
Louis C.K. experiment results: over $500,000 in 4 days - basiliskus
https://buy.louisck.net/statement
======
ChuckMcM
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.

~~~
jonnathanson
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.]

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

~~~
jonnathanson
I'm anything but an apologist for the current model. But if it disappears, we
haven't necessarily made life any better for lesser-known artists. So if we
are to remove one of the critical steps to success (i.e., the marketing and
promotional spend of traditional labels, publishers, networks, and studios),
we should hope that there's a viable replacement. Or we should try to build
one.

In our haste to cast out the old guard, we tend to lose sight of the fact that
the old guard still fills what appears to be a necessary purpose: the
breaking-out of artists. I'm confident and hopeful that their crucial role in
that purpose will, eventually, weaken or fade. But for now, it's still a
strong reality.

Ultimately, we have yet to see indications that this new model is any kinder
to small-time or nascent artists than the old model is. That's the big
problem. The winners of the new model (Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Louis C.K., et
al.) have first been winners of the old model. So it's very premature to say
that the new model is better for the little guy.

To put it in financial terms: the new model holds bigger theoretical upside
(share of profits) for artists and consumers (reduced costs). But it does
nothing about the downside (risk of never breaking out, financial burden of
building a fanbase, etc.), and may even make the downside worse for most
artists. At least the little guy in today's model has a _chance_ , albeit
extremely slim, of getting discovered and catching a big break. But will the
same thing be true in a pure long-tail environment? The jury is still out.

~~~
dmbass
There are lots of examples of artists blowing up without labels (though some
subsequently start their own or get signed) in the past few years by
distributing their music on the internet for free. See: Pretty Lights, Girl
Talk, Odd Future, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, etc. It won't be viable for every
artist/band but neither is the music industry of old. You must bring something
special because otherwise nobody will care.

~~~
_delirium
It's not clear the internet has actually improved the odds, though. There are
plenty of examples of artists DIYing their way to at least moderate prominence
decades ago as well; particularly common in punk-rock, where you've got Bad
Religion, Fugazi, Crass, etc. You didn't have blogs to promote your music, but
did have zines, flyers at shows, college radio, etc.

------
rkudeshi
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.

~~~
DaveMebs
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
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.

~~~
philhippus
I think that says something about his target audience. People are capable of
more complex thought than "funny man is funny" and the usual base instincts
that marketers have exploited to great effect. This marketing ploy adds an
extra layer to customer involvement, just mildly stimulating the slightly
higher faculties of the consumer base cognisance. As sentient biological
super-computers that human beings are, they easily comprehend the concept and
gladly exchange money to support it.

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

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

~~~
dillona
You can buy Apple Lossless from the iTunes Store?

~~~
ugh
No, you can’t. Only AAC.

------
aresant
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).

~~~
kahawe
> _for showing that you don't need a label,_

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

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

~~~
SODaniel
Though since Trent Reznor, Smashing Pumpkins etc. have used the same model for
4-5 years now I wouldn't exactly say that Louis CK was 'first'.

Of course, he's sort of a 'pet project' and lovechild of Reddit etc. But I'm
pretty sure that there are many comedians, film makers, musicians etc. that
would be happy to make 1/5th of 'traditional revenue' and keep 80% instead of
the 5% they keep being signed to a major label.

------
po
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
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.

~~~
paulhauggis
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.

~~~
arketyp
I bought it and then downloaded it with torrent because it went faster that
way. I think the server were overly busy, so maybe the correlation you speak
of is negative.

------
hooande
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.

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

~~~
bobbles
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.

------
skurry
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
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?

------
natch
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.

~~~
MikeCapone
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.

------
sc00ter
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]

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

~~~
bgentry
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.

~~~
sunchild
The correct way to handle this is to email an authenticated link that prompts
password setting on the store.

~~~
gte910h
That's _A_ way. For a virtually costless good, this is just as fine a way that
has a much smaller chance of capturing a password anyone gives a shit about

~~~
sunchild
Look, my point is that for $35K, a newly-built commerce site should follow
basic best practices. It isn't exactly hard to implement, esp. if you're worth
$35K. It isn't about someone stealing my account info – it's about evaluating
what he got for $35K.

~~~
gte910h
I disagree that's a best practice for all cases.

For a commerce site _that you will not use or necessarily maintain for years_
, a system where you don't ever _get_ passwords that other people give you can
certainly serve better than one where you do, as the logins are only useful
for the content.

This could be more useful to him as his security matters less, as he has less
valuable things stored in his site. It may also work better to lower support
costs (as many people are pretty bad about keeping track of passwords), and
this approach means they can just look at their email to start.

I agree for many cases (say, HN), that it is a good practice, but it's not
gold in all cases.

------
omouse
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.

~~~
staunch
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.

~~~
omouse
$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).

------
ebiester
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.

------
seanalltogether
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?

~~~
natep
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)

~~~
seanalltogether
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.

~~~
catshirt
i can say with near complete certainty that if HBO or CC paid for the special
he would receive substantially less than 100%

------
NDizzle
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?

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
Game_Ender
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.

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

~~~
miles_matthias
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!

------
aredington
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.

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

~~~
tempire
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.

~~~
jmonegro
When you put it that way, sounds about right.

------
jordan0day
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.

~~~
kmfrk
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.

------
joebadmo
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.

------
dave1619
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.

------
talmand
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
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.

------
Corrado
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
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.

------
m_for_monkey
_"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_matthias
Unfortunately there isn't a reliable way to know how many people have pirated
it.

~~~
roguecoder
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.

~~~
piggity
I tried to download it using my 3 free downloads - failed miserably (got about
10k/s for the first 100MB).

So I'll be one of those leeches shortly...

------
olihb
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?

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

------
daeken
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.

------
syeren
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.

~~~
fletchowns
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.

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

------
mrleinad
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?

------
epikur
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.

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

~~~
burgerbrain
Would OpenDNS be any better in that regard?

------
shawnc
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!

------
thebigshane
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

------
y4m4
I bought it since its DRM free, if it still remains the same i would buy stuff
all the time. DRM is evil..

------
jmtame
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.

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

~~~
jmtame
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)

~~~
dillona
I bought both Ghosts I-IV and The Slip. I also spent $300 on the Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo soundtrack that he put out last week.

And I downloaded Niggy Tardust for free. I did this because I had never heard
Saul Williams and wanted to support an artist who I had never heard of. But
after listening to it, I honestly just didn't like it, so I did not go back
and buy it.

I wonder how many people were like me and downloaded it for free because of
the experiment and Trent Reznor's involvement but didn't pay because it wasn't
their style of music.

------
synnik
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.

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

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

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

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

I'm buying it now for this.

------
rooshdi
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.

------
ck2
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
Doesn't mean it would't be worth it for them.

------
marcamillion
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.

------
jpdoctor
Disintermediation FTW.

Congrats to Louis.

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

------
dlikhten
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.

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

------
stretchwithme
Good for him. Louie is hilarious.

------
stevewilhelm
downloading my purchased copy now.

------
jayfuerstenberg
Louis! Best $5 I ever spent.

Keep them coming!

------
callmeed
$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>

~~~
patio11
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._ "

~~~
bobbles
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.

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

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

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

------
dfran02
For kicks, request a new password on the site. Funny stuff.

------
y4m4
DRM free for the win!!

------
kahawe
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.

------
maximusprime
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.

------
sixQuarks
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.

~~~
vidarh
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
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.

~~~
sixQuarks
Well, I guess I was wrong then. It's true I'm not a technical guy, but I've
run a site that did 1TB of bandwidth each month and never paid more than
$130/month for hosting (back in the early 2000's), so I figured he should have
gotten better pricing these days.

