The Humble Music Bundle | Hacker News Reader

The Humble Music Bundle

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74 pointsmrud39 comments

I really hope that people buy this bundle even if its not the particular songs they are looking for. If this is a flow then it wont happen again but if enough people buy it they will do it again with different songs.

Also if anyone from humble bundle is reading this. Linux users are usually your biggest donators insulting them twice in your video is not a great place to be. (im not even a linux user but it was a negative note in a pretty upbeat video). Edit: Yes I am aware that it was probably in good faith but it really did not fit into the video (hence my comment). I was not personally affected because I dont use linux so im not sure how actual users felt.

Cant check the video now (work) but what did they say about linux users?

"works on linux...... whatever that is" about halfway through and then at the end "it even works on linux (person has a wtf look on his face)"

They are selling a bunch of audio files, right? So why are they even mentioning what it works on ? It works on anything that can read MP3 and FLAC, thats it. Or am I missing something?

Humor.

One of the artists in the video was explaining how the bundle works / what it is and said basically that it was available to mac and pc users, then: "and linux...whatever that is..." and then there was something at the end (blooper?) of him mentioning no need for steam codes and that it was "linux compatible" with a confused expression and then getting up and walking away.

It didn't seem like it was insulting linux (or its users) to me, either the artist was reading from a script and really didn't know what linux was, or it was just a mild joke playing off the fact that your average person doesn't. Seemed fairly harmless to me, and linux users are overrepresented in the humble bundle so the context (if it was a joke) is probably appropriate here anyway.

I dunno, I feel the opposite. I think that buying something just to "support" it is all fine and dandy if you want to give them money, but it creates inaccurate expectations of long term idea viability. If 100 people purchase something because they like the idea and only 5 purchase because they want the product the next time it happens and that desire to validate the idea isn't there it will flop.

There is a limit on the amount of times something can succeed based on good will, eventually it has to meet a need or provide value.

The Humble Bundle is already a very powerful brand, this will succeed without the need for good will, although I do think "good will" purchases are a noticeable portion of Humble Bundle sales, but not a significant amount.

Neither you or me know whether it can be reproduced until someone tries to. If the bundle succeeds it opens doors for others to try the same. And that's when it will get interesting to watch.

it's a joke based on the fact that the guy in the video is a music artist so he acts like he doesn't know what linux is.

he talks like he tried to learn what to say from previous hibundles ('no steam codes'). just a joke. kind of funny too.

Can't get to the video at the moment, but was the comment from Frontalot or Coulton? If it's the case it's likely it was very tongue in cheek, given (particularly in Frontalot's case) they're both probably quite familiar with the OS.

Nope, it was Christopher Tin, who seemed to be trying to make a joke while actually not knowing what it is. Honestly, while his music sounds good, I thought his pitch was quite bland, and the video would have been better with no talking at all, just music and on-screen words.

It was definitely a joke :) - Jeff from Humble Bundle

That's not a joke, it's a good natured jibe at best. Maybe it's an American thing.

(and can I take the opportunity to thank you for the great work, I love HIBs and 'buy' them all)

Hehe, I suppose that is true. And you are most welcome, thanks for the support!

It's a strange phenomena. Sell content attached to a charity and the Linux users end up the most charitable on average. I don't think the break down of total payments reflects the install base of Windows, Linux & Mac either.

Why is this?

I suppose Linux users have more money left from not having to buy OS updates every once in a while :P

Jokes aside, Linux users are by definition more attracted to the concept of community and independence. Hence their support to people who believe in the same things.

With the Humble Games Bundles, people reasoned that Linux users might be paying more because they were so happy to get games that run on Linux. The Humble Music Bundle indicates that there is more to it than just supply and demand.

I would guess that a significant percentage of Linux users that buy the Humble Bundles are developers/scientists. These groups create content themselves and therefore they might value content (and especially DRM-free content) higher than other groups.

It might be really interesting if the Humble Bundlers collected some basic demographics.

I don't think it's that important actually, although it is kind of cool. If people have a desire to support independent music then I'd suggest spending your money on kickstarter music projects. There are a lot of musicians funding their upcoming albums that way these days.

I am a Linux user, and I thought the reference in the video was funny. The fact that they're/we're the biggest donators certainly hasn't gone unnoticed.

It's nice to see this taken from Mac and PC games to music, but I'm not sure it makes sense to keep the same charities for this initiative. Instead of Child's Play, which focuses on games, I could see supporting a music-focused youth benefit charity. Certain artists might also chafe at the notion of supporting the EFF, which they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as a force acting against their interests as copyright holders.

Here's an (apparently old, with source material no longer hosted on EFF's site) example:

http://www.brettglass.com/effcritique.html

And recently from David Lowery:

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-...

Fifth paragraph: "... Further the new boss through it’s surrogates like Electronic Frontier Foundation seems to be waging a cynical PR campaign that equates the unauthorized use of other people’s property (artist’s songs) with freedom. A sort of Cyber –Bolshevik campaign of mass collectivization for the good of the state…er .. I mean Internet. I say cynical because when it comes to their intellectual property, software patents for instance, these same companies fight tooth and nail."

Reasonable. But don't the participants choose the charities themselves? Other charities such as the Red Cross have been featured, after all, though Child's Play and the EFF do seem the "default" tradition.

So while some sort of music camp is a good suggestion, I don't see a problem with the EFF if the artists approve.

This reminds of the recent Game Music Bundle: http://gamemusicbundle.com/

The difference is that bundle had a ton of albums whereas here it's only a handful. I expected also to see a more game-centric flavour to the soundtracks -- considering the pedigree of the Humble Bundle -- instead of stuff like They Might be Giants.

I bought it just for the They Might be Giants album. Video Game soundtracks are great for video games but not something I have any urge to listen to separately, so good for them!

Two other music bundles were mentioned by their creators on the reddit thread:

http://musicrage.org/ http://indie-allstars.com/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/x74i5/the_humble_musi...

Next up: Humble Standup Comedy Bundle with Lewis CK, Jim Gaffigan and others..

Incidentally, it's Louis CK. I point it out because you spelled it like it's spelled rather than like it sounds ("Louie"), which is an extremely atypical spelling mistake :)

Parent is probably not a native English speaker - I can see that behaviour in myself too. I'd typically think about some words the way I'd read them in my native language, even if I'd never actually pronounce them that way. That makes it easier to make a spelling mistake that's keeping the word close to the original spelling (for example the "s" is pretty strong when I "think" Louis, even if I would never pronounce it).

There are some benefits to that - there's no way to make a mistake with they're/their... they're two completely different words!

I'd buy this. I didn't have any interest in standup comedy until Louis CK made the news here, and I was pleasantly surprised. I'd jump at the chance to broaden my collection and support the comedians at the same time.

Humble indie movies bundle! With stuff like the PhD movie, something by Ian Hubert, and maybe a youtube series to top things up.

The music tracks in the BitTorrent downloads are packaged in a zip file.

That's pure quibbling on my part but I'd prefer to download a directory as BitTorrent supports that and I wouldn't have to unzip anything.

Indeed, I complained about it as well. It's annoying because I can't download the tracks in order and play them immediately after buying. Plus it's a noob error that most decent trackers will warn you against, and it was in fact faster for me to grab the albums I wanted from one such tracker.

https://torrentfreak.com/unpack-rar-archives-before-you-rele...

There are too many greatest hit collections in this, all of which I already own the component music of. If there were some original albums, this would be great.

Christopher Tin is awesome. He did the music intro for Civ IV and did an AMA on reddit recently. I created his wikipedia article back in 2005 I think. :D

I see the charity thing is an interesting angle, but otherwise I'm not sure what the difference is between this and e.g. bandcamp.

Just use whichever one you want. I just used this one.

Awesome. I have been waiting for humble to do music. The model is perfect for it.

I really hope they release more of these; not interested in this bundle, but I certainly would be in a different combination.

Wishfully perhaps, my right brain read the title as "The Human Music Bubble" before issuing the signal to my left hand to click...

man... Windows users are cheapskates.

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