
Humble Comedy Bundle - CrazedGeek
https://www.humblebundle.com/?comedy
======
jljljl
For those who have not heard it, the Tig Notaro special is the one covered
extensively by NPR and various news outlets, after Louis CK declared it one of
the "truly great, masterful standup sets". The set famously opens with her
revealing to the audience that she was just diagnosed with Stage 2 breast
cancer.

[http://www.npr.org/2013/07/26/205540155/tig-notaro-on-
going-...](http://www.npr.org/2013/07/26/205540155/tig-notaro-on-going-live-
about-her-life)

I've only seen a couple sets by Tig, but this set and the Louis CK set alone
make it worth the 5-10 dollars for the bundle.

As a side note, it's great to see Humble Bundle expanding into new types of
content.

~~~
npinguy
I need to offer an alternative point of view.

It's a great set, but it's not as legendary as people seem to want to make it
out to be. I think there is an element of "you had to be there" that is
missing in an audio recording, and people genuinely want to feel what Louis
C.K. did when he first shared news of the performance with his followers.

As someone who is an avid consumer of standup (old and new), and a huge Louis
C.K. fan my expectations were set too high, and I don't think I enjoyed it as
much as I could've because I was expecting something legendary and timeless.

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programminggeek
I feeel like Humble Bundle is sort of becoming like Woot! The more it branches
out, the more successful it is, and less relevant to me it is...

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ohazi
Yeah, it's feeling less and less "humble" these days (imho, of course).

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aray
To me, the 'humble' has always been the

1) pay what you want

2) donate part (as much of you want of that) to charities

As long as they keep these I think a bit of diversity and exploration helps
grow the space. Maybe some other organizations could get involved as well.

~~~
ekianjo
Humble also made sense because it was supporting indie games makers. Now, not
so much.

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kqr2
This site keeps track of DRM free comedy specials for $5 or less.

[http://www.comedyspecials.org/](http://www.comedyspecials.org/)

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nodata
Cool site. Is it yours? Can you add e-mail subscriptions for new titles?

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spindritf
Or RSS.

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marchustvedt
I've been nothing but impressed with this HumbleBundle team. We produced the
Maria Bamford special at Chill (chill.com) and worked with them to make this
part of the new Bundle. Of all the output deals we have done, they have been
the most forward thinking, transparent and just plain easy going I've seen.
And they even got me to drop $25 on this one.

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forrestthewoods
Interesting that you can divide how the money is distributed to the artists.
Is that new? Once upon a time for video games you could split dev/charity/tip
but you could not control the split per dev. Am I mistaken?

~~~
hexedpackets
A couple of bundles have allowed per-dev split, but not all of them.

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icpmacdo
Wow this is great, Patrice O'Neal is one of the best comedians of his
generation.

~~~
cgag
I regret not hearing any of his stuff before he died, I was surprised at how
amazing it was. Mr. P and Hannibal's album are both excellent.

For anyone curious, Patrice's special "elephant in the room" is on youtube.

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tomphoolery
Oh this is just a whole bag of yes! great (and long-running) standup shows are
hard to find online. I even considered starting my own BitTorrent tracker just
for old televised stand-up that never gets aired anymore. Sometimes I like
going back and seeing "who made it" from the old HBO Young Comedians specials.

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zevyoura
The 1995 Edition (Louis CK, Dave Attell, and Dave Chappelle among others[0])
is particularly excellent.

[0]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0777178/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0777178/)

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Pxtl
I realize they must run tight margins with the prices they charge, but I keep
craving a nice client for all this non-game content on my Android device - I
have the eBook bundle and it's a bit of a rigamarole to get the ebooks into
the Kindle app, and the Android bundle client doesn't even list the ebooks.

~~~
moron4hire
be patient. it's going to space.

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leftnode
This is an amazing bundle.

Patrice O'Neal sadly died a few years ago, but his comedy was still hilarious.
Maria Bamford is great.

Hannibal Buress is probably one of my favorite rising comedians today.

The great thing about this bundle is that you can check out most of the
comedians on YouTube, but I definitely recommend buying it.

~~~
smacktoward
Maria Bamford is excellent too. The "Maria Bamford Show" YouTube series she
did a few years back is hilarious:
[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07FAAF5582CDD8A6](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07FAAF5582CDD8A6)

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obilgic
This is not "pay what you want" anymore.

Unlike their initial "pay what you want" culture, now they are basically
giving away few free stuff to encourage you to buy their paid stuff.

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ygjb
Not really, you can still pay what you want for the content, they just offer
an incentive to meet a threshold. Note that you can still direct the entire
amount that you pay the way you choose, so you could donate the entire
purchase if you wanted.

~~~
lightbritefight
Also,"beat the average" has always been a gimmick they use, back to humble
bundle 1. Its not a new mechanic they've introduced.

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dschep
I've already bought Louis CK's show directly from his site. Is the beat the
avg worth it for the Patrice O'Neal shows?

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newsoundwave
I wouldn't say so, but Tig Notaro's Live I would consider worth beating the
average for standalone (even though you don't have to).

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dschep
K, thanks. I've definitely heard excellent thing about Live (mostly via NPR.)

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bal00ns
It seems that the 'bigger is badder' mentality has snuck its way into this
discussion as well.

The Humble Bundle allows its customers to donate every penny they spend and
promotes up and coming artists. Why would its success be anything but
favorable if neither of these characteristics have changed?

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jlgreco
Humble Bundle originally caught my eye with the "curation" aspect, but now
that there are so many "humble bundles" it seems like I need to sift through
all the options myself. I may as well just find what I want to buy and buy it
directly (and donate to the EFF directly as well).

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Ianvdl
I've never watched Louis CK, so I'm might take a look at this. I've only heard
good things about him.

I've always preferred British comedy over all others though, so I was a little
disappointed not to see the likes of Dara 'O Briain or Michael McIntyre.

~~~
alan_cx
I'm British, I'm very much in to my comedy, I reckon we Brits do the best
comedy, and....... I cannot begin to recommend Louis CK enough.

For me, he is one of the best of his generation, including any one we Brits
have. I personally see a lot of "British" in his humor and over all act. I
think most British comedy fans, and fans of British comedy, would warm to him
with in 5 to 10 minuets.

Best of all though, is his whole attitude to getting his work out there, and
doing it himself. He takes risks, and does so with his own money. As a result,
he controls his own work, and his success rests purely on that. Of course he
got well paid, and well deserved, breaks. But he used that to finance his own
thing, his way. He seems to just earn money so that he can fund his next
project, and keep his creative ball rolling. He even published the finances of
his online DVD experiment.

Anyway, don't take my word for it, youtube has loads of his stuff. Give it
half an hour and see what you think. You may well think he is a load of crap,
after all, you do seem to like Michael McIntyre....... ;)

(For those who dont know, Michael McIntyre is the comedian who other comedians
love to have a dig at because his is hugely successful. Its the usual "sell
out" and "old jokes" ribbing that goes on. Truth is of course, MM is a very
clever highly honed and polished act that has mass middle appeal, and as a
result makes shed loads of cash as he appeals to the masses, and sells. Of
course, artistically, he is dumbed down mass appeal pulp, but IMHO, that is as
valid as challenging fringe appeal. I suppose pop music compared to jazz!!!
Or.... MM is MS Windows compared to Linux... )

~~~
Ianvdl
Thanks for the detailed answer, I'll have a look on youtube.

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1qaz2wsx3edc
Is Humble Bundle the new Groupon?

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VLM
No, because its mathematically impossible for the participants to be driven
into bankruptcy. Also, unlike groupon, humble bundle so far has not offered
astrology readings, car detailing, and massages (edited to add, that's all
groupon has ever offered in my area, depending where you live its possible
they offered "real" stuff where you live)

~~~
Dewie
> No, because its mathematically impossible for the participants to be driven
> into bankruptcy.

Well, buying a humble bundle is a _potential_ opportunity cost for each
comedian. If someone buys a humble bundle, they are most likely not going to
buy whatever show that comedian offered in some other format _in addition_.
Something like a humble bundle could in theory be such an opportunity cost for
a comedian that he cannot recoup the production cost of a show because of it.

Or is only the marginal cost of distribution a factor in this idea of
"mathematical impossibility"? Is that the only variable that influences a
potential bankruptcy?

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mercurial
I don't know about comedy, but they recently offered a "Humble ebook bundle",
which included the first novels of different series. It's a great way to find
out if you like the series and want to purchase more. Just like it's a good
way of purchasing games, and I'll gladly pay much more than the average to
support indies. I think it has really worked out both for sellers, buyers and
Humble Bundle so far.

~~~
VLM
About one Internet generation ago a paper sci fi (real scifi, not like TV "sy
fy") publisher called Baen had the same exact business model except with
cdroms.

It worked. I hear it worked very profitably.

As an anecdote I blew a lot of money with them after reading the first novel
or whatever. Also gained a couple new authors I still like.

There's probably a startup opportunity in other areas where "the first hit is
free" works pretty well. Someone should try it with TV shows.

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dublinben
If it's any testament, Baen is still around and has quite a few free books on
their website.

