Culture: Louis C.K. sells DRM-free comedy special, profits handsomely
- I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have #(&!loads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again.
- Comedian Louis C.K. • Expressing pleasure at the success of his self-produced comedy special, “Live at the Beacon Theater.” The comic, currently on an upswing as a result of his hit FX comedy “Louie,” did something fairly novel with the release model for the special — he threw it online himself, charged $5 for streaming or a digital download, passed on the DRM, and made a point of asking nicely for people not to throw the video on torrent sites. (Some did, but they were roundly criticized by their Pirate Bay peers.) The result of Louis C.K.’s move? In just its first couple of days on sale, it sold 110,000 copies, leading to $500,000 in sales and $200,000 in pure profit. He puts it like such: “This 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.” Which means, guys, that Louis C.K. is a genius apparently. source