Me in 10 seconds
I’m a musician, programmer, writer, entrepreneur, and student — though not in that order.
I’m fascinated with the usable psychology of self-improvement, business, philosophy, and intercultural relativism. I love finding a different point of view.
Total introvert (INTJ). I thrive in solitude.
Minimalist. I prefer giving to getting.
California native. I now live in Singapore and New Zealand.
Deeply happy and anti-drama, my favorite fable is 塞翁失马.
CURRENT UPDATE: Here’s what I’m doing now.
Official Bragging Bio
Originally a professional musician and circus clown, Derek Sivers created CD Baby in 1998.
It became the largest seller of independent music online, with $100M in sales for 150,000 musicians.
In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22M, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education.
He is a frequent speaker at the TED Conference, with over 5 million views of his talks.
Since 2011 he has published 34 books, including “Anything You Want” which shot to #1 on all of its Amazon categories.
Newest Articles see all
Popular Articles see all
- Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy
- No yes. Either HELL YEAH or no.
- Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
- The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote
- Why I gave away my company to charity
- You don’t have to be local
- Kurt Vonnegut explains drama
- What if you didn’t need money or attention?
- Nobody’s going to help you. Does that encourage you or discourage you?
- Obvious to you. Amazing to others.
Interviews
NEW: I get personal and pour my heart into 40 hours of interviews.
Each one has an MP3 you can download, or a transcript if you prefer to read.
Projects see all projects
- Book Notes
- detailed notes from the last 200+ books I’ve read
- Now Now Now
- a collection of sites that have a “what I’m doing now” page
- MusicThoughts
- inspiring quotes about music, translated into Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Русский, العربية, 日本語, and 中文
- Wood Egg
- my book publishing company
- sivers.org
- the hand-crafted Ruby code that runs this site
Books
- Anything You Want
- Tales from my CD Baby experience: Entrepreneur lessons learned from starting, building, and selling CD Baby.
- Marketing Your Music
- Free e-book for musicians about promoting your music and navigating the music industry.
- Wood Egg Startup Guides
- 20 books about starting a business in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Videos
- TED (ted.com)
- 3 short talks from the TED Conference.
- Anything You Want
- 7 short animations from my book “Anything You Want”.
- Uncommon Sense
- Entrepreneur lessons learned from starting, building, and selling CD Baby.
- Conference Presentations
- Talks from other conferences, all subjects.
Photos (click for big)
![© 2014 Derek Sivers Derek Sivers](/web/20160523002024im_/http://sivers.org/images/DerekSivers-20141119-100.jpg)
![© 2014 Pat Shepherd - patshepherd.co.nz Derek Sivers](/web/20160523002024im_/http://sivers.org/images/DerekSivers-20141209a-100.jpg)
![© 2014 Pat Shepherd - patshepherd.co.nz Derek Sivers](/web/20160523002024im_/http://sivers.org/images/DerekSivers-20141209b-100.jpg)
![© 2014 Pat Shepherd - patshepherd.co.nz Derek Sivers](/web/20160523002024im_/http://sivers.org/images/DerekSivers-20141209c-100.jpg)
Tweets see all tweets
- April 27
- Possible futures : https://sivers.org/futures (with bonus in comments)
- April 27
- SQL awesomeness gets me so damn inspired: https://blog.jooq.org/2016/04/25/10-sql-tricks-that-you-didnt-think-were-possible/
- April 22
- My 200+ book notes & reviews, now with updated ratings. Top recommendations up top: https://sivers.org/book
- April 21
- I sound strange because I’m singing the counter-melody : https://sivers.org/counter
- April 20
- I split https://sivers.org/d1 into separate pages because people were not noticing the category names.
- April 18
- Do this. Directives - part 1 : https://sivers.org/d1
Search
Contact
Please email me at [email protected] for any reason. I reply to all, and much prefer email over social networks.
Get on my private email list, here: