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Uncategorized Wednesday, December 14th 2011 at 11:00 am

Louis CK Sells DRM-Free Comedy Special Direct to Viewers Via Paypal, Makes Profit

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As you are probably aware, Louis CK is a fantastic comedian. In the past couple of years, he’s really hit his stride with the release of several comedy specials and the launch of his critically acclaimed TV show Louie. For his most recent release, however, he decided to shake things up a little bit and sell Live at the Beacon Theatre direct to his fans via Paypal for a paltry 5 dollars. No middle-man, no DRM, no hassle, no fuss. At a time when many content holders are pushing for SOPA and trying to DMCA takedown the entire Internet out of existence, this move makes for a particularly interesting experiment. The result? He made money.

The special was released on December 10th, and accompanied with a statement from Louis regarding potential pirates. On the website where the special is available for purchase he said:

To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.

Now, after 3 days of sales, Louis made a post disclosing his earnings so far, and they sure aren’t nothing. Again, from the site:

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). 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. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

I’d call that a pretty resounding success for the following reasons: It seems like the problem of piracy was pretty minimal, considering the number of sales. All the people who purchased the special are, in fact, getting a much more valuable product at a much lower price. Louis, who the fans are coming to see, is getting the money, not some random company who fans couldn’t care less about. And, the kicker, this is three days in. Granted, the purchases are probably going to drop off, but I’m a huge fan and I just haven’t gotten around to buying the thing yet. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

This serves as a pretty effective large scale proof-of-concept for direct-to-consumer sale of content, at least when the creator has an established, loyal fanbase and a few hundred thousand bucks to invest up front. It’s worth mentioning that while Louis seems to regard the experiment as a success, he won’t rule out “sign[ing] a massive deal with a company that pays [him] fat coin,” in the future, but all in all, things seem to have turned out pretty well. Here’s to Louis for taking the risk and trusting his fans to be generally good people who want to support artists. And here’s to us for actually going out and buying something when it’s being sold by the guy we actually want to give money to.

Buy that thing here.

(via Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater)

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  • http://www.dragonblogger.com Justin Germino

    I agree, I think if enough artists started doing this it would shake up the industry enough to cause the entire industry to change practices to facilitate easier to access and use the content how you want at reasonable prices.  Good for him and he is a funny guy, I watched one of his shows on Netflix a few weeks back.

  • Fishy

    A quarter of a million to record a DVD and put it on a website? I can’t help but feel he’s getting ripped off somewhere. Even a tenth of that should be adequate for a high quality product, surely?

  • guest

    Heard a lot about him, but never have actually seen or heard any of his comedy.  But even if I hated him, I would still buy because of how he’s doing it.  Never understood why we even need some of these companies.  Hopefully this will become commonplace.  If so, the artist will get more money, we’ll spend less, and the companies can’t 1984 the internet.

  • jh09

    You have to factor in the facility rental and staffing, lighting of professional quality, staffing for stage/production crew, post prod, artwork, mastering. The Beacon is no Improv Comedy Club.

  • Pistolpete

    i would argue, still getting ripped off somewhere along this “value chain”

  • http://twitter.com/SugaRazor Razor

    It cost Oren Peli $15,000 to film Paranormal Activity. A movie shot on a single camera with two actors in his own house. $200,000 to produce a special in a huge theater for the hottest stand-up act in the country today isn’t that unreasonable. Hell, it costs that much just to get U2 on a bus.

  • Anonymous

    Louis CK has been losing his steam in the last few years. “Chewed Up” you could tell he was starting to lose it, but he was still pretty damn funny – However when “Hilarious” hit, it was seriously an ironic title. It was a half-hour of comedy stretched over an hour long, and hardly had a chuckle worth, plus the gross-out humour. Louie (the show) is often just awkward and painful, or has abnormally drawn out scenes (like that car drive with his daughters to their aunts house, playing almost the WHOLE song?). 

    I will applaud his use of viral/download-based though, he’s a good comedian, but after over a decade of awesome, it’s not aging well.

  • Asreal

    The whole thing is the wrong way around.  If I buy something on DVD, I put the disc in, get all the piracy warnings, the odd “piracy funds crime, look at this crying child who was the victim of crime” advert, unskippable scenes.  If I PIRATE I don’t get any of this!

    Maybe a better method would be to release everything for free with all that crap at the start, then have the paid-for copies without?  It’s completely undoable, but in an ideal world… =)

    Good on the guy for doing this, lets hope he starts a trend.