While this is great for Louis CK, whom I find to be hilarious and wish only the best, it doesn't strike me as a truly generalisable model. I mean, it's basicall

While this is great for Louis CK, whom I find to be hilarious and wish only the best, it doesn't strike me as a truly generalisable model. I mean, it's basically a restricted version of NPR's 'pledge' model, right? The copies are effectively free, but you can choose to donate some money to the artist. Sure this can work for someone with a lot of name recognition, but that's because he was already discovered. I think the problem is that Louis CK isn't in the business of distribution, he's in the business of producing comedy. The NPR model does disaggregate the two. You don't pay for the distribution, you pay so that they keep producing content. I think the Kickstarter model is more generalisable, in that it more directly solicits payment for the production, not the distribution. But it still depends on people wanting what you will produce, which means they have to know who you are already. Which, I think means that people are going to have to produce things for free until there's enough demand for continued production to be able to solicit payment.