Comedian Louis CK set a precedent back in December when he released his last special Live at the Beacon Theater exclusively through his own website. He charged only $5, in hopes that the lower price would deter would-be pirates. His gamble paid off big time, and he pulled in well over $1 milllion within less than two weeks. Now, roughly six months later, he's back with a new album, Word, which will be released tomorrow exclusively through his website.
Six months is an astonishingly short time for a comedian to write and refine a full hour of material – most go about a year or two between releases – so the news that Word would be available so soon was a pleasant surprise for fans. According to Louis, the hour-long album is of a show he did at Carnegie Hall while on his national Word tour. "I've had a lot of requests from people to release that show as a special or as a CD," said CK, "I hadn't done so because a lot of the material that I did on the Word tour, was in the second season of my show, Louie, on FX. But I decided since it's never been released as an entire show, and some of the other material was not on my show, I'm releasing this now."
Louis' do-it-yourself approach has been appealing to a number of other comedians, including Aziz Ansari and Jim Gaffigan, who both followed in his footsteps not long after Live at the Beacon Theater was released.
UPDATE: Some sources are reporting that the album is available on his site now, but it is not showing up for us. Were you able to buy it? Let us know in the comments.
2nd UPDATE: We're now seeing Word available for purchase as well as Shameless and the audio for Live at the Beacon Theater! Hooray for new Louis!