The Humble Bundle is a great site where a bunch of people with something to sell, usually indie games developers, get together and sell all those things in one bundle, splitting the takings between themselves, charity and the Humble Bundle guys. The twist is – you get to pick the price you pay, and how it gets split. I’ve bought a lo-o-ot of awesome games through the Humble Bundle.
These days they don’t just do game bundles. Recently there’s been documentaries, ebooks, and now they’ve added stand-up comedy to their slate with the Humble Comedy Bundle, including:
- Maria Bamford – The Special Special Special
- Tig Notaro – Live
- Hannibal Buress – My Name Is Hannibal
- Jim Norton – Please Be Offended
For the next two weeks you get all those for whatever price you like. You could, if you were a bit of dick, get them for one single cent total. Don’t be a dick. To sweeten the deal if you pay more than the current average price being paid (right now that’s about $9) then you get three extra shows:
- Louis C.K. – Live at the Beacon Theatre
- Patrice O’Neal – Unreleased
- Patrice O’Neal – Mr P
I only really know Louis C.K. out of all of them, and he’s absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend you check out any of his shows or his sitcom Louis, but the Beacon Theatre gig is fantastic and well worth $10 even though he sells it for $5 on his own site (because he’s awesome like that).
I’ve heard of Tig Notaro through an email sent out by Louis actually. I haven’t seen any of her stuff yet but as soon as I’ve got this post up I’m going to be grabbing my own copy of the bundle and checking her show out first. Also, anyone who calls their stand-up gig ‘Please Be Offended’ has definitely got my attention, Jim Norton.
The numbers
The first question I asked myself back when Humble Bundle started was “How does anyone make any money out of this?” but it doesn’t seem to be putting off the big names, and the little names probably get a lot of attention they might not have otherwise, so I guess it’s working out for them. This bundle has been on for less than a day and according to their homepage stats so far it’s made $51,000 – though how that’s being split by customers is kept a secret of course.
What with the charity element, it’s not unusual to see people who can afford it paying a lot more for the bundles than the street value, with current top contributors to the comedy bundle paying around $100 by choice, and when there’s anything game-related in the bundle you’ll often see the likes of Notch putting thousands of dollars in the pot, but of course only he knows how he split it.
I’m heading over to pick up my bundle, I highly recommend you check it out yourself and at the very least give Louis C.K. a try if you haven’t already.
Thanks for reading!
