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Comment by DaveMebs | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there is any evidence to support the notion that "a lot of people purchased this only to support the experiment." Sure, some folks on a HN thread commented to this effect, but I think that the vast majority of the 111000+ people who bought this probably like Louis CK. I recognize that I don't have any data to support my assertion either, but given the options of "buy this because I like Louis CK" and "buy this because I like alternative distribution models," I am fairly confident that more people are on the side of the former.

I also don't know why you think most of his "true fan base" would have bought this already. I love Louis CK and only found out about this because I am an HN reader. Why would you think most non-HN readers even know this is available? I mean really, I think you should at least wait a week before decreeing that "today's most most popular working comedian makes less money selling independently."

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Well, almost all of the facebook shares about this that I have seen are exclusively about the novelty and experiment. I didn't see anything that just left it at "Oh, Louis C.K. is awesome. Check out his new thing."

So at least anecdotally, a lot of people around me bought this because of novelty and to support this business model instead of because they like standup or Louis CK.

I think that says something about his target audience. People are capable of more complex thought than "funny man is funny" and the usual base instincts that marketers have exploited to great effect. This marketing ploy adds an extra layer to customer involvement, just mildly stimulating the slightly higher faculties of the consumer base cognisance. As sentient biological super-computers that human beings are, they easily comprehend the concept and gladly exchange money to support it.

Anecdotally, I've experienced the opposite. I haven't seen a single "hey this is a neat experiment" post (Radiohead's similar album sale on the other hand...), yet I know quite a few pretty dedicated Louis C.K. fans, and remember his show here (Winnipeg) being packed solid. Louis already has the popularity behind him, because he's done the years of paying his dues building that up. That's going to be the majority of sales, with a minority percentage (10-20% I'd wager) buying out of curiosity.

FWIW, I haven't even purchased it yet, because every time I've gone to his site its been down...

Beyond the anecdotal evidence sirclueless has given for the actual supporting of the experiment (which matches up with what I have seen), it is the experiment that drove the publicity for this story to get so much coverage. Just look at the title of this thread.

I bought to support the experiment, same with rainbows, NIN and others. I do agree that most purchases aren't this way and the long tail should be significant.

Remember The Plant?

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/00/11/30/1238204/stephen-king...

I remember The Plant. Stephen King made over $700,000 writing a partial novel which he declined to finish not because it didn't turn a profit, but because his download statistics didn't show the opt-in payment ratios he wanted.

It's an instructive example of hubris and mis-aligned goals. Stephen wasn't interested in generating a profit. Had he raised the same revenue with half as many readers paying twice as often he would have continued the project.

It is also an instructive example of novelty. His initial experiment was reported very widely, and tens or hundreds of thousands lined up to "prove it could work", putting their dollars to demonstrate it.

Once the novelty wore off, the viability of the approach disappeared. The opt-in payment ratios started generously, and rapidly approached zero.

Little can be learned from CK's experiment because it was novel -- it got covered far and wide, encouraging a lot of people to "show" that the model works.

That's an interesting theory but I'm not convinced it has a factual basis. Maybe readers decided that King's book just sucked and were waiting for it to improve? Neither you nor I can draw a meaningful conclusion on that point.

What can be demonstrated, empirically, is that money can be made without imposing draconian controls.

Empirically what has been shown is that if you do an IAMA on Reddit leading up to the release of your "experiment", a lot of people will play along. It does not carry over to any other release, and says absolutely nothing about DRM or atypical release plans.

Lots of people sell videos online without the middle man. Most see no sales.

"It does not carry over to any other release, and says absolutely nothing about DRM or atypical release plans"

This is demonstrably false. In fact, every artist who's ever done an online release of their content without DRM has seen sales in proportion to their general popularity. We've seen this with Radiohead, with NIN, and with many other lesser artists.

In every case, the profits were roughly in line with the general popularity of the artist's content.

"Lots of people sell videos online without the middle man. Most see no sales."

And most content distributed through the various middle-man networks likewise is a failure. Most OSS software is a flop. Most commercial software is also a flop. This statement is neither surprising nor relevant.

I'm not sure that one can really compare a written story sold on the internet over a decade ago, before pretty much anybody had a decent reader for such things, with a video being sold online today when literally tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of people own the right equipment for viewing it comfortably.

The comparison is the hype, delivery, and conclusions. After the initial release of the Plant there was much fanfare about its demonstrated validation of a sales model, yet it was a completely atypical example that earned tremendous publicity and enhanced engagement because it was novel.

Sure, The Plant was an experiment with a completely new and novel sales model that ended up falling flat. Meanwhile Louis CK is selling videos online in a world where millions of people buy videos online, but with the barely novel gimmick of selling direct instead of through intermediaries. (Something tons of people have done before, some with great success.) I really don't see the similarity.

That barely novel gimmick got it front and center of every social news site. Indeed, why are we even talking about this experiment if it were "barely novel"? This submission and every comment in it is a counterpoint to your claim.

A fascinating question! I think we're all talking about it because Louis CK is pretty popular.

None of this is a counterpoint to my claim. A counterpoint to my claim would be actually showing that it is novel, e.g. that this experiment contains attributes which have not been seen before.

People have produced and sold videos direct over the internet many times before, so that aspect isn't new. Is there some other aspect to this which I'm missing which is novel?

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