Louis C.K. experiment results: over $500,000 in 4 days

https://buy.louisck.net/statement

by basiliskus • 15 years ago

868 279 15 years ago

buy.louisck.net

daeken• 15 years ago

Wow. I expected positive results, but not that fast. Is there any precedent for this sort of thing? Hell, did Radiohead or Trent Reznor release sales statistics when they tried schemes like this for CDs? I'd love to see the numbers if so.

epikur• 15 years ago

Chrome warns of an SSL error when I try to visit his site, and when I click proceed, I see an OpenDNS page about nameservers failing.

And yet, isup.me says it's up. Interesting.

simcop2387• 15 years ago

I'm not having any problems myself, but here's the output from dig for it.

  louisck.net.            14400   IN      A       75.119.221.139

dangrossman• 15 years ago

I got that for a while yesterday. The site probably changed nameservers and IPs, and your/your ISP's cache hasn't expired yet.

enneff• 15 years ago

It works fine here. Why use OpenDNS? They mess with your DNS results. Instead, try 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

resnamen• 15 years ago

Google DNS makes for a suboptimal Netflix CDN load-balancing experience. :(

ElbertF• 15 years ago

It's down for me, here's a mirror:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&...

syeren2• 15 years ago

Although I'm really happy for him doing this, and it working out so well; Trent Reznor / Radiohead did this exact thing years ago and made millions from it, so I'm confused as to why this got such large publicity.

samdjohnson• 15 years ago

Social Media.

fletchowns• 15 years ago

It got a lot of publicity because that's what he was trying to do. He was on NPR's Fresh Air today and he did a AMA on reddit the other day.

perfunctory• 15 years ago

These kind of things are extremely rare. I guess, before they become a norm, every case deserves some attention.

staunch2• 15 years ago

I wonder if he would have made more if he had let users choose the price.

lukifer4• 15 years ago

Or without even choosing the price, going Bandcamp-style and setting a base price while letting you choose to pay more. He also could have made more by providing a link to send the special as a gift, both giving a fans a way to show support, and perhaps growing his audience at the same time.

Very happy for his success, and I hope other artists are paying attention.

X-Istence• 15 years ago

Sending it as a gift is going live tomorrow ...

dudurocha• 15 years ago

I completely agree. If he made 5 or more, maybe he would get much money.

dave1619• 15 years ago

Only 4 days in and over $500k. Very impressive. But hey, this is Louis CK. I wouldn't be surprised if he hits $3 million within 6 months.

jmtame2• 15 years ago

When Trent Reznor released Niggy Tardust, 28,322 paid $5 for it, which was 20% of the total who downloaded the album freely. Were there any other albums he released for $5? Granted, this was Saul Williams' album and Trent appeared on it; it wasn't a Halo album.

syeren2• 15 years ago

GHOSTS I-IV (Halo 26) and The Slip (Halo 27) were both hugely successful.

jmtame2• 15 years ago

I forgot he released those in that format, and you're right; he really hit some impressive numbers with that experiment: "A week after the album's release, the official Nine Inch Nails site reported over 750,000 purchase and download transactions, amassing over $1.6 million in sales." (Ghosts I-IV)

omouse5• 15 years ago

Niggy Tardust was a collaboration wasn't it? A lot of people probably downloaded it to see how good it was. However, $141,000 is still a hefty amount. It would be nice if it were closer to $700,000 but I think it's good enough to live on and to produce the next album or two?

Fliko• 15 years ago

Saul Williams has always said he was very happy with the result despite 80% of downloaders taking it for free.

Trent made a point later on the nin forum that allowing people to choose how much your product is worth really devalues it, but offering it at a cheap but fair price (say $5) doesn't devalue it.

Personally I think the best model is setting a cheap bottom line that people can pay for your product, and letting them pay more if they feel it is worth more (adding extra stuff for the people who pay more is good too, like a physical copy of the CD for people who pay $20). You don't have to use your bandwidth to give it out for free, the pirates will do that and I think it's safe to say that if someone pirates your album they are probably going to turn into a fan (or be turned off).

citricsquid4• 15 years ago

I really hope people don't turn this into a "Louis CK did it, so you should publish without DRM!". I agree with the anti-drm sentiment a lot of people hold, but this experiment only worked because it's "rare". Every time something like this is done people use it as evidence of the viability of the idea (Radiohead's pay what you want comes to mind too) and that really shouldn't be done. The only reason I heard about this experiment was because it's an experiment and I would personally bet that if this wasn't an experiment a huge portion of these sales would never have happened, I hope in the ensuing celebration of the success of this people don't forget this important fact.

"Louis CK published without DRM and made $500,000 sales in 4 days, therefore if you publish without DRM you too will break your own sales records"

Lagged2Death• 15 years ago

Isn't iTunes all DRM-free MP3 these days?

lukifer4• 15 years ago

To be pedantic: DRM-free AAC and Apple Lossless.

guelo• 15 years ago

What about iTunes video?

lukifer4• 15 years ago

A proper experiment is repeated, over and over again. Some indie bands are managing to make money from "pay what you wish", and a great many more have been thriving from customers paying for easily-torrented, DRM-free downloads.

Video, on the other hand, has had few other tests of the notion that (most/some/enough) people are willing to pay a reasonable price for a good product, even when they don't have to. Instead, our choices are streaming services (to authorized devices only), or physical artifacts (with five layers of encryption). This is the first digital video purchase where I felt like I truly owned the movie I was buying. Give it time for others to try the experiment and see how they fare.

lukev3• 15 years ago

Disagree. I've never bought a comedy DVD in my life, because frankly, an hour of humor isn't worth $15 + the overhead of receiving a package and storing a physical artifact in perpetuity.

But $5, I can have it in seconds, and forget about it until I want it again? Different story entirely. So I bought it. I don't think I did it because it was an experiment - if every comedian released stuff like this, I feel like I'd regularly spend money on comedy which now, I frankly don't.

citricsquid4• 15 years ago

You're proving my entire point.

You bought this because it's an experiment, you wanted to validate the experiment.

vacri3• 15 years ago

Why can't you rip the physical disk?

phil3• 15 years ago

That's bunk.

It boils down to saying, "sure, it worked for Louis CK and Radiohead, and Cory Doctorow and Humble Bundle. It worked for Trent Reznor, OK Go, and pretty much everyone funded by Kickstarter...

But it could never work for you."

This stuff doesn't because it's sprinkled with magic experiment dust. It works because the authors are doing good work, they're able to build a fan base, and they're able to make the case to their fans that the way to keep getting new work is to buy it. There's no reason that won't scale out.

citricsquid4• 15 years ago

The reason it works for those specific groups is because of their fan base. Do you think that if Britney Spears tomorrow launched a similar "DRM free pay what you want" sale that and the "viral" element (news articles about how edgy it is) didn't exist she would have the success that these people have? She would outsell all her other releases because "whoa DRM free this is incredible!"? I don't think so, her average fan (vs average fan of Louis CK or purchaser of Humble Bundle) do not give two fucks about whether or not music is DRM free or independent and would treat it just like DRM music is treated.

The reason this was succesful for Louis CK is because it (for want of a better phrase) "went viral". People spread the existence of this around because he is being edgy, because he's doing something nobody else has the balls to do. If every artist released their creations independently, DRM free and without any "major label" backing this would have flown straight under the radar and been a resounding "meh" in sales.

This sold because it "went viral". The story of what he was trying to do, the desire to prove people wrong. This had the absolute perfect marketing; better marketing than money can buy, but this isn't a group of buyers with endless supplies of money. If what he did became the standard it would no longer succeed like this did.

How many years ago was it edgy to release an album on the internet? I wasn't on the internet back then so I can't provide any examples, but I'll put money on this happening and back then it being a guaranteed success because the people that wanted to prove that selling online could work bought it. I'm going to try and find one.

krelian• 15 years ago

I think the Humble Bundle is a good measure to how these kind of experiments will succeed of fail. People are now starting to "complain" that they are released too often, and I certainly am seeing less and less enthusiasm for each subsequent bungle but there are still making a shitload of money on them, otherwise they would simply stop doing this.

Personally, I think that in a (utopian) world where media is easily available, not restricted, and is fairly priced (like Louis C.K's video) piracy will still be a major issue. Perhaps it will be reduced but even if content makers manage to compete with the availability of pirated content, they can never compete with the price.

timknauf• 15 years ago

And, at least for the foreseeable future, there are going to be people for whom it is very difficult to pay for the content rather than pirate it (e.g. kids, teenagers, folks in countries without an online payments infrastructure etc.).

aidenn0• 15 years ago

Well there's also the issue of how many games can I play? I've stopped buying from the humble bundles since the combination of that, plus good old games, I have enough games for now. If I had half a dozen unwatched comedy specials on my hard drive, I wouldn't have bought Louis' video.

ddw2• 15 years ago

I think a lot of people bought this because they enjoy Louis CK and not because they wanted to experience what downloading a video is like.

The benefit is that he made it easy and cheap. If he went the conventional route I probably wouldn't have watched this special for a year or so until it came out on Netflix (and I've been a big fan for a long time). I don't have cable and it probably would've cost $14.99+ to own from Amazon and maybe $3.99 to rent (for two days). The benefit to what he did was I can buy it now and do what I want with the copy I own.

wvenable• 15 years ago

I disagree. I like Louis CK but I haven't looked into this at all and probably in a few weeks I'll have forgotten about it without buying anything. But the model I like. I'd love if I could get all my media DRM free over the internet and be able to pay for it. Right now I torrent and PVR a lot of stuff but the continued existence of programs I like are at the whim of those with Nielsen boxes.

dkersten• 15 years ago

this experiment only worked because it's "rare"

I said the same thing about the humble indie bundle, but they seem to be doing really well still!

wpietri2• 15 years ago

I can't say why it worked for him, but it worked for me as a consumer because it was easy-peasy and felt very safe.

I'm perfectly happy to pay for content I can get reliably and instantly. Today I gave Amazon $10 for the two Christopher Nolan Batman films because a) it was dead simple, and b) I trust Amazon not to fuck me over. (And I guess c) it works on my Linux box, and d) I love his work.)

In fact, I'm even happier with the Louis CK thing because it's just a file. I'm going to buy another copy for my dad for Christmas, something I doubt Amazon will even let me do.

So yes, as far as I'm concerned, yes, everybody should do this. They may not break sales records, but they may not do that the DRM way either.

omouse5• 15 years ago

I hope they do turn it into that! We need all the propangda we can get to turn everyone into an anti-DRM advocate!

danssig2• 15 years ago

Also keep in mind it may not have "worked for him". He made $200k less than he would have using the traditional route. Who knows how long it will take to make that additional $200k from this offering (if he ever will) and I'm skeptical about counting "the long tail" because he would have probably had residuals on a traditional DVD as well.

vidarh3• 15 years ago

Where does it say he made $200k less? The article says he made $200k profit so far, and that this is less, but it doesn't say how much less. It is also numbers 4 days in. Sales don't stop after 4 days.

As for residuals, maybe, but it looks from the post as if he is comparing his (so far) $200k profit to a lump sum payment for the rights, though he's not exactly being explicit about that.

SODaniel4• 15 years ago

You do realize that the revenue that a comedian/Musician take home from a major label contract averages somewhere between 4-9% of total right?

If Louis CK would have really just sold the rights to comedy central, HBO etc. He could have 'pocketed' an after tax revenue of maybe $100k, with little post-air revenue.

When everything is said and done I am willing to bet my beard that this 'experiment' will net him at least $2 million more then a traditional contract.

Of course the 'pet project factor' and his timing played in, but seriously; He was NOT first!

Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing etc. have been doing this for years and continue to acknowledge the viability of the self publish model over traditional labels.

TLDR; This is not a fad, this is not a 'one off thing'. If you make something worth paying for, people will pay for it.

methodin• 15 years ago

For me personally it would be refreshing to get something that is so deeply personal to the person or persons I support. Any band, for instance, that I enjoy I would feel overly elated to support something they spent all of THEIR time on. It becomes something very personal and I would know that I am supporting THEM only and not the myriad of people in between that have done nothing deserving. It probably won't work for everyone but I doubt everyone would even try it. It takes a lot of effort and knowledge to pull off unless you have a lot of help.

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

Ever hear of JA Konrath? Neither did I at first. He's, at best, a mid-to-back list writer who had a few novels published back in the late 90s and early 2000s. He started self-publishing his old catalog of books once they were reverted (ie, the publishers saw little/no value in holding the rights, and released the rights back to him). He saw not much in the way of sales, but he pressed on, releasing ebook forms of old and new novels as he published them.

Then, the Kindle.

As of today, every new title he releases goes straight into the Amazon top 100 list. Every single new one. And, he's not alone.

Amanda Hocking, John Locke, Michael Sullivan and hundreds of other new and established writers, some who have zero published work or professional experience have made substantial living self-publishing, mostly in DRM-free epub and mobi formats. None of them are running experiments in digital distribution or DRM that I know of.

It's a proven method: For apps, for ebooks, for video (ie Louis CK for paid video and Ryan Higa, Freddie Wong, or Ray William Johnson for ad-supported video). We read (some with disdain, I might add) when someone publishes an ebook through ejunkie that sells a tens of thousands of copies at US$30 a pop, yet we don't question whether that's some "experiment" or not.

It's the future. We'll all have to embrace it eventually.

gte910h5• 15 years ago

You know what happens if you publish WITH drm?

Actual buyers of the content have issues getting to it, and people who want to pirate easily find it online and download it after some random dude removes the DRM.

olihb• 15 years ago

I'm sure that most big production/distribution houses are not panicking because it's still a new way to distribute content and it's a niche product, but I'm wondering what they are thinking of this right now. Do they view this as an emerging trend or just as a fad?

jmonegro2• 15 years ago

Is it me or do I find $32,000 for that website a bit too much?

tempire• 15 years ago

Indeed. I thought the same thing, but I suspect he's including a design firm that tested out multiple versions of the site, backend infrastructure to handle potential load, support to handle issues in a timely manner should they come up, and maybe his personal time.

jmonegro2• 15 years ago

When you put it that way, sounds about right.

lukev3• 15 years ago

Of course you or I could do it for cheaper. But for someone without particular technical skills to contract to a good, reliable company, spec it out, and produce a solid product at market rates on a reasonable timeline? 32k seems about right.

lukifer4• 15 years ago

design, e-commerce, login/registration, authorized downloads, streaming, social integration, CMS (I assume), probably analytics, and who knows what on the back-end.

A little on the high side, and possibly not using the latest and greatest platform(s), but I wouldn't say unreasonable.

ookblah• 15 years ago

Why are all the downvotes on comments relating to the website cost? I thought it was pretty high as well when I read that, I mean sure you pay much more for peace of mind, but that's like a 100% markup. And the red on black text wasn't a great choice IMO.

wpietri2• 15 years ago

Because those comments are pretty much content-free. "That large number! It's large! Since I, as a non-expert, can't imagine spending that much, the people involved must be idiots!"

If there were a comment from somebody who had built a similar site breaking down hours and dollars spent, that would be fine.

dashr• 15 years ago

Wonder if he is including the S3 costs in there?

lemieux2• 15 years ago

His site makes my eyes bleed.

lemieux2• 15 years ago

Tell me you can stare at this site more than one minute. Red on black is not the good choice.

jrockway2• 15 years ago

It seems pretty inexpensive to me. Designing a site where people can log in, pay actual currency for a file, and download it a few times is not trivial. We may be able to do stuff like this ourselves over the weekend, but Louie can't, and so he had to pay someone to do it. And when you pay for something like this you're paying for things like the company's reputation, support "forever", and the right to say things like "can you move that 1 pixel to the left"?

wmeredith• 15 years ago

Your weekend project also doesn't lose you a quarter of a million dollars if it goes down for a few days. There is a big difference between tinkering and building a product.

bhousel• 15 years ago

Pay attention MySpace, because this is what you could have been: The go-to spot on the internet for artists who just want to pay some money for a personal website where they can put up their shit and sell it and not worry about the details.

aaReese• 15 years ago

For that price the design should look more modern. With even a $2000 design budget you could create a 3 page site that looked 10x better than that.

po• 15 years ago

I think by releasing the sales figures he actually runs the risk of decreasing sales. I think there is probably a segment of the population that would feel bad about not paying for the video but now that he announced how much money he made their guilt over stealing from a poor artist will subside. It's a bit hard to keep people sympathetic if you've announced that you just made a nice profit. I'm sure at this point he's satisfied either way but it's a thought I had.

wdewind• 15 years ago

You're missing the price aspect: at $5 it's hardly even worth it to torrent it when I can have a zero hassle download experience.

jahmed• 15 years ago

People pay for convenience. I wonder how many people used their two streams and would pay another $1 to stream it again.

the_cat_kittles• 15 years ago

exactly! also, when its that low, the good feeling of actually buying something is not overshadowed by the bad feeling of spending money, since its so little money, at least for me at 5$. In response to the initial comment- I was indirectly prompted to buy this because of the post he made... I don't know why, but after I read it, I bought the show. Probably because I want the experiment to work.

paulhauggis• 15 years ago

You would think that, but in an interview I heard, he said it's already been torrented.

I would be interested to see if the increase in torrents over time has a correlation with a decrease in sales. This also might depend on who the artists is. Some demos aren't that tech savvy.

nzoschke• 15 years ago

My anecdotal response...

I read the post, and decided I finally needed to see what the big deal about this video is. I did feel your reaction -- that he won't be hurt if I don't pay for it at this point -- and actually did search for the video on a torrent site.

I found it, but then realized that streaming the video right now is worth the $5. Torrents are a hassle compared to streaming. So I just clicked through to paypal and now it's paused on another tab.

I'm going to watch the video now. Cheers.

asmosoinio• 15 years ago

Or: Releasing the numbers just made him a whole lot of new visibility, and increased his sales enormously.

I had never heard of the guys before. I saw some headlines here and in reddit before, but never bothered to check it out. But raw income numbers are rare and interesting, so this headline made me check it out.

SODaniel4• 15 years ago

On Caucasian please!

Why would any significant part of the audience somehow not purchase the show knowing that he may actually make a decent amount of money from the sales?

I for one am perfectly happy chipping in my $5 towards the CK family beach house. At least I know my money is going to someone that seems to be working his ass off entertaining his fans and not some nameless label that play artist and entertainers like pawns for the profit of their share holders.

grandpoobah• 15 years ago

The show wasn't anywhere near as amazing as his previous shows.

Game_Ender• 15 years ago

I haven't seen his other shows in their entirety, but the last half of his material wasn't as good as the first half.

aresant• 15 years ago

Louis C.K. deserves all credit for showing that you don't need a label, that non-DRM distribution's benefits outweigh its costs, etc.

Yet to me the real lesson is about the remarkable PR he's built for this story around being the "purple cow" and his ability to market to his audience (holding a AMA on Reddit even).

wdr1• 15 years ago

Didn't Jonathan Coulton already show that?

> In 2010, Coulton's music brought in about $500,000 in revenue. And since his overhead costs are very low, most of that money went straight to him.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/14/136279162/an-inter...

kahawe2• 15 years ago

> for showing that you don't need a label,

you mean: for showing that Louis CK doesn't need a label.

rplnt2• 15 years ago

Also, another guy doing this won't get that much attention as it won't be so new.

kmfrk2• 15 years ago

Using Louis C.K. as a guiding light for the rest of us is a little like hearing that indie game developers can make big bank, because Notch did. Louis C.K. is the biggest comedian now, and is generally popular with appearances on all the late-night talk shows, NPR, reddit, etc. We have no idea about what parameters had the biggest influence. Novelty value is probably one of those parameters as well.

We don't know how much Louis would have made, had he published the normal way, but we do know that the customers benefited by it.

We need more people to do this to draw any significant conclusions from it.

It is a great story that someone as popular as LCK chose to do this partly as a service to his fans, but I don't know how much there is to be learnt from the perspective of self-publishing right now.

stevewilhelm• 15 years ago

downloading my purchased copy now.

callmeed• 15 years ago

$32K for a site that does checkout with PayPal!? That sounds nuts to me, even with over-planning for high traffic.

FYI I recently posted a RoR app that lets you sell a file with Stripe: https://github.com/2tablespoons/Thylacine

JabavuAdams• 15 years ago

You're doing it wrong. :{

patio113• 15 years ago

You're thinking from the perspective of "geek who could actually implement this." Try thinking from the perspective of "entertainment personality who doesn't want their personal brand tarnished when their website blows up in their face and is willing to pay for surety of that."

bobbles2• 15 years ago

The comments are full of people proclaiming that the cost was too high, but then every time someone asks for an estimate on working as a freelance everyone says to charge as much as possible.

rkudeshi• 15 years ago

Devil's advocate: In the post, he himself says he would've earned more by doing a show for HBO/Comedy Central/other (also note that he mentions, but doesn't factor in the cost of his own time in putting this all together).

Given that a lot of people purchased this only to support "the experiment" (i.e. they might not buy the next time he or someone else does this), does this really demonstrate the success of selling independently?

Yes, he still owns the material and can resell it to Netflix or whoever. Yes, he will continue to earn money from it. But I imagine most of his true fan base will have already purchased it by now, so how many people are there really left to reach?

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this all become the standard way of distributing content. I think it will eventually happen.

But what does it say that today's most most popular working comedian makes less money selling independently?

EDIT: Based on these numbers, yes, Louis CK will end up making more money this way. But to say he hasn't done any publicity to this point is stretching the truth - he's promoted it all over his Twitter, gone on Reddit, did an interview on NPR, etc. It's not like he just dropped this out of the blue without warning. But my overall point isn't whether it will work out financially for Louis CK (clearly, it will) - it's that the circumstances of this business model work for Louis CK, but not necessarily others following in his footsteps.

EDIT2: Also, it's not as if others going the traditional route wouldn't make money in perpetuity. Maybe Eddie Murphy only got a standard fee for his Raw standup special, but surely he's getting residuals from DVD sales.

reustle• 15 years ago

I completely agree, but don't think most others would spend almost $200k on production.

radley• 15 years ago

It's been 4 days.

Think George Carlin or Richard Pryor - i.e. watching great old stand-up 20 years later. No royalties - all self-owned.

He could sell for $1 ea and still make more than the flat fee.

MikeCapone2• 15 years ago

Exactly. This is a pretty timeless show. It won't get stale quickly. If it's already considered a success after 4 days, imagine in 4 years.

DaveMebs2• 15 years ago

I don't think there is any evidence to support the notion that "a lot of people purchased this only to support the experiment." Sure, some folks on a HN thread commented to this effect, but I think that the vast majority of the 111000+ people who bought this probably like Louis CK. I recognize that I don't have any data to support my assertion either, but given the options of "buy this because I like Louis CK" and "buy this because I like alternative distribution models," I am fairly confident that more people are on the side of the former.

I also don't know why you think most of his "true fan base" would have bought this already. I love Louis CK and only found out about this because I am an HN reader. Why would you think most non-HN readers even know this is available? I mean really, I think you should at least wait a week before decreeing that "today's most most popular working comedian makes less money selling independently."

sirclueless• 15 years ago

Well, almost all of the facebook shares about this that I have seen are exclusively about the novelty and experiment. I didn't see anything that just left it at "Oh, Louis C.K. is awesome. Check out his new thing."

So at least anecdotally, a lot of people around me bought this because of novelty and to support this business model instead of because they like standup or Louis CK.

TomAnthony• 15 years ago

Beyond the anecdotal evidence sirclueless has given for the actual supporting of the experiment (which matches up with what I have seen), it is the experiment that drove the publicity for this story to get so much coverage. Just look at the title of this thread.

interlagos5• 15 years ago

Remember The Plant?

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/00/11/30/1238204/stephen-king...

wastedbrains• 15 years ago

I bought to support the experiment, same with rainbows, NIN and others. I do agree that most purchases aren't this way and the long tail should be significant.

r0s2• 15 years ago

I can only imagine the overhead is much lower compared to a HBO production. Compound that against every future sale as well.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

You'd need to know what conglomerates pay him. If the differential is not large, I could see the difference residing in the costs he paid. HBO doesn't have to develop a new website from scratch every time, and they probably have in-house production, reducing cost.

cookiecaper• 15 years ago

>it's that the circumstances of this business model work for Louis CK, but not necessarily others following in his footsteps.

I fully agree with this. If you have your own cable TV show, you can make a lot of money by selling your wares independently online. The platform is a lot different for those of us that can't start an AMA on Reddit and have it shoot up to 10,000 comments in a few hours.

This mentality is reminiscent of the first tech bubble. People, if you aren't already a famous figure or brand, it is difficult to get traffic and it is really difficult to get $500k in sales in four days. I'm not saying it never happens, but you shouldn't go into anything with that kind of expectation.

tankenmate• 15 years ago

Personally I had never heard of Louis C.K. before. What I did do though is watch the quick taster on his site and liked what I saw; sold.

icebraining• 15 years ago

Yes, but if you're unknown, you won't be able to get the same contract he could with a large company neither. It may still be worth it.

BrandonM2• 15 years ago

> But to say he hasn't done any publicity to this point is stretching the truth - he's promoted it all over his Twitter, gone on Reddit, did an interview on NPR, etc.

This is all stuff that he was able to do from the comfort of his own home. An HBO/Comedy Central/other contract would also stipulate that he make the rounds of Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, David Letterman, and numerous radio shows to promote the material. Those kinds of appearances are critical for expanding your fan base, since they give an essentially captive audience a chance to be exposed to a performer's material. Just look at his viral "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy" routine that helped get a lot of his current fan base.

The point is, he hasn't even begun to do the type of promotion that he typically would be contractually obligated to do, yet he's already closing in on the amount he usually expects to make. This looks like a wildly successful experiment.

manpat• 15 years ago

Actually, he has already done Conan (all week-special in NY back in October) where he clearly stated some details about his upcoming "$5-show".

Also, today he's doing Leno.

paolomaffei• 15 years ago

It got first link on front page of reddit BECAUSE he was distributing this way.

This won't happen the next times if this method of distribution becomes the norm.

tdoggette• 15 years ago

A comedy special isn't an every-couple-of-weeks thing, and the front page of reddit isn't a very exclusive club. I'd bet five bucks that his next $5 special enjoys a great deal of attention from there.

maximusprime2• 15 years ago

> " today's most most popular working comedian"

Are you serious? Most popular on Reddit and other liberal political communities maybe. I don't think anyone would claim he's the most popular comedian working today.

dasil003• 15 years ago

I don't disagree, but I think the more interesting angle is not that people are "supporting an experiment", but that so few A-listers are doing it this way so it stands out and attracts attention without any marketing effort. If everyone did it this way then no one would be impressed and he would have to fight for attention just like everything else in the normal marketplace.

That said, the normal marketplace has completely lost sight of pleasing the consumer, and instead they're trying to fleece us for everything they can get. An example is the price of Blu-rays and the fact that they still force you to sit through 20 mins of ads every fucking time you want to watch the movie you paid an arm and a leg for.

So even though I'm cynical about the industry, it's refreshing that Louis can do something like this in such a plainspoken way and really move the needle, giving the industry execs something to think about at least.

ianstormtaylor• 15 years ago

Just as far as this goes: "Yes, he will continue to earn money from it. But I imagine most of his true fan base will have already purchased it by now, so how many people are there really left to reach?"

Fan bases are always growing/shrinking. That statement is the equivalent of saying that Michael Jackson's "Bad" album probably saturated his fan base in 1987, and he probably didn't make much money off of it in the 24 years since.

I wouldn't underestimate the long tail.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I'm glad he made some money on it. His mind will be blown when the 'long tail' kicks in (people buying this video 3 years from now, still). He mentions "This [$200,000] is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video."

Here is the part where this can go off the rails. So the long tail will hit, people will 'discover' him (maybe on his second or third video) and will download this one. There will be many copies out there in circulation. The temptation will be to think "Gee if people couldn't just get one of those copies out there already I would be making even more money!" Completely losing sight of the fact that the videos out there are an agent for discovery and 'tasting' which is bringing more people to his web site.

People sometimes go all green with greed when that happens. Money can do that to people sadly.

That being said, the really cool thing is it adds another 'success' story to Trent Raznor's Radiohead (I don't think they were ever this transparent with the numbers there but I may be wrong) and makes it harder to dismiss the successes as 'anomalous' rather than 'reasonable expectation'. It is the presence of success stories that will get more and more people to move this way.

I wish it wasn't like water eroding a rock though, progress will be rapid when the flood starts but for now it is just a trickle.

weaksauce2• 15 years ago

Trent is not part of radiohead; Radiohead and Trent(nine inch nails with ghosts) did the same thing but at different times.

mojowo11• 15 years ago

I'll just throw this out there -- he did an interview with Digg a while back and talked about some of this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBxhxVIiwaA

masklinn• 15 years ago

> Radiohead and Trent(nine inch nails with ghosts) did the same thing but at different times

Not exactly the same thing: Ghosts I-IV was fixed price(s), provided lossless downloads, under a very permissive CC license and the first quarter was put on torrent sites directly.

Similar yes, same no.

patio113• 15 years ago

More valuable than the long tail is that he probably has an email list of ~20,000 people -- and more by the hour -- who have demonstrated interest in paying money for Louis C.K. comedy specials. I trust I don't need to tell you what to do with that if you're the exclusive producer of Louis C.K. comedy specials.

ddw2• 15 years ago

He makes it seem like he won't be using that list:

> and they would have owned your private information for their own use.

> You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

And I think Louis CK is going to be Louis CK's EP from now on.

EDIT: Forgot about the "don't contact me" default on the purchase screen.

redthrowaway3• 15 years ago

I'm curious where you're getting the 20k figure from. He mentions only that he's sold over 110k copies, but not what percentage of people opted in to the mail list.

evilduck• 15 years ago

Louis C.K. has 800k followers on Twitter too, and he was talking about it there too (that's where I discovered what he was doing).

nettdata3• 15 years ago

Back in the early days of the internet, I was the IT Manager at Nettwerk Records. We went out of our way to put complete, high quality MP3's of every song we owned the rights to online, for free, because we were willing to let the music stand on its own. We believed that it was worth giving potential new fans the chance to hear what they were (hopefully) buying, and that really was the case.

We had so much obscure music in the back catalogue that people would browse our archives, find a band that they'd never heard before, listen to a few songs, and then buy one of their CD's. More often than not, people would buy multiple CD's.

For that matter, when Sarah McLachlan's first big album, Surfacing, came out, the day that it hit the shelves we also put the entire thing in (for the time) high quality MP3's up on our web site for people to grab copies of.

And even if they didn't buy the CD, we hoped that they'd enjoy the music enough that they'd come out to see her in concert, or at Lilith Fair.

That kind of worked out not too badly, it turns out.

nettdata3• 15 years ago

Forgot to mention that the underlying concept was that it was more profitable, in the long run, to make a fan than it was to make a sale.

Tichy• 15 years ago

I think that kind of thing is often also done with a twist: the artist whose content is put online for free (or very cheap) does not get a dime. After all, no money is made from selling his stuff. Meanwhile the company profits nicely in the way you describe, selling other stuff. Not saying it worked that way for you, just that it is an old technique...

dspillett• 15 years ago

But back in the early days of the Internet, the hassle/quality/price ratios were not the same, so I suspect that would not work as well these days.

For a start downloading a full CD would be quite a faf back when most people had dial-up or something else slow as their main connection method. Costly too if you were in a country/area where there were no plans that didn't result in you paying per minute for time on dial-up.

To keep the download size manageable you'd have to use a relatively low bitrate, which would probably mean most people could tell the difference between them and the CD, especially with the older compressors with psycoacoustic models inferior to those used today (giving the choice on dial-up: high quality some time later today, or low quality sooner).

Being able to download a track, at a high enough quality that you can't tell the difference without breaking out a spectrum analyser, in a matter of seconds means the number of people paying for the CD because that is easier is going to fall drastically. The number of people buying other merchandise of tickets for live gigs might remain more constant though: physical delivery and "being there" can't be refactored by a fast connection in the same way.

TechNewb• 15 years ago

It will be interesting to see the analytics of the sale in a long term model, and see if there is a long tail, or if it's just a stubby tail. Like many, I hope that it is long. But this is currently on a single website, and not through a major distribution channel (one of the initial appeals). If he gets the content onto other services, then I imagine the tail would be longer. He should get it on Netflix, etc, if a true long tail is desired.

SODaniel4• 15 years ago

This is so true; and so well deserved! I'm 'guesstimating' wildly, but would not be surprised if the end revenue for 12 months hit $3.5+ million for this 'project'.

Again: Well deserved and I for one feel like I got $100 worth of awesome, for a bargain price!

jonnathanson2• 15 years ago

I'm all for this model.

But a major challenge remains, and it's this: Trent Reznor, Radiohead, and even Louis C.K. were all hugely popular and successful before they employed this model. Can the model work for lesser-known artists attempting to capture an audience?

In theory, sure. If anything, I could see this model's working out quite well for the proverbial little guy. But first, that little guy faces a big challenge: how to get himself noticed. How to turn himself into a Radiohead without the tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars that EMI spent marketing and promoting and touring Radiohead, over 20-odd years, prior to the band's online release of "In Rainbows." How to turn himself into a Louis C.K. without two major HBO series deals, a bevy of TV roles, sponsored tours, and a movie role or two.

In looking at the majorly successful artists in pop culture today, we see that 99.99% of them were "made" by a big company or series of big companies. They were self-made in the sense that they quietly worked in the trenches, perfecting their craft, sometimes for decades, before they hit their big breaks. But big breaks were necessary conditions of becoming superstars. And becoming a superstar seems to be a necessary condition for big success in this model.

[I don't want to get onto too wild of a tangent, and start discussing the philosophical meaning of "success." For some, success might mean simply making a living as an artist. I get that, and I respect that. I'm putting that aside for the moment, however, and focusing on the top of the game.]

absentbird• 15 years ago

Well there are also people like Jonathan Coulton (the guy who sings "code monkey") who started with nothing and built a fan base. Also he did the ending song for both Portal games.

onemoreact• 15 years ago

The current model does not work for less popular artists, so I have trouble seeing the downside.

larrys• 15 years ago

"quietly worked in the trenches, perfecting their craft, sometimes for decades, before they hit their big breaks. But big breaks were necessary conditions of becoming superstars"

Right and I would add that the model also worked because the supply was constrained on talent by the those offering the break. It's possible that we will hit (and are already hitting) a talent saturation point there is only so much entertainment pie that an individual will pay for or needs to consume. I mean my time reading HN takes away from the time that I used to spend reading other sites.

rgoddard• 15 years ago

I think the important fact is that this worked. If this did not work even for someone with a sizable reputation and fan base, then the outcome would be bleak for those who do not. Plus as more people follow this path with success, even those who do not can benefit. The studios and other agencies may have to compete with this model, and in the process hopefully improve the current model for those who are still under it.

nathanlrivera• 15 years ago

Just look at Markus Persson. He was a relatively unknown indie game developer until Minecraft.

mitsche• 15 years ago

I had never heard of Pomplamoose before stumbling upon them on YouTube. They seem to do well. Jonathan Coulton has been mentioned, who I knew before Portal came into existence and made him even more famous. Can't remember how I found out about MC Frontalot, but I bet I never would have heard about him at all in times before music production and distribution became virtually free.

Novelty acts? Sure. But they're proof that it's possible to become reasonably successful without the help of traditional media outlets if there's an audience for your work out there (I think most artists are–understandably–delusional about this one).

Anyway, I think curation is becoming more important and influental nowadays. And curators used to be much more (totally?) dependent on what the industry decided to provide them with.

It is no more so. I see no reason to worry about that (being a recording and performing artist myself).

djbrowning• 15 years ago

I really believe content distribution has to work this way, so much so that we've created a site (http://momeant.com) that allows you to enjoy content and then "reward" it after the fact. As Louis proved, audiences will support something they find value in, especially if the price is spread across a large volume of people.

efsavage• 15 years ago

"It is the presence of success stories that will get more and more people to move this way."

Absolutely. There's a very recent (<60 years) misconception (among artists and fans alike) that creating (as opposed to performing) music is a standard career choice and if you're at all good at it, you should be able to make a living off of it, and if you're not it's because the labels screwed you over. This causes musicians to vie for the favors of the industry they profess to despise.

These guys going out and actually making it happen on their own (even if the initial entrants have a historical advantage) will erode that sense of entitlement, and thus erode the willingness to submit to the industry that artists have.

Eventually, hopefully, musicians will be busting ass, giving away their music to fans early in their career, and getting increased funding/patronage as they go along, just like every other artist has since ancient times, not positioning themselves for a deal and being depressed if there's no A&R people at their big show. The most talented will likely still get rich, the one-hit wonders will go back to their day jobs, and if we're lucky, music will again be created by those who love doing so.

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

Disintermediation FTW.

Congrats to Louis.

bwooceli• 15 years ago

My favorite part of that whole article is the gigantic "buy the thing " button at the bottom.

natch• 15 years ago

I love that this worked, even though I'm not buying. For me it's a value-for-the-money thing. I'm sure I can spare the $5, and I'm sure I would enjoy it, but still, I get a huge amount more value from my $8 monthly-fee-for-a-limited-selection Internet streaming service (yeah, that one, I still love it even after the bumps).

It's really great for our freedom from DRM that this worked, and I almost bought it just to support that cause, but ultimately I think prices have to be even lower for me to do outright purchases of content. But then, maybe that's just me. A lot of other people voted differently this week, with their wallets, and that says a lot.

MikeCapone2• 15 years ago

So if $5 is too much for a show, how much would you pay? $1? 25 cents?

Just curious. At those prices, only the very mass-market stuff will make any money. Anything niche just won't pay for itself.

jayfuerstenberg• 15 years ago

Louis! Best $5 I ever spent.

Keep them coming!

y4m42• 15 years ago

I bought it since its DRM free, if it still remains the same i would buy stuff all the time. DRM is evil..

y4m42• 15 years ago

DRM free for the win!!

omouse5• 15 years ago

I dislike how it says "if anybody stole it". Piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement.

I'm still curious about the bandwidth costs. 110, 000 people is 110, 000 gigabytes which is 110 Tb of bandwidth. How much does that cost??

Also, since some of the torrenters did indeed pay for the video, they can be included as profit and they didn't add to the bandwidth costs. They were also a small amount, 10k is listed as the number of downloaders on one site. That's 10,000 out of 120,000 people who downloaded using torrents. That's around 8.3% That's really not bad at all and I'm thinking that this is the case for many things. And like I said, some of those people did pay for the video which bumps that percentage down; I would say down to 8% if you're a pessimist, and down to 5% if you're an optimist ;-)

Anyway, piracy isn't a problem here. I hope other people do this because it cuts down on the middlemen who are a constant drain of society.

staunch2• 15 years ago

It's on S3, so rounded up to 200TB (multiple downloads, etc) it's around $15k.

You could distribute it for significantly cheaper than that, but it's still a relatively low portion of revenue.

omouse5• 15 years ago

$15k extra might make him bitch less about piracy, especially when it's bittorrenting that saves those costs! ;)

It looks like lots of companies are using it for software patch distribution (Blizzard, Facebook, Twitter).

eof• 15 years ago

110TB is ~10k on amazon s3

edit: looks like i was beat to it; and didn't include multiple downloads.

to add some value 110TB is $9213.68 200TB is $14640.90

sixQuarks2• 15 years ago

Why did it cost $200,000 to produce and host the video? That seems way too expensive. $32,000 on the web site and hosting? Are you kidding me?

Bandwidth shouldn't cost more than $100 per TB. Seems like he got ripped off big time.

angrycoder• 15 years ago

You think he can just have his buddy record on his cellphone, edit it in Windows Movie Maker, and throw it up on a linode instance?

vidarh3• 15 years ago

Using your bandwidth price, his bandwidth costs alone will have easily exceeded $10k. Assuming $22,000 as a top end estimate for design, development and somewhere to host it sounds quite reasonable to me. If he hasn't chosen a bargain basement designer and developers, it's not uncommon to pay $1k+ per day for an agency. 20-22 man days if we exclude hosting costs, from concept, through proper design, content, development, testing and deployment isn't much at all.

lukeholder• 15 years ago

yeah I just don't understand the whining from some people here at HN about the cost of the website.

I suspect they are freelance guys with inadequate skills to charge the proper rate. This website would have taken at least taken $32k to design, build, test, approve, test etc. (test allot)

Of course some hackers could whip it up in a day - but I wouldn't trust the best hacker to have dotted all the i's and crossed the t's. Payment testing, S3 testing etc.

Doing something right is different than just doing it.

seanalltogether2• 15 years ago

Can anyone comment on the $170,000 cost to produce the video? He says he edited it himself so that pricetag must cover only the recording side of it. Is this cost a reflection of the price that large studios normally pay, or would he have gotten this rate from a smaller shop as well?

natep2• 15 years ago

My interpretation is that this was the cost of the cameras, cameramen, and venue (tickets, box office, ushers, sound setup, soundboard, lights, spotlights, advertisements). Basically, all the costs associated with getting people in the seats and the show on film (or whatever the cameras record to)

seanalltogether2• 15 years ago

Yeah maybe. I think the numbers are a bit weird then. He talks about making a profit of 200k, but then admits that ticket sales largely covered production costs, so is his total revenue around 750k with profits closer to 500k?

I wonder if HBO or CC paid for the special, whether he would still get 100% of ticket sales.

agildehaus• 15 years ago

This one video spanned three performances (Nov 10, 11, 12). Three nights in the Beacon theatre + audio/video engineers + equipment + set + lighting + production assistants + security + travel expenses + other stuff I can't imagine.

I'm sure it adds up quick.

jamesbritt• 15 years ago

He said, in the NPR interview, that he only filmed 2 of the 3 Beacon shows.

TheFunkyMonk• 15 years ago

"I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money"

I'm buying it now for this.

hooande• 15 years ago

Is it just me, or is Louie sounding more and more like a part of the hn/reddit crowd? He went from "I don't know what this 'torrent' thing is" (implied: "I'm not a nerd or anything") to being excited about online distribution and avoiding DRM. I've been a fan of his for some time and this seems unlike him. I think it's pretty cool to see someone's geeky side being exposed publicly.

redthrowaway3• 15 years ago

He's surrounded by that crowd. Remember, it was recommended to him that he release without DRM (not by the industry folks) and that he do a (wildly successful) AMA.

Also, as an artist, it has to be just pretty damned cool to see an experiment like this work, and be able to connect directly with fans who are willing to fork over money.

chippy• 15 years ago

I am also cynical - I suspect it's clever marketing. Targeted.

zandor• 15 years ago

And that might be the case. But the guy has been around the business for a while. His mother was a software engineer and grew up learning to fix things according to interviews. I mean he writes, directs, edits, produces his own TV series, uses RED cameras and then does this, so I'm inclined to believe that it's not all for show.

bobbles2• 15 years ago

If someone marketing to me is providing me with a cheap, DRM-free content that I WANT to purchase.. then I'm a happy person.

miql• 15 years ago

So what day does PayPal freeze his account? That's what I want to know.

woof• 15 years ago

I will pay more than $5 to see his reaction to that. A kickstarter to get Paypal to freeze the account anyone?

miles_matthias2• 15 years ago

Haha good question. I didn't buy one - did he use PayPal exclusively? Someone should tell him about Dwolla - he wouldn't have had to pay anything in fees!

stretchwithme• 15 years ago

Good for him. Louie is hilarious.

skurry• 15 years ago

So this is why Big Media is freaking out. Anyone with a MacBook and a Shure SM58 mic can record a studio quality album, and anyone with a Canon 5D on a shoulder rig can produce professional quality video. The Internet replaces the studios' giant duplication and distribution networks. And now Louis proves that this applies to full features as well, and that the artist can make really good money with this model. Reminds me of Kina Grannis of YouTube fame, who won a major record label deal, but decided to keep self-publishing, probably for her own best (even financially). Too bad Big Media is barking up the wrong tree (piracy). They can't stop technology.

ehutch79• 15 years ago

That's not really true, there's a lot that goes into 'professional' recordings, video or audio.

Mostly, experience is a huge part of it.

There's also a world of difference from a shure 58 on a macbook line-in, and high quality mics on a protools rig.

that said, my band recorded a 4 song ep for about 600$ at a local studio start to finish recently. (i linked to the album on my about page) I don't think any of us expect to make our money back on this one, unless everyone on here decided to go buy a copy on itunes, so we're giving it away.

Were we to do it all ourselves, the investment in equipment would have been at larger than that, and then amortized of a small amount of sales. The resulting quality also would not have even been close.

It's also hard to do promotion on a national scale without some kind of built in audience. Hows a small local band or whatnot going to reach people on the other side of the country, or in other countries entirely?

m_for_monkey• 15 years ago

"If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you."

Searching for "louis ck beacon" on The Pirate Bay gives 7 hits, with a total of 886 seeders, 152 leechers.

http://thepiratebay.org/search/louis%20ck%20beacon/0/99/0

miles_matthias2• 15 years ago

Unfortunately there isn't a reliable way to know how many people have pirated it.

roguecoder3• 15 years ago

It really doesn't matter how many people pirated it, as long as he makes enough money for it to be worth it to him to have made it in the first place. If it was 10 people but 40,000 bought it or a million pirates and 40,000 consumers, it's all the same to him.

alinajaf• 15 years ago

Did anyone else notice how good the copy is on the purchase page? Makes someone like me (who's been trying to get this right on my own projects) weep.

mipapage• 15 years ago

For sure, but man did that color scheme hurt my eyes...

ebiester• 15 years ago

I bought In Rainbows and this, as well as Harvey Danger's album (one of the first experiments from an established band) and Saul Williams's 2007 "Niggy Tardust." This is not to mention lesser known pieces that I've bought from independent artists online.

What I will say is that I wouldn't have bought any of these had they not been promoted online or DRM-free -- that isn't because I wouldn't have heard about them, or because I needed to support a particular model, but because in each case the artist both presented a genuine interaction with the fan and because the work was good. To the extent that the artists showed their humanity, provided an appealing product, and supported values that aligned with my own -- that was what drew me in.

It goes back to being a human rather than a faceless corporation, and it's a great tool of marketing niche products.

kahawe2• 15 years ago

Yes, nowadays you can easily record video and audio and edit both very comfortably on your home computer and if you know a bit what you are doing, you will get pretty good results.

Yes, nowadays there are a lot of ways of easily distributing music, especially online and yes, as the artist you will be keeping more per sold unit.

Yes, "surprisingly" your fans will want to pay for your albums - is it really so surprising? They also buy your merch and pay good money for seeing you perform live. So the whole "people aren't paying for music anymore" is nothing but propaganda.

Now here is the thing: this has been done a couple of times before, e.g. by Radiohead and then by Trent Reznor and NIN and probably a few others.

The point is: Reznor, NIN, Radiohead and Louis CK can do that kind of thing because they are ridiculously famous and successful. But for any other bands or musicians, I doubt they would have remotely that much success with a stunt like that. A lot of bands publish music online but come on, that is more a way of presenting themselves than it is a super easy and fast way to make half a million for them.

ck2• 15 years ago

It's a great "experiment" but let's be honest - this only worked because it's Louis C.K.

If it was an unknown or less popular comedian - they would have had a fraction of the sales and lost money.

bostonvaulter2• 15 years ago

Doesn't mean it would't be worth it for them.

Evgeny2• 15 years ago

I have no idea who the guy is, but I've just bought it - thanks to HN. I hope I enjoy it. :)

masmullin2• 15 years ago

So it's been 7 hours. Did you like it?

Evgeny2• 15 years ago

Only got to watch it today. That were some of the most well-spent $5 I remember!

harryf• 15 years ago

And then Paypal freezes his account for suspicious activity...

rplnt2• 15 years ago

I hope that handling these issues is in the $32,000 he paid for a website (&co).

maximusprime2• 15 years ago

This is clever marketing, and it worked - Although it is not innovative, new, or even news, it's top of HN.

The story here is how to market to Reddit/HN rather than anything else.

IMHO It would also be a stretch to call him a comedian.

pepijndevos• 15 years ago

He spent that much on the website, and still has unreadable red-on-black text?

Corrado• 15 years ago

I have said for the past 10 years or so that I would gladly pay a small fee directly to an entertainer instead of having them get an even smaller fee from a middle-man. For example, torrent the latest Rush album + give the band $5 directly = everyone (who matters) is happy. I have the satisfaction of supporting my favorite artist and Rush has quite a few more $$$s directly in their pocket.

All we have to do if find a way to send money directly to an entertainer and keep the (MP|RI)AA off our backs. Maybe this would be a good startup idea. Provide a "Pay Me" button (implemented with Stripe :) for artists to stick on their site. Joe consumer torrents their work then visits their site and clicks the button. Neat and easy. Of course, then you become the middle-man...

GFischer• 15 years ago

I started out with that idea (adding a "contribute to me" button), and tried to validate it.

It turns out that the people I approached weren't interested in a service to accept contributions if said service had significant fees, and I couldn't find a way to make those cheaper (moving money has a significant cost) and couldn't compete with Paypal Donate.

I still believe there's a market for it (you're an example :) ), but it's going to be tough to convince the content owners.

chocoheadfred• 15 years ago

I wonder how much he had made from us talking about him here?

rooshdi• 15 years ago

Awesome to hear and hopefully this encourages more content creators to distribute directly to fans through independent sites or apps. Loved the direct and blunt nature of the site. Price wasn't too shabby either.

swah• 15 years ago

And I was thinking, from the title, that it was a great success...

mrleinad• 15 years ago

Devil's advocate (another in a long list of threads here): I really like this model, and that the people actually creating contents receive good benefits cutting out the middle man..

however

There's this (I think correct) assumption that big labels are getting richer and richer by sucking a good portion of the money off the content creators, and providing almost no value in return. But they also create lots of jobs for other people, which in this model is reduced to a minimum. Could there be some way to fix the current model without losing all of those jobs for lots of people?

aredington• 15 years ago

Girl Talk's been using an even more beneficent form of this model since day one, which means far before getting popular. Gregg Gillis has achieved enough success to be touring and making money. There's still a couple caveats though:

1) Girl Talk is remixing bits of other songs that people already know, thus there's familiarity. 2) Trying to go through any label and traditional distribution model very likely would not have succeeded anyway, so trying something different wasn't really a choice.

synnik• 15 years ago

I also wonder what may have been different if this was not placed in the context of a very public experiment. How many of the purchases were political statements?

I think the same model needs to be employed, without any commentary, to get a true measure of the mechanism.

sc00ter• 15 years ago

I'm glad it's worked out for him, and unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems he's double-counting his production costs in working out his (pre-tax) profit, so he may have done even better than that:

"the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows)"

"12 hours [after launching] we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website."

Surely one or the the other covered the cost of production, not both?

"As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000"

(170K + 550K) - 250K - paypal fees != 200K

Which makes me wonder if this statement is correct:

"This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you"

On the other hand, whilst in the other front-page article on HN he says "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special", I only heard of Louis C.K. from watching one of his stand-up shows on TV on an airline, so even if he didn't get payed directly, there's still publicity value in them.

[Edited for clarity]

sunchild3• 15 years ago

I was more concerned that he paid $35K for a paypal-powered commerce site that sends plaintext passwords by email.

ryanwaggoner• 15 years ago

Yeah, because if someone got ahold of that password...they could login and download that $5 video!

In this case, I think this is actually superior, because a lot of the purchasers are going to buy and download this, and never login again. Why have them type in the same password they use for their email and banking, and have to worry about keeping it safe indefinitely?

bgentry• 15 years ago

4 reasons the plaintext password is OK in this situation:

1) They generate the password for you, how else are they supposed to get it to you?

2) Just because they email it to you in plaintext does not mean they are storing it in plaintext (they could easily send the email at the time the password is generated)

3) You won't reuse this password on other sites because you didn't choose it. The primary reason why it's bad to store passwords without proper hashing is that a leaked password database means hackers can tap into everybody's email/bank accounts which are using the same password.

4) All the password gets you is access to download a video (no other personal info available). Not a huge risk.

ohyes• 15 years ago

I think your math here using different assumptions than he would.

"This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows."

Otherwise he would have been able to simply pocket 170,000 dollars worth of tickets, as if he had done a regular show.

So to him, that's a net loss of 170k, you don't get to add it back in at the beginning.

So, 550 - 170 - 30 = 350k

You've also got to assume that his time is worth something, he could probably be working on something else instead of arranging his own marketing blitz... Also have to assume he pays for his own travel expenses etc.

I can see that being an expensive proposition if he, for example, has to fly cross country, miss out on potential shows, etc. If he misses out on 2 shows, that's a couple hundred thousand right there (apparently).

The point being, if he had done this through a media conglomerate, he probably could have had time for other stuff that would have made him money.

Bandwidth costs money too. > 100,000 GB isn't particularly cheap.

"I only heard of Louis C.K. from watching one of his stand-up shows on TV on an airline, so even if he didn't get payed directly, there's still publicity value in them."

Same, except it was YouTube. There's even publicity value for him in piracy. If he can afford to sell this thing for $5 and make a profit, he only needs something like 1/15th of people to become fans, buy a ticket and see him live.

thebigshane• 15 years ago

This is great news. I know Radiohead and Trent Reznor had similar results, but to avoid selection bias[1], does anybody know of an artist/musician/producer/etc that tried this and failed[2]?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

[2]: or at least wasn't as enormously successful as these three

jordan0day• 15 years ago

While I think this is great, and am just like (nearly) everyone else in our (nearly) universal disgust with the big content-owning conglomerates, I wonder about the part where he's justifying selling the video for $5, when through traditional channels it would have cost $20.

I feel like it's not uncommon to see stories on hn that basically say we should do the opposite with our products. That is, charge more, because the difference between increased revenue vs. customers lost will still result in a net gain.

Now, obviously Louis CK is a pretty widely-known comedian who already probably has a lot of money, so I don't think he conducted this experiment as a way of becoming that much wealthier, and I applaud him for not taking advantage of his fans. If he had sold it for $20 and billed it as "cutting out the middle man" I'd wager his total revenue probably would have been higher, but he chose to cut his fans a better (for them) deal.

That said, for lesser-known folks with smaller audiences who aren't already wealthy enough to cut their fans some slack, I'd imagine they'd do better charging $20 rather than $5.

kmfrk2• 15 years ago

I think the arguments you bring up are usually mentioned in the context of subscriptions and salaries. LCK's product is a one-time purchase, so the psychological limit sounds like just about $5, which is a price so low that you don't have to debate with yourself whether you want to buy it or not.

Use Steam videogame and iOS game prices as a corollary instead.

NDizzle• 15 years ago

Just throwing this out there, but if I can buy a Louis C.K. comedy special for $5 each year, I'm going to buy a Louis C.K. comedy special for $5 each year.

It's probably a self sustaining model. I only just heard about it now, and bought it just now. I don't think he's tapped 100% of his potential market in the 4 days it has been available.

I look forward to the next batch of statistics released. Hopefully in ~4 months?

shawnc• 15 years ago

Kind of surprised by the amount of people in this comment thread saying "yes it works for him but no one else". Why operate from this as your default? How sad. Examine this for how it can work for you, or someone else. Examine how it can work for a nobody. A small somebody. A first CD release. A "reunited after 10 years" cd release. Put that effort into how it can be done people!

talmand• 15 years ago

Am I the only that finds it odd he spent $32,000 on a website that features small, dark red text on a black background? I had to highlight the text to read it.

Otherwise, I'm glad his experiment worked out for him as in a small way it proves new business models can work if only tried. My question is whether the related industries will learn anything from this?

My guess is no.

maxmcd• 15 years ago

I was relieved to hear hear he only spent $32,000. He's clearly not heavily involved in the web, and I'm glad he wasn't drawn in by some flashy firm trying to charge him $100,000. It may seem like a lot to anyone on HN that could put something like this together in an afternoon, but I feel he could have done much worse.

masmullin2• 15 years ago

Is it funny? I didn't like the comedy special of his that is on Netflix.

dlikhten• 15 years ago

A case someone made about Louis C.K. being an asshole. Downloading his content and watching it without paying != stealing. Stealing is a +crime+ punishable by heavy fine/jail time (depending on how violent), watching his stuff and not paying is just not supporting future versions. It's like going to a website and blocking all ads. This is not stealing. It is not supporting, consuming without desire to help the producer succeed.

However, this goes to show: If you are well known, it's more profitable to self-publish.

joebadmo• 15 years ago

While this is great for Louis CK, whom I find to be hilarious and wish only the best, it doesn't strike me as a truly generalisable model. I mean, it's basically a restricted version of NPR's 'pledge' model, right? The copies are effectively free, but you can choose to donate some money to the artist. Sure this can work for someone with a lot of name recognition, but that's because he was already discovered.

I think the problem is that Louis CK isn't in the business of distribution, he's in the business of producing comedy. The NPR model does disaggregate the two. You don't pay for the distribution, you pay so that they keep producing content.

I think the Kickstarter model is more generalisable, in that it more directly solicits payment for the production, not the distribution. But it still depends on people wanting what you will produce, which means they have to know who you are already. Which, I think means that people are going to have to produce things for free until there's enough demand for continued production to be able to solicit payment.

pbreit• 15 years ago

This seems more like the success of novelty than a viable longer term, broader implemented model.

dfran02• 15 years ago

For kicks, request a new password on the site. Funny stuff.

marcamillion• 15 years ago

Louis, welcome to the meta-data effect.

Would love to hear how the releasing of this info has further affected sales. Based on the upvotes here, I wouldn't be surprised if it doubled them again.

Louis C.K. experiment results: over $500,000 in 4 days

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