Humans as a Competitive Advantage

A year after I started CD Baby, when it was still just me in my bedroom, the CEO and VP of a hugely-funded Silicon Valley online music company contacted me, saying they wanted to fly out to New York to meet me. I said OK, and we met a week later for dinner.

Dinner was a lot of blah blah blah smalltalk, and I wondered what they really wanted. Then they finally got to the real point:

“The reason we flew out to meet you is because we’ve been looking at many music recommendation engines, and the one that’s powering cdbaby.com is one of the best we’ve found. Could you tell us a little something about the algorithms and data points you’re using?”

Uh… I was confused, and asked what they meant.

They said, “The «if you like this you will like that» recommendations. We’ve been testing them on your site, but they don’t seem to be sales-driven like Amazon. The music-matching algorithm comes up with incredible recommendations. What software are you using for that?”

Ah! I get it. I smiled and pointed to my ear.

“No software. I just listen to everything that comes in, and recommend other good stuff like it.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *