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Comment by mrmaddog | Hacker News Reader

His post seemed a bit off to me. I got the feeling that he's doing this because "Oh look, Louis CK made metric ton of money this way, lets see if I can emulate his success" rather than actually understanding the motivations for why consumers want a 5 dollar, drm free comedy special.

It also seemed strange that he is pre-announcing this release. I think this initial post will be his biggest shot at publicity, and it is peculiar to have no call-to-action (i.e. check out my related comedy if you've never heard of me, go ahead and pre-order it now, etc.). Right now there is nowhere for the reader to go after finishing the post (his "videos" tab isn't representative of his standup comedy) and there is very little for a reader to share about this story besides "Somebody is planning on doing something like Louis CK did."

I'll be impressed if I remember or hear about this again in April, when the special is actually released.

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That's exactly the reason you want people to be doing it for. It's all very well understanding why consumers want better options, but it has to make sense for both sides, the artists need it to be a viable way to make money.

His point is that if he was doing it right, he would have announced it and launched it at the same time. He blew his biggest moment to capitalize on this idea. \

No, he made two points, in different paragraphs - I was replying to one of them, not the one you noticed.

As a consumer and Jim Gaffigan fan, all I'm thinking is this is great. $5 and I get his next album and he gets all the loot - except for the small amount he's donating.

I'm not sure what you are saying my hidden reason as a consumer is for wanting $5 drm free stuff. Is it something more?

I think a better approach would have been him coming out and saying he's going to subscribe to Louis C.K.'s new business model because it just makes sense to consumers, and it makes sense financially to him, and he's ALL IN.

But even if he is riding the coat-tails of Louis CK, isn't it still a good thing that more people are starting to provide direct content for very reasonable prices?

It is, but if Gaffigan squanders the marketing potential of this, then it will have a serious impact on how much money his special brings in.

Since this is only the second time a (well known, mainstream) comedian has tried this, a failure or even just a poorer-than-expected showing could make a lot of other entertainers write Louis CK off as being a one-time thing. They'll assume he succeeded as a novelty and will be more wary of trying it in the future.

We need Gaffigan to succeed to show that the model is repeatable in order to convince others to try it. If he fails, it will be that much harder to convince others that they're not better off just following the status quo.

Then let us help him.

But if nobody finds out about the special and he doesn't make money, wouldn't that also mean people don't know about the failure?

No, because we're talking about two different groups.

Just because the general public doesn't know of the special, and therefore doesn't know of it's failure, other entertainers will. It's their job - the business side of their job - to keep up to date with these sorts of things.

A common strategy is to pre-announce when you know a competitor is ready to release a product but yours is in the pipeline.

I'm not claiming that this is the case, but if some other comedian is ready to release on Friday (and therefore become the second significant person to do it), Gaffigan's pre-announcement may actually be part of a well planned strategy.

It is a good trend, but when people do it incorrectly, and then fail, the entire industry can just say "Ha, look, that direct-to-consumer model doesn't work."

I want him to succeed. I want to be able to watch a trailer of his video, think it is hilarious, go through a one minute payment process, and have the video to watch instantly right after that in whatever format I want. If that is Gaffigan's plan, why bother pre-announcing it? Why not just wait till he has something to sell?

I think the thing that you are missing here is that if a comedian of his success was to go through the normal channels, he would be able to negotiate a large upfront payout (a la HBO or comedy central). So the $0 amount Jim Gaffigan is concerned about here is releasing something that he has worked hard on and making significantly less than he would otherwise. The less well known artist would likely be overjoyed at the 1 000 000 x $0 model of exposure since that artist would not likely be able to negotiated much upfront or have much say in the editing of his act anyhow.

Still, I agree that Jim Gaffigan is presenting the copyright argument in a very un-savvy way. Louis C.K. seemed to get it.

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