Humble Comedy Bundle
humblebundle.com
humblebundle.com
http://www.npr.org/2013/07/26/205540155/tig-notaro-on-going-...
I've only seen a couple sets by Tig, but this set and the Louis CK set alone make it worth the 5-10 dollars for the bundle.
As a side note, it's great to see Humble Bundle expanding into new types of content.
It's a great set, but it's not as legendary as people seem to want to make it out to be. I think there is an element of "you had to be there" that is missing in an audio recording, and people genuinely want to feel what Louis C.K. did when he first shared news of the performance with his followers.
As someone who is an avid consumer of standup (old and new), and a huge Louis C.K. fan my expectations were set too high, and I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I could've because I was expecting something legendary and timeless.
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0138294/
Very interesting to rediscover actors and actresses who succeed in anti-typecasting themselves. I would never have suspected she was a standup comedian, as she was the only character I had never seen before in that show.
Thank you for pouring me a piping hot cup of Tig! (Reference to the episode, see the link.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_bundle#List_of_games_off...
1) pay what you want
2) donate part (as much of you want of that) to charities
As long as they keep these I think a bit of diversity and exploration helps grow the space. Maybe some other organizations could get involved as well.
Are the game bundles not relevant to you anymore due to expansion?
[0] http://www.joystiq.com/2013/08/23/origin-bundle-is-the-bigge...
That, combined with their clear intention of using this to promote Origin, left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
EA didn't get any money directly from the bundle sales.
For anyone curious, Patrice's special "elephant in the room" is on youtube.
Patrice O'Neal sadly died a few years ago, but his comedy was still hilarious. Maria Bamford is great.
Hannibal Buress is probably one of my favorite rising comedians today.
The great thing about this bundle is that you can check out most of the comedians on YouTube, but I definitely recommend buying it.
Unlike their initial "pay what you want" culture, now they are basically giving away few free stuff to encourage you to buy their paid stuff.
The Humble Bundle allows its customers to donate every penny they spend and promotes up and coming artists. Why would its success be anything but favorable if neither of these characteristics have changed?
I've always preferred British comedy over all others though, so I was a little disappointed not to see the likes of Dara 'O Briain or Michael McIntyre.
For me, he is one of the best of his generation, including any one we Brits have. I personally see a lot of "British" in his humor and over all act. I think most British comedy fans, and fans of British comedy, would warm to him with in 5 to 10 minuets.
Best of all though, is his whole attitude to getting his work out there, and doing it himself. He takes risks, and does so with his own money. As a result, he controls his own work, and his success rests purely on that. Of course he got well paid, and well deserved, breaks. But he used that to finance his own thing, his way. He seems to just earn money so that he can fund his next project, and keep his creative ball rolling. He even published the finances of his online DVD experiment.
Anyway, don't take my word for it, youtube has loads of his stuff. Give it half an hour and see what you think. You may well think he is a load of crap, after all, you do seem to like Michael McIntyre....... ;)
(For those who dont know, Michael McIntyre is the comedian who other comedians love to have a dig at because his is hugely successful. Its the usual "sell out" and "old jokes" ribbing that goes on. Truth is of course, MM is a very clever highly honed and polished act that has mass middle appeal, and as a result makes shed loads of cash as he appeals to the masses, and sells. Of course, artistically, he is dumbed down mass appeal pulp, but IMHO, that is as valid as challenging fringe appeal. I suppose pop music compared to jazz!!! Or.... MM is MS Windows compared to Linux... )
...Ok, I'll bite, why is it mathematically impossible?
So HB a good method for generating demand/revenue once you've crossed that point, but not so before.
As an overall business or project you may or may not end up with a net profit when its all done, but your figures will only improve if the marginal cost of sale is zilch and you can clear the market yet again at a lower price.
Someday someone will invent a working microtransaction system (LOL people have been saying that forever) and all this HB stuff will hit it again for ten cents each (Hey, ten cents times ten million sales isn't all that bad for a days work, and sales always increase as price drops, so I could see it...)
If you haven't covered your fixed/dev costs, and if you misjudge the market quantity demanded at each price points, you could easily drive yourself to bankruptcy by running a Humble Bundle.
The only way Humble Bundle makes it "mathematically impossible" to go bankrupt (which was the claim I was disputing) is if they present you with a perfect demand schedule and then somehow align the price each person pays to that demand schedule, without letting anyone pay above or below their reservation price. Whoever figures this out is probably not going to just use it for independent pay what you want gaming sales.
Massage therapy isn't real stuff because you can mark the price to anything you want, then groupon it 75% off. So if a realistic charge for massage is $25/hr (I donno) then you mark up to $100/hr and groupon it for 75% off net $25/hr.
The bankruptcy stories all come from restaurants selling 100K steaks (hundred kilosteaks?) for $1 where the raw uncooked meat alone is $5. Whoops.
What is a fair price for the valuable service of astrological readings? Hard to say when its pure profit unless it involves sacrificing live chickens as part of the act or something like that. I suppose there's always a real estate cost at the bottom if nothing else.
Well, buying a humble bundle is a potential opportunity cost for each comedian. If someone buys a humble bundle, they are most likely not going to buy whatever show that comedian offered in some other format in addition. Something like a humble bundle could in theory be such an opportunity cost for a comedian that he cannot recoup the production cost of a show because of it.
Or is only the marginal cost of distribution a factor in this idea of "mathematical impossibility"? Is that the only variable that influences a potential bankruptcy?
It worked. I hear it worked very profitably.
As an anecdote I blew a lot of money with them after reading the first novel or whatever. Also gained a couple new authors I still like.
There's probably a startup opportunity in other areas where "the first hit is free" works pretty well. Someone should try it with TV shows.
Its not possible, so far as I know, to get an individual transaction net loss from a humble bundle, so make one sale or a billion its not possible to end up a net negative much less a negative greater than the net worth of the sponsoring company. If you want to see something funny, try typing in a custom amount on a humble bundle less than $1. You get a pop up graphic and she doesn't look amused. This would imply to me that CC processing/amazon processing costs less than $1 for a $1 transaction.
I don't think the potential sales loss exists unless you put a new product on HB. No one does that, its always something older. Frankly a "fan" of these comedians would have bought it a long time ago, so all thats going to happen is they'll get a small stack of cash and a bunch of new fans. Which is cool.
First, Humble Bundle scales. They can pull together a handful of artists to offer some MP3s, and sell it to the whole world. Groupon has to negotiate with small businesses in every market that they want to have a presence.
Secondly, the nature of the goods on offer is different, in that a restaurant or cafe has considerable marginal costs associated with each sale, whereas a comedian selling MP3s has no marginal costs, and even the Humble Bundle team has almost no marginal costs. The Humble Bundle team spends a few cents on bandwidth for each sale, and the artist only loses hypothetical future sales at a higher price.
(edit: pluralized "business")
It should be significantly less than that.