Since putting his “Live at The Beacon Theater” video up for sale for $5 on Saturday, free of DRM, region restrictions, or any other silly bullshit, Louis C.K. has sold over 110,000 copies. A little quick math reveals that this is well over half a million dollars.

In a statement on his site, Louis reveals that his costs for producing the video and creating the website, all paid out of his own pocket, were about $250,000. So he’s made 100% profit in 4 days.

Take note, stupid corporations and politicians trying to pass laws that will add even more layers of regulation and bullshit in the name of anti-piracy: If you make good things, and sell them at a reasonable price, you can make a lot of money.

Put another way: you don’t have to be a fucking asshole to be rich.

Want to make Louis C.K. even richer and hammer home the point? Buy his video. I’ve seen it, and it’s funny.

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

32 replies on “Update: Louis C.K.’s Experiment”

  2. So happy for the update. I got it as soon as you posted about it, and loved the damn show. The I stumbled across his completely epic Reddit session about it. I love this man so much right now.

  4. Every time you buy a self distributed album, the head pops off one of the RIAA or MPAA drones.

    And it’s Louis CK, so it’s completely solid.

  5. Paypal made about as much money as he did and their costs were even lower than his. They might have profited more than he will from this whole thing.

  8. I am happy for Louis CK, but to extrapolate something much broader about regulatory approaches as a result is extremely silly. Louis CK can make half a million dollars selling his standup online because he is already extremely famous. He has a teevee show named after him! (Yes the SOPA act is very dumb, but i can’t stand free culture fundamentalists who forget that step one to selling lots of records by giving them away is ‘be Radiohead for a decade and a half’)

  9. @8 – I’m not disputing that. Of course you have to make something good, and often be pretty lucky, to be successful. That doesn’t change the fact that the layers of DRM and other nonsense do nothing to stop piracy, are more hostile to legitimate buyers than to anyone else, and won’t protect an antiquated business model.

  10. @5:Paypal made about as much money as he did

    How do you figure?

    Last I checked, Paypal charges something like 3% per transaction, which is significantly less overhead than using a standard credit card processing service. Do you know who pays for all those mileage awards on your Visa card? Not Visa or the issuing bank – the merchants do.

  11. Thanks for the update Anthony. These are not hard numbers obviously, and I don’t blame you from reporting a claim that CK makes himself, but he seems to be double-counting the expense of producing the material.

    He states in the third paragraph:

    First of all, this was a premium video production, shot with six cameras over two performances at the Beacon Theater, which is a high-priced elite Manhattan venue. I directed this video myself and the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows).

    Then in the fifth:

    As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000…

    Which looks like he’s deducting the shoot and website development costs again. Just point out that by his own numbers, he’s doing better than he thinks. Always bugs me when folks get this stuff wrong.

  12. You know? I’m probably wrong. I forgot that he didn’t mention bandwidth costs. The HD version of the special clocks in at over a GB. So, that could be it. My bad.

  13. It doesn’t take a genius (or a “free culture fundamentalist”; you’re really reaching there, @8) to see why this worked: the alternative existing model is built around a need for centralized, controlled distribution. Media companies buy/bought rights from artists in exchange for access to shelves in stores which are now mostly closed. They provide other services (production, marketing, management), but none of them require monolithic ‘content ownership’ media companies.

    It may not be immediately obvious what is the best way to make money on something which can be distributed by anyone for free, but it surely isn’t to base the entire business model on centralized distribution.

    @11, when he says “paid for by” I assume he means “financed by”. He made something like $170,000 on the shows. Normally, that’s cash in pocket, but he invested it in the video production. That investment has to go back to his pocket before he’s making money on the video itself.

  14. i hate all the stupid drm stuff, too. the last dvd i rented wouldn’t play in my computer — my only dvd playing devices — because the analog signal to the monitor was drm free. i had to use a program normally used to illegally copy disks just to watch the film i wanted to watch (legally).

    that said, this worked for ck because he is already famous. and he got famous in the system of drms. and it is, unfortunately, effective. show me the act that makes it from the ground up drm free, and then i will be impressed. and it will not be a viable system for most artists.

    regarding why i say drm enforcement is effective, when napster was left alone, everyone used it. when drm is left alone, more people abuse is. it’s pretty much that simple.

    that all said, this bill still goes way too far in such an obvious way.

  15. drm stuff does tick me off. the other day i rented a dvd (i wanted to try out redbox) and it wouldn’t play in my computer because the analog signal to my monitor wasn’t drm free (or something). grrrrr. so i used an open-source player to watch it.

    this bill goes way too far in what i hope is a completely obvious way.

    that said, louis ck made money because he was already successful. and he because successful in the drm system, not the drm-free system. show me the artist that makes it from the ground up drm-free and i’ll be impressed. and even then, who knows if that would be viable model.

    in addition, drm enforcement works. when left drm free, more people “pirate.” when napster was left alone, it seemed everyone did. so it would seem that some enforcement, while inconvenient, does have the desired effect.

  17. Or I could watch a Louis CK video on Netflix streaming as part of my $8 a month subscription. And legally.

    In fact I did. But I still think Patrice O’Neill is (was) funnier.

  20. @18: e L CK probably gets paid 5% of the sale price of that licensed dvd with the rest of the money being divvied up by middlemen; and that’s all he’ll ever make off of those DVD sales. By distributing the content himself, his profit margin per unit only increases the more he sells.

  21. How can someone who doesn’t work for MPAA or it’s ilk find media without Digital Restriction Management [sic] a problem?

    If this kind of thing can work economically: cheaper stuff where the people making it get more money is a good thing. If it doesnt work economically, it is nitch or goes away.

    I do worry congress might try a “Digital Artist and Consumer Protection Act” somehow to make sure media business interests are mandatorily served. Maybe a tax on bits (remember the fee on all Blank Cd’s?)

  22. @20 and that right there is what the record labels are really freaked out over. It’s exactly the same as the reactions of brick and mortar book stores to the internet; of video game companies to stores like Gamespot; of newspapers to the Internet. Monopolies aren’t being so much broken as shattered, and they’re year over year watching their profit margins drop, for better or worse, as the cut of the pie gets split up more and more.

  23. @21, that is the most horrifying dystopian prediction I’ve ever heard. Since a bit is the most basic unit of information, a tax on bits (applied to bandwidth? storage? information in memory? all of the above?) would be the equivalent of a tax on books. Worse, it would effectively be a tax on all thinking/learning while interacting with digital systems.

    You really ought to write science fiction about this.

  26. @13,

    Another “service” media companies provide is protecting artists against losses. It varies by industry, but, in the movie industry in particular, artists get paid no matter whether the movie makes or loses money (and 90 percent of movies are not profitable). Especially in industries where the upfront costs are considerable (you can’t make anything that’s not mumblecore trash for less than $5 million, and a halfway decent movie will cost about ten times that), I don’t see an alternative.

    Also, Louis C.K. had to pay 250 grand for the production and distribution of a comedy show, a pretty hefty sum when you consider he’s just standing in front of a camera for an hour or two. Most artists can’t afford to pony up even that much upfront, especially if they lack the same level of established fame.

  27. @26, I suspect we disagree about what constitutes “mumblecore trash” but I don’t object to any of your major points. It’s clear that existing notoriety is the primary asset of pop-culture artists. It’s also clear that it’s expensive and hard to produce this kind of content.

    I just don’t jump from that to the idea that (pop)culture is unsustainable without the support of giant media companies. I also don’t think any of it means that those media companies will be successful at maintaining their grip on audience attention as use of the internet gets more sophisticated.

    New models emerge. They *are* emerging. Not just for Louis CK, but for lots of other people, too.

  28. Five bucks to see Louis CK without the added expense of parking, drinks, or the obligatory bachelorette party of shrieking drunken harridans? I’m in!

  29. @6: It was 250k for shooting and producing the show (in HD), the site, bandwidth, etc.

    He did everything right EXCEPT giving business to those thieves at PayPal. I hate those fuckers.

  30. @ Bailo the Rapist. Good Grief. On your Netflix streaming you are watching material that is 4 years old at least. Louis’ Beacon special is brand new. He writes a new hour every year. Can you really not understand the difference? You are the worst.

    Oh and Patrice was very funny. I understand why you like him. He hated women almost as much as you do.

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