[Ravenlock]

"Imagine what would happen if Jimmy Carr, Dave Chappelle, Zach Galifinakis, Will Ferrell, and every other comedian in town started dropping specials every two weeks. Would you still be as willing to rush out and whip out your credit card for the sake of an ‘experiment’? Or would the medium’s novelty soon wear off and every new release will be greeted with the same response as a new release in the real, physical world?"

Well, I'd certainly be more willing to pull out my credit card for a $5 charge than I am for a $20 charge, which means it'd still be more successful with me than it is on the shelves at Walmart. And since I've never purchased a comedy DVD from anyone but threw down $5 without hesitation for Louis CK's special, it's infinitely more successful than the physical model in my case already.

How often would I do that? No idea. Depends how many comedians I really wanted to support, how often they put stuff out, and how my finances were looking at the time. But all three of those factors equally impact their chances at my money in "the real, physical world" (which is an utterly stupid phrase in this context, btw - he made $250,000 very real dollars in 4 days), and I'm still more likely to spend $5 than $20.

The only variable here is exposure. Can Louis (or other people who want to try the same) reach enough people using non-corporate-media methods to make up the difference between a $5 sale and a $20 sale, or can't they? Obviously a brand new talent isn't going to have the success with it that Louis CK does, but a brand new talent, with the rarest exception, isn't getting shelf space at Walmart either.

This strikes me as a lot of doom and gloom over nothing. He paid for production costs with ticket sales for the live show. He made back his money on putting the thing online more or less instantly. Will it work for everyone? Of course not, nothing works for everyone. But I bet it'll work for him again the next time he does it.

[bittermang]

The part that I think gets overlooked when we have these "Well he only made it because he's already popular" arguments is the fact that Louis CK was once himself a brand new talent that wasn't going to get shelf space at Walmart. Same with Trent Reznor, and Radiohead, and everyone else who has embarked on a magical "What if we didn't sell our product for the exact same price/exact same way everyone else has been doing?" experiment. No one starts out at the top. Everything is evaluated on its own merits, and past performance does not indicate future success. Otherwise we'd all be using Zunes and Apple TVs, because Microsoft was already big, and Apple is popular.

Popularity doesn't factor, in my opinion. We have to evaluate the business model by itself. Everyone in the entertainment industry -- from movies, to music, to video games, to books -- generates content, presses it to a disc or otherwise physically produces it, sticks it on a truck, ships it to shelves everywhere in America, and sells it for the exact same price. A sea of different cover arts and $20 price tags. And when they don't move they slash it down to $10 and unceremoniously stick you in an unorganized bargain bin to make room for the next $20 crop.

That is what spurs these kind of experiments, ultimately. Just try something different. We've got different communication channels now, different distribution methods, different payment methods. I think we do real damage to ourselves if we dismiss them off hand and say, "Well, they were already popular, so of course it worked." We completely dismiss that their experiment and their new model actually did work in a very real way, it generated real money, because people already liked them? That's absurd.

[dfxm12]

Nice reply. Here is some additional food for thought: make up the difference between a $5 sale and a $20 sale This implies that Louis CK makes all $20 form that DVD sale. He stated in an NPR interview that he normally sees zero dollars from a TV special.

The author seems to assume that content owners aren't out to screw the talent and pay fair royalties, etc. This isn't the case. What we can learn here is that the Internet levels the playing field a bit. Contrary to what the author would have you think, all kinds of bands are making more money selling music directly to their audience than they ever could being jerked around by a record label. Yes, they aren't making as much money as a well established act, but they weren't going to anyway.

[Ravenlock]

True. I'm also a little confused by the "every two weeks" part of his initial question that I quoted.

Would I buy a $5 special every two weeks? No, but I wasn't going to buy a $20 special every 8 weeks, either, and Louis made $250,000 PROFIT in FOUR DAYS. He doesn't need to do this every two weeks or every month or even every six months (nor could he; he edits it all himself). Would I pay $5 every year for a new special from Louis CK? I certainly would.

Now, I guess the more logical way to interpret what the author wrote is "what if, between all the comedians, these things were dropping every 2 weeks?", but that's no different than what you have now, except it's physical media, a higher price, and a slightly more spread out timeline. In both cases, people will buy the stuff from the people they really like and want to support, and prioritize their spending along those lines.

Though actually I would argue that if 4 comedians get $5 out of me, that's better for all 4 of them (assuming I'm part of a larger audience) than if one of them got some cut of $20.