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Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

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Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#51

Post by dasil003 »

tptacek wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design: $2k, coding: $5k, convincing Louis CK to use you over everyone else in the world for the most important moment of his career to date: $23k. And honestly, given the results, they undercharged.

Just because it snags my overliteral nerd brain: this wasn't the most important moment of Louis CK's career. Louis CK is a giant of modern standup comedy.

Why is it not the most important moment of his career? Are you saying there was one break he had that really was the difference between his being a mega-successful A-list standup comedian and being a struggling pauper? Because his little stunt seems to be one of the biggest success stories of indie distribution to date. He would be rich either way, but maybe what is important to him is changing the world in which case I could easily see how this was the most important thing.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#52

Post by tptacek »

dasil003 wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it snags my overliteral nerd brain: this wasn't the most important moment of Louis CK's career. Louis CK is a giant of modern standup comedy.

Why is it not the most important moment of his career? Are you saying there was one break he had that really was the difference between his being a mega-successful A-list standup comedian and being a struggling pauper? Because his little stunt seems to be one of the biggest success stories of indie distribution to date. He would be rich either way, but maybe what is important to him is changing the world in which cas…

We're talking about someone with multiple seasons of an eponymous show on FX, a full season of an eponymous show on HBO, and numerous HBO standup specials, along with a studio film director credit, all this following a long career as a TV writer, and we think this Internet special was somehow his break?

I don't know, maybe you'll be right in the long run, but I'd bet against you being right.

I'll put it differently: Louis CK will end up being more important to the Internet than the Internet will be important to Louis CK.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#53

Post by dasil003 »

staunch wrote: post #34

Louis CK paid like $30k to setup his site for streaming his special. Gaffigan will probably pay some similarly absurd amount. What HNer is going to setup the simple solution for all the comedians that want to copy Louis CK but don't want to figure it out and spend $30k? Transcoding + S3 + Stripe + Reporting dashboard + handholding with a flat 5%-20% fee or something. It could even be an iTunes-like competitor. Web-ba…

Okay, I can't just let people keep repeating this. $30k for a promo of this magnitude is not absurd in the least. This thing blew up huge, and it went off huge without a hiccup. If you just hire some low-ball bidder who knows how to slap together some APIs what guarantee do you have that it won't crash and burn under load? If that happens in seed-stage startup, oh boohoo, you disappointed your 100 early adopter friends, you learn from the mistake and you iterate, no experience necessary. If you do it with a viral promo that cost you hundreds of thousands to produce you just threw 90% of your potential millions right down the toilet and you probably end up crawling back to your bitter paymasters who are not feeling particularly generous after being cut out of the last big deal.

You hire people who know what the fuck their doing. No one here knows all the edge cases and planning that went into it. It looks super simple, but that is the brilliance of it. It looks effortless because it so well achieved. It's disappointing to me that HN members would dismiss this as just combining a bunch of commodity components and calling it a day. Just because you fancy that you could churn this out in a week of working 14 hour days with your buddy like you do for your startup doesn't mean that people doing this professionally shouldn't charge $250/hr to do it. Remember, they have no upside, and should charge a proper fee for their expertise.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#54

Post by Dylan16807 »

brador wrote: post #14
sawyer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft's success had very little to do with the model of "pre-ordering PC games", and very much to do with being an amazing product (even in it's pre-release state). Delivery novelty may account for a fraction of the overall effect - it's certainly not the central reason for a commercial success.

I meant novelty in product marketing, not novelty in product itself. Minecraft was sold as a preorder when in Alpha, with buyers expecting to shape the future direction of the product as it gets "made". This worked in that case, but not in the iso zombie mess case. With these comedy sales, the novelty again is in the manner of selling. One big shot, some mob mentality, hype and Reddit. Everyone sharing the moment. Th…

Shape the future of the product? This is the first time I've heard of that and I was an alpha customer.

I bought it because I wanted to play it. In its current form.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#55

Post by dasil003 »

tptacek wrote: post #52
dasil003 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not the most important moment of his career? Are you saying there was one break he had that really was the difference between his being a mega-successful A-list standup comedian and being a struggling pauper? Because his little stunt seems to be one of the biggest success stories of indie distribution to date. He would be rich either way, but maybe what is important to him is changing the world in which cas…

We're talking about someone with multiple seasons of an eponymous show on FX, a full season of an eponymous show on HBO, and numerous HBO standup specials, along with a studio film director credit, all this following a long career as a TV writer, and we think this Internet special was somehow his break? I don't know, maybe you'll be right in the long run, but I'd bet against you being right. I'll put it differently:…

Who said anything about "his break"? What he did on the Internet was certainly more novel than his previous stuff which has been by countless other people. Again, the "importance" of that is up to Louis to decide, but it's not as obviously ridiculous an assertion as you seem to think.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#56

Post by alxp »

paulhauggis wrote: post #33

It's interesting because it's all over the torrent networks (Louis's $5 comedy special). It shows you that it's not about: price, protection, or availability. Many times it's just because people want it for free and are not willing to part with their hard-earned money. I also think that most people bought this only because they wanted to prove to the world that it would work (DRM-less and cheap media). When it become…

> I also think that most people bought this only because they wanted to prove to the world that it would work (DRM-less and cheap media).

I think the number of people concerned with making a gesture to push some political agenda about DRM is dwarfed by the number of people who like Louis C.K.'s stuff from HBO and FX and think $5 is a great deal for a 60 minute special.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#57

Post by defen »

tptacek wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design: $2k, coding: $5k, convincing Louis CK to use you over everyone else in the world for the most important moment of his career to date: $23k. And honestly, given the results, they undercharged.

Just because it snags my overliteral nerd brain: this wasn't the most important moment of Louis CK's career. Louis CK is a giant of modern standup comedy.

Perhaps more accurate to say "if the site had fallen over, he would have looked like a total asshole, lost a ton of money, and no mainstream entertainer would even dream of trying something similar for a decade."

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#58

Post by drivebyacct2 »

corin_ wrote: post #23
mrmaddog wrote: post #12

His post seemed a bit off to me. I got the feeling that he's doing this because "Oh look, Louis CK made metric ton of money this way, lets see if I can emulate his success" rather than actually understanding the motivations for why consumers want a 5 dollar, drm free comedy special. It also seemed strange that he is pre-announcing this release. I think this initial post will be his biggest shot at publicity, and it i…

That's exactly the reason you want people to be doing it for. It's all very well understanding why consumers want better options, but it has to make sense for both sides, the artists need it to be a viable way to make money.

His point is that if he was doing it right, he would have announced it and launched it at the same time. He blew his biggest moment to capitalize on this idea. \

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#59

Post by staunch »

dasil003 wrote: post #53
staunch wrote: post #34

Louis CK paid like $30k to setup his site for streaming his special. Gaffigan will probably pay some similarly absurd amount. What HNer is going to setup the simple solution for all the comedians that want to copy Louis CK but don't want to figure it out and spend $30k? Transcoding + S3 + Stripe + Reporting dashboard + handholding with a flat 5%-20% fee or something. It could even be an iTunes-like competitor. Web-ba…

Okay, I can't just let people keep repeating this. $30k for a promo of this magnitude is not absurd in the least. This thing blew up huge, and it went off huge without a hiccup. If you just hire some low-ball bidder who knows how to slap together some APIs what guarantee do you have that it won't crash and burn under load? If that happens in seed-stage startup, oh boohoo, you disappointed your 100 early adopter frien…

I'm not really arguing about whether $30k was too much or too little. That's beside the point.

The point is that it shouldn't cost every comedian who wants to follow Louis CK's lead $30k to setup their own site. It would be a total waste of time and money, not to mention limit the number of people capable of emulating him.

Think about why Shopify, Weebly, Blogger, Wordpress exist. Every person who wanted an online store or web site of any kind used to have to pay people thousands of dollars to get a custom one made.

Re: Louis CK inspires Jim Gaffigan to sell comedy special for $5 online

#60

Post by johnthedebs »

paulhauggis wrote: post #33

It's interesting because it's all over the torrent networks (Louis's $5 comedy special). It shows you that it's not about: price, protection, or availability. Many times it's just because people want it for free and are not willing to part with their hard-earned money. I also think that most people bought this only because they wanted to prove to the world that it would work (DRM-less and cheap media). When it become…

It shows you that it's not about: price, protection, or availability. Many times it's just because people want it for free and are not willing to part with their hard-earned money.

It's entirely about price, (lack of) protection, and availability.

There will always be those who pirate it – ignore them. How do you make the most money from people willing to pay? Make it cheap, let them own it, make it easy to obtain.

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