A COOL, MINIMALIST LITTLE RECORD STORE

CD Baby's Derek Sivers shows 'em how it's done

By Joseph McCombs | March 28, 2002 "Every single person at CD Baby -- I mean, every single musician -- has tracked us down," says Derek Sivers of the unexpected success of CD Baby. Visit CDBaby Check out these great CD Baby Artists: SMP Brendan O'Donnell Thomas Dolby Dave Allen Eileen Quinn Grant-Lee Phillips In Choler's editorial circles I'm known as the "anti-futurist," in part because I tend to take a pessimistic outlook on coming events. In my world there is no movement that can't be co-opted, no message that can't be commercialized, no person that can't be tainted, no idea that can't be cynicized to within an inch of its life. The future, I sometimes suggest, is merely a new prefab venue created to allow history to repeat itself in a Zesty New Flavor. Then someone like Derek Sivers comes along to shut me up. Sivers is the founder of CD Baby, one of the few places where the Internet's ever lived up to its future promise. Sivers had no idea what kind of Zeitgeist he was tapping into when he created CD Baby back in early 1998. He was simply creating what he called "a cool, minimalist little record store where people can go and buy CDs without being bothered with bought, paid advertisements." And not only did the shoppers get an ad-free respite on the 'Net, musicians who produce their own CDs got a place where they could sell their wares without concerns of store-placement politics or percentages cut from profits by slimy mid-level execs. A great thought, and some great timing: there may never have been a better time to be an independent artist. With advanced tools now available for song production, promotion, marketing, CD duplication and distribution, the potential for a DIY artist has improved remarkably in recent years. Add to that the increased attention paid to executive perfidy at all levels, restrictive and misleading contracts, and the challenges of recoupment within the major-label structure, and you've got an environment ripe for people eager to make an end-around to avoid the system. Sivers acknowledges that he never expected to be a vanguard of the indie movement, or even to make a business out of his little record store: "Honestly," he explains, "this wasn't my original intention." Nevertheless, a business it has become, and a profitable one at that: at the beginning of this year it was announced that CD Baby had topped $1 million in payouts to artists. "For just a silly little hobby that I didn't expect to be anything," Sivers explains modestly, "that kinda makes it even cooler." Alongside running the CD Baby shop, he has become a staple on the lecture circuit, appearing on panels at such conferences as the College Music Journal's New Music Seminar and South By Southwest, and giving the grand finale speech at the 2002 DIY Conference. The accolades have been universal; Dave Allen, best known for his work with Gang of Four, announced shortly after that conference that his next album would be released exclusively at CD Baby, joining the ranks of such noted performers as Grant-Lee Philips and Melissa Ferrick. " Because I was always in the 'hobby' mentality, we've never really gone out and pursued anybody. People just kind of come this way through word of mouth. " Not that the site's offerings are centered on indie rock and folk, as I incorrectly assumed. "You'd actually be surprised," Sivers clarifies. "It's completely across the board. More diverse than I'd ever expect. […] Like children's Christian records. Sailing music -- sailors chanting songs. It's totally diverse. Some people just got it goin' on, or are doing a lot of good promotion, or perhaps used to be famous, or getting great write-ups somewhere. All across the board. "One is a woman named Eileen Quinn, who is a full-time sailor," he continues. She's from Nova Scotia or something, and just sails around the world full-time. I don't know how she makes a living at it, but she's a full-time sailor and always has been. And whenever she docks into port for a few months in the winter, she records an album before she takes off again for nine months. She got a couple great write-ups in, like, Sailing magazine and Boat US magazine -- really, four-page long articles, with pictures and everything; and at the end said, 'And you can buy it exclusively at CDBaby.com.' And whomp, she instantly became one of our top sellers of all time -- and this was, like, the first year or two I started CD Baby, which, now, is like four years ago. So all of a sudden, that also gets this other effect of other people who are making music for sailors, bring it in to CD Baby." Which leads to the question: do artists such as Ms. Quinn seek out Derek and CD Baby, or does he seek them out? "Actually, every single person at CD Baby -- I mean, every single musician -- has tracked us down. Because I was always in the 'hobby' mentality, we've never really gone out and pursued anybody. People just kind of come this way through word of mouth." I can't help but interject at this point in the conversation: "So were you surprised when some of the bigger names, like Grant-Lee Phillips and Melissa Ferrick, came to you and were like, 'Hey, you're fuckin' cool'?" "Totally," he responds with an unmaskable grin. "I was just, like, 'Whoa, dude! Grant-Lee Phillips wants to sell his CD here!' And in his case, he went exclusive with us! At least, at first, for the first six months, when he did his album, this was the only place you could get it! Later, he added Amazon, just 'cause, I guess some people begged him to or whatever. Or I guess he kept hearing people say, 'Come on, I want to put it in my cart at Amazon.' So he reluctantly added Amazon, but keeps his website pointing to CD Baby. Even some folks like that -- Melissa Ferrick, too -- goes pretty much exclusive to CD Baby. "So all these people have just kind of come our way through word of mouth. Somebody tells them we're cool. Thomas Dolby just did that a couple months ago, in December, actually. He brought his new album -- first album in 10 years or something -- and he sells it through CD Baby exclusively, just 'cause somebody, a friend of his told him they had a great experience here." By Sivers' own count, CD Baby gets about 50 album submissions a week, with a grand total of two staffers devoted to the task of listening to and categorizing them. Surprisingly, the categorizations are remarkably accurate even under such a daunting workload. Not surprisingly, once in a while a spanner gets thrown into that machine's works. "Some real Satanic band -- I mean, with a bloody goat's head and stuff -- totally, over-the-top Satanic metal --brought their stuff in," Sivers expounds with a laugh. "And there in their style description of their album, it said, like -- where it says 'please describe the style of music' -- they wrote … what was it … 'Jesus was a sniveling Jew whose followers should be slaughtered.'" "And so actually, I decided to, whenever somebody submits their album, we play editor a little bit. The musician submits their initial description, and then we edit it, so if they're using 19 exclamation points after each sentence, and all-capitals, or calling it 'the greatest band ever invented,' or whatever, we tone it down a bit, so it's more believable. So honestly, I just did the same thing with these guys. We removed the -- didn't feel their religious opinions described their style of music well, so we converted that to say 'Satanic death metal' or whatever, and just kind of, really, gave them the same treatment as anyone else." Artist responses to the CD Baby approach have been universally positive. Besides the aforementioned Dave Allen commitment, former Del Fuego Dan Zanes uses the site to successfully sell his new records of children's music. And lesser-known artists derive considerable benefit as well. "I first heard of CD Baby through friend and fellow musician Holcombe Waller," recalls San Francisco-based singer-songwriter Amelia Ray, whose work this writer has reviewed. "I hopped on over to check it out. Within ten minutes, I had a functional site, a new distributor and a barcode!" Brendan O'Donnell concurs. The New York area folk-rocker was connected with CD Baby by the Hive Music artist development company. "They sold my CD First through the site," he tells me. "CD Baby also selected me to play their event at the EAT-M Conference in Las Vegas in 2000, which was great." " It's still in that hobby mentality that, this is what gets me off now, is the idea of doing things not for any great commercial gain ... " O'Donnell is careful to point out, though, that it's not accurate to refer to CD Baby as a record label. "CD Baby sells the product through their site, which draws a great deal of traffic, but they don't help with recording/touring/promotion or anything like that." This is a conscious effort on Sivers' part. "I've always kept a goal to just keep it as single-focused as possible," he states. "We just want to be the best at selling CDs. I think that focus is really helpful. […] I thought that was the downfall of Amazon. I used to think that Amazon was pretty cool. But then all of a sudden they started selling kitchen appliances and lawn mowers and it's like, 'no, hell man, they've just become Wal-Mart.' And I used to think it was kind of like a cool bookstore." Business focus? Check. Artist satisfaction? Check. But what about the customers? "Everybody comes in knowing what they're looking for," replies Sivers. "At least the first time. Like any record store; you know, you don't go down to Tower Records unless you remembered what CD you've been meaning to buy. So you go into the record store knowing what you want, and you go for it first, and then after you get it in your hand, decide to look around. "And that's why I focused the whole store on that mentality; that's why it has no advertising anywhere. My goal is, I want to get you to the CD you want, as fast as possible, with no distractions; but then once you have it in your hand, and I see what you like, that's when I start recommending. 'Okay, if you like Jack Johnson, you should probably check out these four artists.' Or 'if you like Melissa Ferrick, here's three other CDs I really think you'll like.' And we do that from our actual listening, not out of some computer -- you know, 'other customers bought' kind of calculation. We've hand-recommended them, because we've listened to everything. "So I think it comes off very sincere, and accurate. And I find a lot of customers get the CD they came for, and then go to the recommendations based on that, listen to it, find out we were right [laughs], and add a few more CDs to their shopping carts. The average order on CD Baby is for 2 ½ CDs -- so more than half the people that come here --" "They got the one they wanted, and the one or two they didn't know they wanted," I interject. "Exactly." "Which is my favorite part of the job," he adds, "because I never expected that. I always thought it was just gonna be a place so, if you were a musician, here's somewhere that people can use their credit cards to buy your CD. I wasn't expecting it to be a browsing destination. But that's the most satisfying part, to think that, here's some people making great music, and here's 30 people around the world, too, that have bought their CD, that hadn't heard of them 10 minutes before, before they were on the website." Sivers closes with this assessment of his work: "It's still in that hobby mentality that, this is what gets me off now, is the idea of doing things not for any great commercial gain […] It's just something that -- to help out my fellow musicians, to do something, if we can do it, we should. 'Wouldn't it be cool if …' That's the big motivation for doing something. The money stuff seems to take care of itself. I'm not much of an accountant, and don't look at the numbers much, but if we just set up this business to do things that would just seem like the right thing to do, that would just seem like the cool thing to do, then the numbers seem to take care of themselves." And one million dollars later, they certainly have.