How To Increase Your Sketch Comedy Business By 23,000 Percent (Monty Python Edition)
Gizmodo's Adam Frucci posts an interesting story about how Monty Python seized the YouTube momentum to generate massive online sales of licensed DVDs:
Monty Python started a YouTube channel with tons of their sketches streaming for free. The[y] included links to their DVDs at Amazon. The result was a whopping 23,000% increase in sales….Are you paying attention, MPAA and RIAA? A controlled release of free material keeps people from resorting to piracy and keeps them in your controlled ecosphere, which can include, yes, ways for fans to give you money. But when you're a bunch of pricks, people go to The Pirate Bay and think of you as the enemy, and then you don't get any money. Take notes, you idiots.
Reason on this sort of thing here and here.
Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks sketch:
Hat tip: Brent Palmer.