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Comedian Louis CK, against all informed advice given to him, released his latest collection of un-aired material online in a DRM-free format, and the new distribution method seems to have worked out well, despite warnings of doom and gloom.
Without going through a production company, and a distributor who would then slap on DRM and also increase the price four-fold, according to Louis himself, and pricing the video at $5, CK says he has not only recouped the cost of producing and distributing the video himself, he's had made a tidy $200,000 profit in just a week's time
And the video is still selling, despite being widely available on BitTorrent networks.
CK admits that the amount earned is less than what he would have earned had he taken the traditional approach, but doing it 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."
And Louis CK is more than satisfied with the result of this little experiment and has promised to keep on doing it his way "be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours". "I'll do it here and I'll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction," added the comedian.
Louis also asked people to keep on buying his $5 video, so that he "can have shitloads of money".
Without going through a production company, and a distributor who would then slap on DRM and also increase the price four-fold, according to Louis himself, and pricing the video at $5, CK says he has not only recouped the cost of producing and distributing the video himself, he's had made a tidy $200,000 profit in just a week's time
And the video is still selling, despite being widely available on BitTorrent networks.
CK admits that the amount earned is less than what he would have earned had he taken the traditional approach, but doing it 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."
And Louis CK is more than satisfied with the result of this little experiment and has promised to keep on doing it his way "be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours". "I'll do it here and I'll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction," added the comedian.
Louis also asked people to keep on buying his $5 video, so that he "can have shitloads of money".
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