Need a Job? Derek Sivers is Hiring.

There’s got to be a lot of pressure on Derek Sivers.  This is the guy, afterall, that came up with a really good idea at a time when the music industry seemed to be all out of them.  Sivers founded CD Baby in 1997 as a way to distribute his own music over the internet.  The idea caught on among his friends and 11 years later he sold the company for $22 million to Disc Makers.  As of July, 2008, CD Baby had a roster of nearly 250,000 musicians, had sold over 4.6 million CDs and paid out over $85 million to independent musicians all over the world.  I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that CD Baby completely changed the independent musician industry.  For starters, we no longer needed record deals – CD Baby made it easy to sell directly to our fans.

It makes your heart ache to know that you didn’t think up that idea, right?  What a great thing he made!

I went to a CD Baby meet-up in Chicago once about 5 years ago.  To everyone’s surprise, Sivers showed up and gave a short speech to the group.  From the vibe in the room that day, you would have thought that Abraham Lincoln himself had risen from the grave and given a recitation of the Gettysburg Address.  People were shocked that he, Derek Sivers, had come to our little gathering.  I kid you not, it was like the king had come to a peasant’s birthday party.  He is a celebrity among musicians.

So now that he’s sold CD Baby and moved on…what next?  The pressure must be enormous.  He’s still a young guy and full of good ideas.  Every dinner party he goes to must be stocked with people asking, “So what are you doing now?”

And he’s come up with something!  He hasn’t released much information about it, but the idea – as I understand it – is a service that will work as an (affordable) personal assistant to musicians.  The core idea is, perhaps, not his – websites that sell virtual personal assistant services are plentiful – but selling the idea to musicians is new.  I can’t say I understand the concept fully, but nevertheless, I think he’s a smart guy to get into this industry early.  An article in the Huffington Post states that the annual revenue from virtual assistant services is expected to grow to $2 billion by 2015.

And he’s hiring!  This is probably the best testament to Sivers’ credibility among the musician community.  This guy doesn’t even have to tell us exactly what the idea is – and we’ll still apply for a job doing it.  Here’s the link:

MuckWorkers Wanted

According to the website, Sivers is looking for two kinds of workers – professional musicians like us, as well as experienced virtual assistants.  The first group can expect to make somewhere under $20/hr and the second group can expect to make somewhere under $10/hr.  That is, at least, what the website says.  He explains it better himself – you can find the info at the link provided.