The Day Steve Jobs Dissed Me In A Keynote
In 2003, iTunes had just launched and was starting to put music in its store. During this time, Apple and Steve Jobs invited hundreds of people from small record labels and distributors to a meeting to convince them to give Apple their entire catalog of music. It was a great opportunity for independent music to be heard through a major outlet.
After the meeting, Derek Sivers of CD Baby posted his meeting notes on his website thinking that everything was fine, but got a rude awakening. Apple berated him for posting information about the meeting which was apparently confidential. Read on at Music Think Tank to how Jobs dissed Sivers.
“This was huge to me, because until 2003, independent musicians were always denied access to the big outlets. For Apple to sell all music, not just artists who had signed their rights away to a corporation, this was amazing!” (Read On)
Did Sivers “drunk-blog” this entry?
I cringed when I “had to” use CD Baby as the gateway to landing my first EP on iTunes. Physical product was a “must” for CD Baby, their limited quantity (“just send us ten to fifteen copies, don’t call us we’ll call you”) seemed SO outdated, the repeated emails of “we’re almost out of your release” BS… CD Baby was a widely available service, low-hanging-gateway-drug into what I really wanted: iTunes Music Store availability. I didn’t care about all of the other “digital distribution” they offered at he time, iTunes was the big (only) goal. Why a competitor hadn’t beat them to the punch was a mystery to me.
Reading Sivers rant about Steve Jobs confirmed my suspicions.
Sivers sells iTunes Snake Oil to a desperate customer base, and his own course of actions prove it. Jobs dissed Sivers because Sivers wanted to trumpet his earliest doorway available to iTunes.
As someone who currently works in a field with a digital product that resides in multiple competitive “platforms,” you implicitly understand that you NEVER start blowing your hype-pipe before everything is clearly outlined and you have explicit permission to go public. There are so many reasons to save your smoke, why put your next big opportunity in jeopardy?
I know Sivers business, CD Baby, is quite an entity in themselves, and I know Sivers provides a service AND needles his userbase along with his Prairie Home Companion style advice… But this rant on Jobs is really best played out over a cocktail between colleagues, not all TMZ’d out for all to hear. What’s to prevent Apple from slowing down CD Baby’s entry process? What do they have to lose?
Thanks for posting this very interesting stoy.