Basically the coolest guy ever. Louis CK did a stand up
act, filmed, produced, and sold it himself on his website for $5 and did not
put any copyright protection or anything on it. He wanted to see how people
would respond vs illegally downloading. This is the result.
Pardon the Language.
If you want to buy the concert please do so here https://buy.louisck.net/-----Original Message-----
From: Louis C.K. [mailto:info@louisck.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:44 AM
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXSubject: A statement from Louis CKHi. This is LOuie. It seriously is me. Im even going to leavethe O stuipdly capatalized because who would pay an intern to dothat?? Okay so you bought the thing with my fat face on it andyou clicked the button that said i could email you. And i knowthat now you are thinking "aw shit. Why'd i let this guy into mylife this way?". Well dont worry. Because i really swear it thati wont bug you. I will not abuse this privalage of having youremail. You wont hear from me again... Probably, unless i havesomething new to offer you. The reason i'm writing now, in theback of a car taking me to the Tonight Show set, is to let youknow that as of now there is some new and cool stuff on my site,related to Live at the Beacon Theater. Theres a thing where youcan download and print a dvd box cover and label so you can burnand make your own dvd of the video. And theres a new option whereyou can gift the special to as many people as you want (for 5bucks each) and they'll get a nice gifty email from you with alink to the video.Also, some of you may know, i recently made a statement (thatsounds so dumb. Like i'm the president or something) about how thevideo has been doing online. Im pasting it in here below in caseyou missed it.Lastly I'm planning to put some more outtakes of the show onyoutube and i think i will put one on the site that is onlyavailable for free to you folks on this list, who bought thething and opted in. But dont hold me to that because really ijust thought of it and typed it.Okay well please have a happy rest of the year and more happyyears after that. And please even have been happy in your past.What?Thanks again for giving me 5 dollars. I bought 3 cokes with it.Regards. Sincerely, Actually,Louis===========================People of Earth (minus the ones who don't give a shit aboutthis): it's been amazing to conduct this experiment with you. Theexperiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at adrastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible tobuy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyonejust go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much moneycan be made by an individual in this manner?It's been 4 days. A lot of people are asking me how it's going.I've been hesitant to share the actual figures, because there'spower in exclusive ownership of information. What I didn't expectwhen I started this was that people would not only take part inthis experiment, they would be invested in it and it would beimportant to them. It's been amazing to see people in largenumbers advocating this idea. So I think it's only fair that youget to know the results. Also, it's just really cool and fun andI'm dying to tell everybody. I told my Mom, I told three friends,and that wasn't nearly enough. So here it is.First of all, this was a premium video production, shot with sixcameras over two performances at the Beacon Theater, which is ahigh-priced elite Manhattan venue. I directed this video myselfand the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This waslargely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at bothshows). The material in the video was developed over months onthe road and has never been seen on my show (LOUIE) or on anyother special. The risks were thus: every new generation ofmaterial I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop.The time and effort on my part was far more than if I'd done itwith a big company. If I'd done it with a big company, I wouldhave a guarantee of a sizable fee, as opposed to this way, whereI'm actually investing my own money.The development of the website, which needed to be a very robust,reliable and carefully constructed website, was around $32,000.We worked for a number of weeks poring over the site to make sureevery detail would give buyers a simple, optimal and humaneexperience for buying the video. I edited the video around theclock for the weeks between the show and the launch.The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned$250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. Asof Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over$500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have aprofit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than Iwould have been paid by a large company to simply perform theshow and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged youabout $20 for the video. They would have given you an encryptedand regionally restricted video of limited value, and they wouldhave owned your private information for their own use. They wouldhave withheld international availability indefinitely. This way,you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and youcan watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, orDubai. 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 fromus again.I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can haveshitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely saythat the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn'tmany of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we allget to know that about people and stuff. I'm really glad I putthis out here this way and I'll certainly do it again. If thetrend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i canreach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs ortickets to my tours, I'll do it here and I'll continue to followthe model of keeping my price as far down as possible, notovermarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me aspossible in the transaction. (Of course i reserve the right to goback on all of this and sign a massive deal with a company thatpays me fat coin and charges you straight up the ass.). (This isyou: yes Louie. And we'll all enjoy torrenting that content. Youfat sweaty dolt).I probably sound kind of crazy right now. It's been a really funand intense few days. This video was paid for by people whobought tickets, and then bought by people who wanted to see thatsame show. I got to do exactly the show I wanted, and exactly theshow you wanted.I also got an education. And everything i learned are things iwas happy to learn. I learned that people are interested in whathappens and shit (i didn't go to college)I learned that money can be a lot of things. It can be somethingthat is hoarded, fought over, protected, stolen and withheld. Orit can be like an energy, fueled by the desire, will, creativeinterest, need to laugh, of large groups of people. And it can beshuffled and pushed around and pooled together to fuel a commoninterest, jokes about garbage, penises and parenthood.I want to thank Blair Breard who produced this video and producesmy series LOUIE, and I want to thank Caspar and Giles at VersionIndustries, who created the website.I hope with all of my heart that I stay funny. Otherwise this allgoes to hell. Please have a safe and happy holiday, and thank youagain for all this crazy shit.Sincerely, Louis C.K.--This email was sent to XXXXXXXXXXIf you are no longer interested you can unsubscribe instantly: