
Thanks Louis C.K, now here's my Dad - dools
http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Thanks_Louis_now_here_is_my_dad
======
jaysonelliot
Gosh, a lot of harshness here for such a simple and nice thing that this guy
did.

A kid loves his dad, his dad makes some good songs, so he decided to show him
that you could sell them online without a lot of complications.

He referenced Louis CK, which I think is appropriate. Different scale, but in
the spirit.

I'd like to see more authors, artists, and musicians do this. It would be
quite a poke in the eye to the DRM-loving companies that are pushing SOPA
right now if they saw that indie artists can thrive without them.

~~~
Natsu
I agree that it's a very nice thing he did. But the ability to build &
maintain a fanbase is key here. I wish him the best of luck with that.

Right now, though, I fear they're missing an opportunity. They should least
figure out how to get people to sign up for a mailing list, or give them a
Facebook page to like, or make it easy to share the page via social media...
anything, really, to keep a connection to the audience you have right now and
using that to get a bigger one. They appear to be doing nothing of the sort
yet, which may lead to an initial boom followed by nothing, just as if the
intersection they were playing at had gone from a busy one to an empty one.

With RL busking you can always find a crowd, but online it's not always that
easy to get or retain attention. I mean, there's a reason why business people
like to see graphs of user numbers that are increasing steadily.

I say this because I want to see him succeed. I believe that this model can
work here, but only if he can build and retain the fanbase to support it. It's
no different than trying to make sure that you always have a crowd to play
for. Busking on an empty street won't get you anywhere, after all.

I wish him all the best.

~~~
dools
Hey Natsu, there's a form to enter your email address to find out about future
releases on the page. We've had a few people put their addresses in :)

It's below the PayPal button - perhaps you missed it? Makes me think the
positioning isn't all that great.

~~~
Natsu
Yep, totally missed it somehow. My bad on that.

EDIT: It took me a while to figure out why I missed it. I went there and found
nothing at all but an email address. I looked through everything and found
that PayPal is serving a 1x1 tracking pixel via https. Odd.

<https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_AU/i/scr/pixel.gif>

Ghostery didn't see that, either, and many things have default exceptions for
https. Strange. Finally noticed that the Wufoo thing was getting eaten by
NoScript. You can't even tell that something is missing, you have to whitelist
them to get it to show up. So, this probably only affects some of the HN
folks, it wouldn't affect a more general audience.

------
blhack
I'm sorry, not to be a cynic, but there is almost no similarity between this
and what Louis C.K. did.

One was a massively successful, near household name who has his own cable
television show releasing what he normally releases, but doing it without a
formal distributor.

This is an unknown street musician that I doubt anybody has ever heard of.
Musicians like this have been giving their music away for free on the Internet
as long as I've been here.

For him, there isn't a real risk. At best he gains popularity, at worst his
situation doesn't change.

I hope he gains that popularity, but there is nothing new here, and this
certainly doesn't have anything to do with Louis.

~~~
natrius
To add to this, note that while Louis C.K. experimented with distribution, he
experimented very little with marketing. He hit the same late night television
shows he would regardless, and the word of mouth of his existing fan base
propelled it even further.

This, on the other hand, is an experiment in both marketing and distribution,
and barring any significant innovation in the former, it will probably fail.

~~~
detst
I think you mean promotion, not marketing. I'd say he experimented heavily
with his marketing. I'd even say he experimented with his promotion by doing
things like answering questions on Reddit. Even the novelty of the experiment
is part of the promotion; he knew that the novelty would likely garner
attention that he would not otherwise receive.

------
wheels
Do you have the original tracks from the recording? The mix could use some
help – the EQing of the vocals pulls the low mids out and makes them sound
hollow and the reverb is overbearing (and low quality). This may seem like
minutia, but the quality of your father's voice is such that a rawer, more
organic sound would, I believe, make it genuinely come across as more
authentic. (This is in contrast to his guitar playing which is fairly precise
– it actually might work better if it was a little sloppier.)

Just for reference, I think a mix like these might get closer to bringing out
the subtleties:

<http://grooveshark.com/s/Company/2h3knu?src=5>

<http://grooveshark.com/s/Old+Man/1MhNJ8?src=5>

Those are both really dry, imprecise recordings, but that's appropriate for
the material.

I agree with the others that the fundamental character of this experiment is
pretty different from what Louis C.K. did. But your father is a good
songwriter, and I think you might get more milage out of releasing the source
recordings with Creative Commons licensing and encouraging people to mess with
them and report back. It'd at least have the potential for more of a feedback
loop than you'd get just posting them as-is.

~~~
dools
Hey wheels, I don't have access to any different material right now but this
is awesome advice, thanks. I particularly like the idea of encouraging people
to mess with them.

~~~
yardie
The French band Phoenix did something like that. They had on their site where
you could download the tracks for each song. I think it averaged ~100MB/song
because you had an MP3 file for each guitar/keyboard/vocal track. I didn't
have a lot of experience with multitrack mixing at that point, but I was
engrossed for hours in Garageband mixing things up.

------
sien
This kind of thing has been done for decades but not over the web. Really, do
people not know this or are you all too young?

Consider Ani Difranco and go read the article about her from The Economist
from 1998 : <http://www.economist.com/node/174267>

Small 'indie' labels did something similar starting in the 1970s at least and
probably earlier.

Louis CK doing it is interesting, but people have been able to build up their
own distribution before the net existed. It's easier now but piracy is also
much easier too.

Loads of people do it on the net now, one of my current fave bands Amiina
which is the string section from Sigur Ros, has their music available for a
few bucks out there direct too sans DRM.

~~~
dools
This looks really good that Amiina is using: <http://www.topspinmedia.com/>
still it seems more complex to me than the "couple of bucks" and very simply
downloadable tracks - I really wanted this to be as close to busking as
possible but on the web.

------
boredguy8
I don't think it worked for Louis CK simply because he's popular. It worked
because he's a great performer. And I hope this doesn't come across as too
harsh, but the out-of-tune moments, like "find" at about :47 into "When I Find
Claire" are why it's tough for other people to do the same.

Louis CK put out a $200k production at $5 / pop, not including editing time
(since he edited it himself). This is not the musical equivalent of a $200k
production.

I hope your dad makes a few bucks because it's important to support local
artists, but this isn't particularly well produced, so comparing this with
Louis CK's production isn't going to safely lead to general conclusions about
the approach to sales.

~~~
dools
There are two issues at play here: one is actual recording production (which
in the case of Nick's songs is reasonable albeit homespun) and actual content.

Out of tune moments - they happen to really amazing musicians (especially when
performing live) and a lot of what you're calling "production" these days is
just auto-tune.

That being said, he's not, never has been, nor will ever be a "diva". The
style of music doesn't necessarily call for it, although that's not to say
that he hasn't worked on improving his voice over the years - mainly with a
focus on unamplified street performing more than intonation and accuracy.

Really, though, the goal here is to allow a musician to connect with _anyone_
who enjoys their music - not to make anyone like it or convince them that it's
great.

Because those people are not going to be common (let's face it - we're never
going to see Spunky Junk Tambourine performed at the MTV VMAs), what I'm
interested in finding out is whether or not simply taking the same approach as
busking but broadcasting it to a much wider audience will allow Nick to make a
living from his originals in the same way as he can make a living singing Khe
San at 2am on a Sunday morning (and having people steal his tambourines :)

~~~
boredguy8
I understand what you're saying. I hope you understand my point isn't, "This
needs to be more like pop music." It's rather the simple point that this is
perfectly fine amateur music, but not much more than that. Drawing any broader
conclusions about the viability of direct-to-consumer sales of media content
is inappropriate with this experiment.

------
jaysonelliot
I threw a couple bucks in his virtual guitar case.

Four tracks for two bucks, that's more than fair. We all spend that on an
iPhone app easily, I'm happy to pay for these songs.

Nick Dooley's songs are really beautiful. I'm going to enjoy having these.

~~~
dools
I'll pass this onto my Dad, he'll love it, thank you very much :)

------
erikpukinskis
This kind of thing would be a great use for <http://gumroad.com>

------
kennywinker
I love what Louis C.K. has done, but if you read his description of the
process you'll note he says he spend about 35k on the platform he used to sell
his video.

I'd love to see an open source version of this, so that other people can do
the same without having the 35k up front to pay a web developer.

~~~
prawn
I got the impression that some portion of that $35k was on hosting, and would
be considerably cheaper for a smaller player? If you were smallfry wanting to
sell a digital asset, you could do it for a lot, lot less than $35k obviously.

~~~
redthrowaway
Also, he had not only to pay for the massive amounts of traffic, but also
ensure the website could handle it without bogging down. That's not really a
concern, here.

------
aw3c2
Any chance to give the tracks a specific license, eg a Creative Commons one?

Random 5 minute website critic:

Website is very wide. Stretches to full width even on wiiiiide screens ruining
readability.

Signature is cut off on 1050px desktop height for me. The text itself seems to
be many fancy words with no content. I had to force myself to read it. There
were not instant eye catchers or a visible structure.

The photo looks kinda sad and negative.

"Hi I'm" should be "Hi, I'm" I think?

No idea what "busking" is.

"please feel free to get in touch" -> "please feel welcome to get in touch".

Buy button is greyed out and "invisible", the paypal image next to it is much
more visible.

Remove that "Artist Statement" headline, it's clutter.

Definitely add a Facebook page.

You definitely want to add in-browser streaming for those demo tracks.

~~~
cdmoyer
Just commenting to second the comments about the donate button being
invisible. I tried clicking the paypal logo, and nothing happened, and at my
brower's width, it overlaps the button. Luckily, I found it, but I almost just
closed the window in frustration.

Another note, let people put in any amount on paypal. I would have donate
more, but paypal wouldn't let me.

------
jsilence
If we were to create a society which simply circumvents the broken copyright
industry in a way where artists and audience act on a basis of mutual trust
and respect, we need more artists releasing their work like this and we need
an audience that ist showing their appreciation by paying the artist.

So yes, IMHO this is absolutely the way to.

Thank you Nick Dooley, for doing this. And thanks to everybody who is chipping
in some money. You are building blocks of a society I would like to live in.

------
zitterbewegung
Interesting to see if it worked for Louis C.K. because of his notoriety and
popularity or if the model can actually work for everyone.

~~~
toyg
The critical factor is always publicity, rather than distribution models.

Louis didn't get publicity because he put stuff on the internet, but rather
because he had built a following with his previous work, and used that to
publicize this effort. He could have spent three months in a glass box
suspended on the Hudson river and sold the tape at some random street market,
and he would have probably received the same amount of money and attention.

The OP knows this very well, and is actually just trying to get publicity by
arbitrarily linking his dad's stuff with Louis' name. To be honest, it's quite
disgraceful.

~~~
EGreg
Louis CK's experiment was hailed by many people as a proof that independent
artists can produce themselves and distribute their stuff successfully using
the net. What is disgraceful about making an experiment to see if it would
work for a non-celebrity?

~~~
georgemcbay
I agree that this isn't disgraceful at all, but for me the more interesting
test will actually be whether or not Louis CK's model will work for other
famous live performers.

Did it work because the model is inherently sound or because it was so novel?

I don't think we can say one way or the other yet.

If I had to guess, I'd say that I think that his model will work for others
but probably not as well, once (if?) it becomes commonplace I suspect you'll
get a higher ratio of downloaders who don't pay to those that do.

------
seldo
I think this would have been a closer analogue to Louis C.K.'s experiment if
the songs had not been available for download without payment. This is just
busking -- playing the music whether or not people pay, but hoping they do.

Obviously, Louis C.K. could require payment first because people had some
expectation of the quality of his content already, and that won't work for an
unknown musician.

That doesn't mean this is a bad idea, but it's not really the same idea.

~~~
dools
This is absolutely like busking! It was the similarity between what Louis was
doing and what buskers do that really reminded me of this idea - and it's one
that's not even very new.

It was written by Robert Woodhead on selfpromotion.com as "Virtual Tipping"[1]
in 2000. That's where I first read about it - and I'd talked to my Dad about
it before but never knew how to tackle the whole distribution thing. Seeing
Louis do this so simply just made me think "fuck it, let's go".

[1]<http://tipping.selfpromotion.com/>

