Just selling my CD | Derek Sivers

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from the book “Anything You Want”:

2011-07-03

This story begins in 1997. I was a professional musician, age 27. I was making a full-time living just playing music — playing lots of gigs around the U.S. and Europe, producing people’s records, playing on people’s records, and running a little recording studio. I was even the musician and MC for a circus.

My bank account was always low, but never empty. I made enough money to buy a house in Woodstock, New York. I was living a musician’s dream.

I made a CD of my music, and sold 1500 copies at my concerts. I wanted to sell it online, but there were no businesses that would sell independent music online. Not one. I called up the big online record stores and they all told me the same thing: The only way I could get my CD into their online stores was through a major distributor.

Music distribution was an awful racket. Getting a distribution deal was as hard as getting a record deal. Distributors were notorious for taking thousands of CDs, and paying you a year later, if ever. Record labels with deep pockets would buy expensive promotional placement, and the rest of us would just sit in the bin. If you didn’t sell well in the first few months, you were kicked out of the system.

It’s not that distributors were evil. It was just an awful system, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

So when the big online record stores told me they couldn’t sell my CD directly, I thought, “Ah, screw it. I’ll just set up my own online store. How hard could it be?”

But it was hard! In 1997, PayPal didn’t exist, so I had to get a credit card merchant account, which cost $1000 in setup fees and took three months of paperwork. The bank even had to send an inspector out to my location to make sure I was a valid business. Then I had to figure out how to build a shopping cart. I didn’t know any programming, but I copied some examples from a programming book, with lots of trial and error.

Finally, though, I had a “buy now” button on my website! In 1997 this was a big deal.

When I told my musician friends about my “buy now” button, one friend asked, “Could you sell my CD, too?”

I thought about it for a minute and said, “Sure. No problem.” I just did it as a favor. It took me a couple hours to get him added into my system. I made a separate page for his CD on my band’s website.

Then two other friends asked if I could sell their CDs. Then I started getting calls from strangers saying, “My friend Dave said you could sell my CD?” The calls and emails kept coming. I said yes to all.

Two popular online music leaders announced it to their mailing lists. (Bryan Baker from Gajoob, and David Hooper. Thanks, guys!) Fifty more musicians signed up.

This was meant to be just a favor I was doing for a few friends. Hmmm…

© 2011 Derek Sivers.

Resumir
故事始于1997年,作者是一名27岁的职业音乐人,靠音乐维生。尽管银行账户常常不富裕,但他过着音乐家的梦想生活。为了销售自己的CD,作者发现当时没有独立音乐在线销售的渠道,传统的音乐发行系统让他感到沮丧。于是,他决定自己建立一个在线商店,尽管过程艰难且耗时,但最终成功实现了网站的“购买”按钮。随着朋友们的请求,他开始为其他音乐人销售CD,意外地吸引了越来越多的音乐人加入。最初只是出于好意的举动,最终却发展成了一个庞大的在线音乐销售平台。这段经历展示了创业的偶然性和音乐行业的挑战。