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Humble Comedy Bundle
- Ianvdl 13y agoI've never watched Louis CK, so I'm might take a look at this. I've only heard good things about him. 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.
- alan_cx 13y agoI'm British, I'm very much in to my comedy, I reckon we Brits do the best comedy, and....... I cannot begin to recommend Louis CK enough. 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... )
- Ianvdl 13y agoThanks for the detailed answer, I'll have a look on youtube.
- dschep 13y agoI've already bought Louis CK's show directly from his site. Is the beat the avg worth it for the Patrice O'Neal shows?
- newsoundwave 13y agoI wouldn't say so, but Tig Notaro's Live I would consider worth beating the average for standalone (even though you don't have to).
- dschep 13y agoK, thanks. I've definitely heard excellent thing about Live (mostly via NPR.)
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y agoIs Humble Bundle the new Groupon?
- VLM 13y agoNo, because its mathematically impossible for the participants to be driven into bankruptcy. Also, unlike groupon, humble bundle so far has not offered astrology readings, car detailing, and massages (edited to add, that's all groupon has ever offered in my area, depending where you live its possible they offered "real" stuff where you live)
- jljljl 13y ago>>> No, because its mathematically impossible for the participants to be driven into bankruptcy. ...Ok, I'll bite, why is it mathematically impossible?
- freehunter 13y agoBecause the marginal cost of digital distribution is next to nothing. While it costs Starbucks a few dollars for them to give you a cup of coffee, it might cost a couple pennies for bandwidth (on Humble's end) to sell another copy of a digital movie.
- jljljl 13y agoTrue, I suppose that once they have recouped their fixed costs and development/production costs, this would be the case. So HB a good method for generating demand/revenue once you've crossed that point, but not so before.
- VLM 13y agoRegardless of if you've passed your fixed cost point or not, once you've exhausted the market for people willing to pay $25 for, say, Little Inferno, then you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by clearing the market again, this time at a lower price, until you hit the humble bundle and people who wouldn't send you $10 are sending you $5. 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...)
- jljljl 13y agoFor those who have not heard it, the Tig Notaro special is the one covered extensively by NPR and various news outlets, after Louis CK declared it one of the "truly great, masterful standup sets". The set famously opens with her revealing to the audience that she was just diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. http://www.npr.org/2013/07/26/205540155/tig-notaro-on-going-live-about-her-life 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.
- twerquie 13y agoNot to build it up too much, but Live is one of the more remarkable performances I've ever heard. Unbelievably tragic, visceral and funny. Not to be missed.
- turing 13y agoCame here to say the same thing. Tig's performance alone makes this worth purchasing. Truly unforgettable.
- npinguy 13y agoI need to offer an alternative point of view. 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.
- 616c 13y agoWow! Tig, as in Tig the lesbian police officer Sarah Silverman tries to seduce in an episode of the Sarah Silverman Show? She even used her own name, which I thought was something fictional. I had no idea she was an accomplished comedian, as this is the only time I have seen her in television, and she was purposely not so funny in that episode (maybe two or three). http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0138294/ 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.)
- kqr2 13y agoThis site keeps track of DRM free comedy specials for $5 or less. http://www.comedyspecials.org/ http://www.comedyspecials.org/
- leftnode 13y agoThis is an amazing bundle. 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.
- smacktoward 13y agoMaria Bamford is excellent too. The "Maria Bamford Show" YouTube series she did a few years back is hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07FAAF5582CDD8A6 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL07FAAF5582CDD8A6
- icpmacdo 13y agoWow this is great, Patrice O'Neal is one of the best comedians of his generation.
- cgag 13y agoI regret not hearing any of his stuff before he died, I was surprised at how amazing it was. Mr. P and Hannibal's album are both excellent. For anyone curious, Patrice's special "elephant in the room" is on youtube.
- marchustvedt 13y agoI've been nothing but impressed with this HumbleBundle team. We produced the Maria Bamford special at Chill (chill.com) and worked with them to make this part of the new Bundle. Of all the output deals we have done, they have been the most forward thinking, transparent and just plain easy going I've seen. And they even got me to drop $25 on this one.
- programminggeek 13y agoI feeel like Humble Bundle is sort of becoming like Woot! The more it branches out, the more successful it is, and less relevant to me it is...
- ohazi 13y agoYeah, it's feeling less and less "humble" these days (imho, of course).
- aray 13y agoTo me, the 'humble' has always been the 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.
- ekianjo 13y agoHumble also made sense because it was supporting indie games makers. Now, not so much.
- jljljl 13y agoIf anyone wants data on whether Humble Bundle is more or less successful, a list of their sales and the amount raised is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_bundle#List_of_games_offered http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_bundle#List_of_games_off...
- dbalatero 13y agoI guess they're branching out, but it still falls under the umbrella of "creative digital content" - whether it be games, comedy specials, music, etc. Are the game bundles not relevant to you anymore due to expansion?
- dublinben 13y agoAs someone who bought all the first several "Indie" bundles, the most recent games bundles have been completely irrelevant to me. They're just collections of slightly out of date AAA titles from a major studio at a flexible price. The most recent "Origin" bundle was just an insult to their ahem indie roots.
- obilgic 13y agoThis is not "pay what you want" anymore. 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.
- ygjb 13y agoNot really, you can still pay what you want for the content, they just offer an incentive to meet a threshold. Note that you can still direct the entire amount that you pay the way you choose, so you could donate the entire purchase if you wanted.
- lightbritefight 13y agoAlso,"beat the average" has always been a gimmick they use, back to humble bundle 1. Its not a new mechanic they've introduced.
- Pxtl 13y agoI realize they must run tight margins with the prices they charge, but I keep craving a nice client for all this non-game content on my Android device - I have the eBook bundle and it's a bit of a rigamarole to get the ebooks into the Kindle app, and the Android bundle client doesn't even list the ebooks.
- moron4hire 13y agobe patient. it's going to space.
- forrestthewoods 13y agoInteresting that you can divide how the money is distributed to the artists. Is that new? Once upon a time for video games you could split dev/charity/tip but you could not control the split per dev. Am I mistaken?
- hexedpackets 13y agoA couple of bundles have allowed per-dev split, but not all of them.
- bal00ns 13y agoIt seems that the 'bigger is badder' mentality has snuck its way into this discussion as well. 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?
- jlgreco 13y agoHumble Bundle originally caught my eye with the "curation" aspect, but now that there are so many "humble bundles" it seems like I need to sift through all the options myself. I may as well just find what I want to buy and buy it directly (and donate to the EFF directly as well).
- tomphoolery 13y agoOh this is just a whole bag of yes! great (and long-running) standup shows are hard to find online. I even considered starting my own BitTorrent tracker just for old televised stand-up that never gets aired anymore. Sometimes I like going back and seeing "who made it" from the old HBO Young Comedians specials.
- zevyoura 13y agoThe 1995 Edition (Louis CK, Dave Attell, and Dave Chappelle among others[0]) is particularly excellent. [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0777178/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0777178/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]