented people out there."
DS: [laughs] Yeah. Even MP 3.com, to their credit, really did try to set up a system where the cream would rise to the top--they did it in terms of popularity of downloads and such. But then it just got back to the people--the popularity contests as far as the people who already had the biggest fan base, or if you worked at a big company, you email everybody in the company and say, "Please go download my song so I can rise to the top of the charts." Or somebody else says, "Hey, pay us a thousand bucks and we'll make you rise to the top of their charts."
PM: Right.
DS: I mean, it would still be a wonderful thing, that idea of an MP3.com, but with an editorial bent to it also, saying these were editors' picks or--I don't know, it's tough to say.
PM: We'd like to get into selling some CDs, finally, at Puremusic, but I don't understand the whole retail store thing yet, and I think I got to go get some chops in that area. We've always been editorial oriented. And when I'm not doing this, I'm working on music, you know.
DS: Sure. You could just set up an affiliate thing with iTunes, like we did. I think it would be a big waste of your time to go recreate some of these things that are already out there--in the same way I don't really want to get into editorializing. CD Baby.org is where I've put some of my philosophies about this. Hang on, I'm just pulling one up: "Every single day for six years, people tell us things like, 'CD Baby should start a radio station. CD Baby should sell downloads. CD Baby should start a record label. CD Baby should sponsor tours. CD Baby should do CD manufacturing. CD Baby should help do promotion and publicity. CD Baby should do physical distribution to retail stores. CD Baby should start a dating service.'"
PM: [laughs]
DS: "Okay, I was kidding on the last one. But the rest are for real. And it's seriously every day for seven years that we have to say no, no, no, no, no to all of these requests. I think they're flattering, and I'm sincerely honored that people would want us to do these things. But could you imagine if CD Baby actually did all of those things on that list? What a mess."
PM: Right.
DS: "Remember the dot.com days when all these companies couldn't even tell you what they did. Their 'About' page on their website would say, 'We deliver extensive e-markets and syndicate cross-media portals and empower e-business systems worldwide to help you transform relationships into next-generation paradigms.'"
PM: [laughs]
DS: "CD Baby is a record store. Yes, we've got a couple side services for our members, but those are just the side effects of having a record store. You may say that CD Baby is a community, or revolutionizing independent distribution, but we don't see it that way. Those are all just side effects of trying to make a great online record store."
Oh, here's the point I was getting at: "I really believe in doing something great or not doing it at all. If you can't be one of the best in the world at something, you should really let someone else do it." I think of that a lot. People say, "Yeah, man, but come on, it would be so easy for CD Baby to start a radio station." But I think, "Man, there are other people out there who have committed their lives to having the best radio station." I'd much rather let them have the best radio station, and have me have the best record store, and you have the best magazine. I think it's a beautiful idea for everybody to just kind of be the best at what they do, instead of trying to half-ass it all.
PM: It was a gas this morning going through the photos of your staff. They seem like a colorful and interesting bunch.
DS: Yeah, they are.
PM: Is it pretty family up there?
DS: Yeah, it's very. It is that page.
[laughter]
PM: It was fantastic. I actually keep looking at their faces as we're speaking.
DS: It's a bunch of twenty-somethings up there. Out of the 40 people who work there, 25 of the 40 are in the warehouse and 10 are in customer service, and the other five are the miscellaneous jobs. So it's almost entirely a pick, pack, and ship warehouse business with a customer service bent to it. And that means everything. I mean, we have four phone lines that are just filled all day long with musicians calling up and asking, "How can I copyright my songs?" or "What's a barcode?" Actually it's much more of that stuff than, like, "Hey, where's my order?" It's people asking--because we're so open to the world, people just call up and ask all kinds of questions.
PM: Right. "Can you help me get a life?"
[laughter]
DS: "I'm not famous yet, I'm wondering if you can tell me why."
PM: [laughs]
DS: I mean, seriously, man, that's not too far off from the kind of questions we get sometimes.
PM: How would you describe yourself as a CEO or a leader up there? What's your personality in the company, in relation to your own staff?
DS: You'd be surprised. It's different than the public perception.
PM: Of course.
DS: The real deal is that I'm the guy who designed the system, and for the first three years, I was the guy who ran the system. But three or four years into it, I realized that if I kept trying to run this system myself I was going to do it more harm than good. So instead, I taught everybody there everything I knew, and I stepped back. And so I basically no longer work at CD Baby, I work on CD Baby. All day long, I work on improving CD Baby and designing new things that CD Baby or HostBaby is going to do. But I just design the system. And once it's designed and built, then I show the gang up there how to run it, and I get on to building the next thing.
PM: Wow.
DS: It's because of all of the emails I've written, and the form letters and such have my name on the bottom, it comes across like I'm--actually, I kind of like that, it's like Ben & Jerry's. It gives the impression that it's just Ben and Jerry up there pumping the cream. So I mean, yeah, almost everybody who calls up asks for me because it's my name on the bottom of everything. And they have to say, "Well, he's not here, but I'm sure I can help you." And I like that better. I mean, it's not really meant to be a lie, it's just more personal.
PM: Right.
DS: And I am the one who originally created all this stuff, even if I'm not going to be the one replying to every email or whatever.
Everything I just told you in the last couple minutes is how I'd like it to be. The truth is that all day long, of course, I'm in there, helping put out fires and solve things, and people toss things my way. So it's still what I do all day long. It's kind of the entrepreneur's curse, it's so hard to remove yourself from something that you've created. Here's Amy's Muffins, right, and it's so hard for Amy not to be involved in every single decision that goes on with Amy's Muffins, because it has her name on it. And I kind of feel like, alright, so CD Baby doesn't have my name on it, but it might as well. Everybody really just thinks CD Baby is Derek. So it's hard for me to trust that the guys up there at the office have it under control--not only that, that they're doing a better job than I could do.
PM: Right.
DS: It definitely takes some trust to just know that they've got it covered, allowing me to be free to invent the new stuff. continue
