A few days ago I complained about overpriced Tom Petty tickets and how they alienated his fans (well, at least two fans!), but today I want to highlight someone who’s doing it right.
Standup comic Louis C.K. is a pretty successful guy. He has a strong following. Like many stage acts he has released videos of his live performances. These have mostly taken the form of conventional DVDs (or BluRays now) that go through multiple steps of production and distribution. A DVD typically runs between $20 and $30 but the artist only sees a few dollars of that if he’s lucky, or he is paid a lump sum upfront and the profits from individual units are distributed to the people farther down the chain.
What Louis did is brilliant and refreshing in its simplicity. He financed the recording of his show himself (to the tune of $200 000), did his own video editing, and released the show as a download on his website for $5. There’s no DRM – the only “security measure” was Louis asking fans not to pirate the video.
And they didn’t. As I write this he has exceeded $1M in profit (in 12 days!) from people who paid their five dollars to download the show. There’s no record label and no big marketing machine, just the artist himself who paid a film crew out of pocket, edited the footage himself on his laptop and made it available on his site through a simple storefront. Every purchase is pure profit for him now (except maybe a few cents worth of bandwidth) and his fans are happy – they can watch the video for $5 instead of $20 or more!
And he managed that without treating his fans like criminals by imposing copy protection or anything of the sort. He was honest and upfront, telling people he financed the whole thing himself and to please play nice. He offered people something they want at a good price. He spoke to people directly on Reddit. He was honest and respectful to his fans and they treated him in kind. Isn’t it great how that works?