Derek Sivers | |
---|---|
Born |
United States of America |
September 22, 1969
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Entrepreneur, businessman |
Notable work |
CD Baby MuckWork Wood Egg |
Website | sivers |
Derek Sivers (born September 22, 1969) is an American entrepreneur best known for being the founder and former president of CD Baby, an online CD store for independent musicians. A professional musician (and circus clown) since 1987, Sivers started CD Baby by accident in 1997 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby went on to become the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients.
In 2008, Sivers sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company, MuckWork, where teams of assistants help musicians do their "uncreative dirty work". His current projects and writings are all at sivers.org.
In June 2013, Sivers launched his new company, Wood Egg, which publishes annual guides on how to build companies in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Sivers resides in Singapore and Wellington, New Zealand.
Derek Sivers transferred ownership of his company to a charitable remainder unitrust for music education, and had the trust sell it to Disc Makers. This agreement requires the trust to pay Sivers 5% of the trust's value annually (hypothetically $1,100,000 pretax, based on a sale price of $22 million as reported by Sivers) until death, while upon death the remainder will ultimately go to charity.