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

buy.louisck.net

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

#121

Post by wpietri »

ookblah wrote: post #82
jmonegro wrote: post #18

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

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.

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.

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

#123

Post by omouse »

sliverstorm wrote: post #106
backprojection wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why was this not more widely adopted? I mean, if you want to convince a corporation to adopt some business model, all yo have to do is show it's more profitable. Or is that naive?

How do you demonstrate that a fan is more profitable with something more than speculation? In a way that can still be charted in a PowerPoint for the suits to see?

You demonstrate the opposite; that pissing off fans is unprofitable. The music industry is no stranger to speculative charts and graphs; they use them all the time to justify their stance on piracy! "Potential revenue lost".

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

#124

Post by omouse »

citricsquid wrote: post #13

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 t…

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

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

#125

Post by omouse »

staunch wrote: post #67
omouse wrote: post #65

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…

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.

$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).

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

#126

Post by cookiecaper »

rkudeshi wrote: post #36

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…

>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.

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

#128

Post by perfunctory »

syeren wrote: post #8

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.

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

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

#130

Post by 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.

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