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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

#281

Post by sunchild »

gte910h wrote: post #279
sunchild wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

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

#282

Post by moe »

joechip wrote: post #272
moe wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a way for them to make money they will be interested in you, just don't assume they are idiots. That's a really polite way of saying "They will squeeze the last drop of blood out of you and then some". You may also want to start thinking about writing software to help them manage [...] We already have the software. It's called spotify, soundcloud, grooveshark, iTunes etc. The technology to pay the artists…

That's a really polite way of saying "They will squeeze the last drop of blood out of you and then some". Very true! However, they do have a lot of cash and very few ideas of how to exploit all their digital assets. We already have the software. It's called spotify, soundcloud, grooveshark, iTunes etc. The technology to pay the artists a slice of the revenue is in place. Except currently it's mostly used to pay the l…

You'll be surprised (or not) to know quite how disjointed and hacked together their internal systems are.

Not surprised, I've witnessed it first hand (I've been with a music startup).

My argument is that they don't have a software-problem. Managing an inventory of a couple million items is by no means rocket science, they could fix that in a couple months. What the best software can't fix is their mindset, which is firmly stuck in long expired business-models.

Dealing with one of the so-called "majors" is like dealing with a really stubborn 3yr old. You can forever explain the simplest realities to them in the simplest terms - they will still insist on their objectively absurd position and use all the remaining power that they have to make your life miserable in every possible way.

The best strategy is to stay far away from them until they run of money and their inventory moves into more clueful hands. Unless you want to be the one to take-over their inventory of course. In that case I wish you the best of luck - and nerves of steel.

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

#283

Post by gte910h »

sunchild wrote: post #281
gte910h wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

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

#285

Post by vacri »

gte910h wrote: post #280
vacri wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that he's gilding the lily. He doesn't have to store the physical artifact in perpetuity, he can format shift it and make it like his $5 purchase. Sure, it's more work for him, and makes the effective cost more than $5. But he's not forced to store the physical artifact forever.

No, I can't rip a physical disk without considerable effort and learning and trial and error . I have one machine with an optical drive, and no ripping program I know how to use to rip a DVD. You think because you can format shift something everyone else has the time, inclination, hardware and software to do so.

Are you serious? With the amount of effort you've spent complaining here, you could have already found out how to do it. And it's a one-time learning thing - once you know, you'll know for next time too. Software is free. Handbrake is popular. You have the hardware. Time is trivial. Seriously, unless you have eight kids, you have the time. And frankly, people had the time before digital downloads became popular over the last few years - society hasn't changed that much.

The only argument you have is 'inclination', and frankly that's an argument against anything. There are people who prefer physical disks because they like the physical entity and find digital-only to be too ephemeral (witness the endless screeds against Steam not existing in the future, for example). Their inclination is the opposite of yours.

Your argument style is simply to grossly exaggerate the point. I also find it amusing that you follow a tech startup blog that markets itself to 'hackers', yet consider learning how to rip a disk 'considerable effort'.

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

#286

Post by Evgeny »

masmullin wrote: post #239
Evgeny wrote: post #153

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

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

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

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

#287

Post by mitsche »

jonnathanson wrote: post #186
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

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, peopl…

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 challe…

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).

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

#288

Post by sixQuarks »

lukeholder wrote: post #249
vidarh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, developm…

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…

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.

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

#289

Post by wnight »

_delirium wrote: post #246
jfruh wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current model doesn't work for most less popular artists. All the artists who came up through the system and are now superstars were less popular once, and the promotional machinery had a big part in making them popular (and rich). This is sort of how I feel about the traditional publishing industry. The way it's worked traditionally is that can't quite tell which authors are going to be big sellers, so you take…

An interesting angle is that the current model actually works quite well for the least popular artists: someone else pays for the cost of recording, usually at least a small advance, and tour, and if the record ends up selling nothing and the tour is a bust, the label eats the expenses. Such people would be quite a bit worse off if they paid for the recording/tour out of pocket and it went nowhere. The people who get…

But this is a symptom of one-size-fits-all solution the labels cram people into. Like VCs, they don't care at all about moderate success, anything less than phenomenal success is failure to them. So they'll burn your band/company out trying for unreasonable goals instead of helping you achieve whatever you can.

Your band could have been poised to be a very successful mid-level act and have been mispositioned, because mid-level acts aren't hugely profitable, and thus seemed to be a failure in a market you weren't wanting to compete in.

The small bands don't need a ton of financial support, especially these days. Recording a song can be done, professionally, for just a few thousand dollars and traveling to nearby concerts is pretty cheap. If you drop the idea of trying to sell an album in stores (payola!), and doing continent-wide tours, it's not all that expensive to spread your music to fans and enjoy a moderate return on investment.

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

#290

Post by gte910h »

vacri wrote: post #285
gte910h wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I can't rip a physical disk without considerable effort and learning and trial and error . I have one machine with an optical drive, and no ripping program I know how to use to rip a DVD. You think because you can format shift something everyone else has the time, inclination, hardware and software to do so.

Are you serious? With the amount of effort you've spent complaining here, you could have already found out how to do it. And it's a one-time learning thing - once you know, you'll know for next time too. Software is free. Handbrake is popular. You have the hardware. Time is trivial. Seriously, unless you have eight kids, you have the time. And frankly, people had the time before digital downloads became popular over…

Found out a method that might work in less than 10 minutes and try it out and find that it works? Possibly I could do that. (I've made 2 comments, Took about 10 minutes). I'm not sure I own the proper drivers to do it, I don't know enough about the video format to know what is required to decode it. I know my Grandmother, youngest half sister, step-mother, and many aunts would be nonplussed to do it (as I was arguing how valuable the media was to everyone, not to me; I pointed out YOU assumed EVERYONE had your abilities).

It was illegal until 2010, and I haven't owned DVD's since Xmas 2009. So yes, no inclination personally either. But I know that list of people has much better things to do than to learn to do all that stuff.

Now I own no (non-computer) DVDs. Why buy some? Why learn to do anything to them? I don't have any of the media.

I'd not even look at buying the DVD. Just like I don't look at buying the record, or the 8-track, or the floppy disc/betamax combo pack.

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