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I'm Drew Breunig and I obsess about technology, media, language, and culture. I live in New York, studied anthropology, and work in advertising technology.

These are reactions to things I feel are important.

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Louis CK on his $5 Comedy Special Experiment

He writes:

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 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

…

I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I’ll do it here and I’ll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

The whole piece is nearly a manifesto for how creative people should use the internet.

Which only leaves the issue of discovery. People are discovered or acquire large audiences online, but they tend to immediately switch to the corporate route: an agent, a book deal, a TV show. The transition barely ever works, we get tired of the marketing push and what was once special is now trite.

We just need to bring the internet to a place where it can offer more consistent ways to sustainably support creative people.

18 notesShowHide

  1. tresbienensemble reblogged this from slutsonskates
  2. slutsonskates reblogged this from jishhd and added:
    can he be so fucking awesome? i...don’t understand how one dude comprises all
  3. jishhd reblogged this from dbreunig
  4. getdowngetfunky reblogged this from dbreunig
  5. davepress said: I’m with you. However, the major problem why this kind of experiment won’t work for 99% of the creative people on the Internet is they don’t have the audience that Louis C.K. does to turn something into a profit.
  6. dbreunig posted this