Recently Louie CK decided (against the advice of his business partners, lawyers, and countless other advisers) to release his most recent stand-up special directly to consumers, for the low price of 5 dollars. He was able to do this as it seems he funded, edited, and distributed this whole thing out-of-pocket. So any losses would be a hit directly to his pocket, but any profits would be as well. The avoidance of large corporation as the middle man of production and distribution represents a shift in the paradigm of entertainment distribution and consumption.

This shift, which is nothing new, was predicted by Chris Andersen in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Where this relatively new information super highway allows the sharing of media from one hard drive to another. But even this new business model can be subverted using Torrents. Chris Andersen concluded these illegal sharing techniques could actually benefit media producers in the new business model. For example, it could be a supplement for a live band’s (for-profit) shows, which aren’t reproduced very well with pixels, versus an in-the-flesh experience. But what’s a comedian to do who doesn’t have any “supplemental material” to hawk?

Be honest. This isn’t an example of a shift in economic model, but a psychological one as well. Louie acknowledges the whole sharing thing: “I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing… But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.” By not only acknowledging the low price, but by acknowledging what he intends to protect against, I’m sure he gained a couple more sales from computer-savvy consumers why would have torrented his stand-up, had they not read his plea to them.

We are seeing this more and more, from the prevalence of open source software, to wireframes, to designs. The profit doesn’t seem to be in the process anymore, but in the product. Louie himself probably put this “economic shift” best:

“I learned that money can be a lot of things. It can be something that is hoarded, fought over, protected, stolen and withheld. Or it can be like an energy, fueled by the desire, will, creative interest, need to laugh, of large groups of people. And it can be shuffled and pushed around and pooled together to fuel a common interest, jokes about garbage, penises and parenthood.”