Louis CK - Cutting Out the Middle Man (and DRM!)

Published by manu
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Louis CK has been distributing his latest show directly himself without any distribution thieves such as I-Tunes and the like. The video is available as a download and this without any DRM attached !

Check out the little note to torrent users (bottom of the page), it's honest at the least.

In any case he's made a lot more money then he had imagined, in just 2 weeks over a million dollars.. at 5$ a copy (not too expensive for most people). Not bad. I don't know this guy (yet), but he seems decent as over 25% of that will go to charities. Click here for more details on the spending.

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Nux

Nice! I'm always happy to see people putting a foot on apple/sony/universal/etc neck.

I have a better idea for Louis though, and all other artists:
- how about making the content available, by any means - the more the merrier - and ask for people to donate money (while making it very easy to do so, online payments, paypal etc).
I'm thinking something like the "Frozen bundle" style of payments: donate what you want.

$5 is not that much, for a north american or western Europe citizen, but for the rest of the world is a bit too much. I expect torrents. :)

Happy new year!

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manu
http://manurevah.com

I totally agree with you, except for one thing and it's more about semantics.. I'd replace "donation" with the words "Pay what you want", this way it looks less like charity and more like actually buying something and paying what you can/want/etc.

Humble Bundle is an excellent example of a system that works (or at least it seems too). More !

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Nux

Yes, you're right. Donations would also have some financials/tax implications. "Pay what you want" it should be.

I think this model would also encourage more innovation and better performances, as the revenue would probably tend to be proportional with the quality.

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manu
http://manurevah.com

BTW, in case you didn't already know about In Rainbows, it's an album released by Radiohead and at first was available online at the price of "pay what you want, even zero".

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Nux

Omg, nice! Had no idea about this. Too bad it only lasted 2 months, though, as apparently they did enough money out of it!

This is the way forward! We just need to overcome greed, especially big labels' one, that's the most poisoning.

Thanks for sharing all this info ;-)

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