Is Louis C.K. a model for cloud services?

OK, so maybe that is a stretch but the enterprising cloud service provider should still take heed.  The phenomenally hilarious comedian (YMMV) Louis C.K. completely circumvented the major ticket brokers and managed to sell his own tickets.  Eliminating the middle man had to cost him dearly to spin up the site, pay for management and deal with the data interchange between the venues/banks/customers.  The catch: it had to cost him less dearly than if he had stuck to the established majors in the ticketing space.

The Consumerist » Louis C.K. Says He’s Sold $4.5M In Tickets To His Shows In 45 Hours All On His Own.

Imagine if you could just spin up a ticketing platform on someone’s (or your own) elastic cloud compute service in an hour and dissemble it at the end of the event.  Louis C.K. can pull a pretty good draw but even so his success was not guaranteed.  If you can design and scale a solution down far enough even a small entertainment offering should be able to make this work.  Think of a small band or solo act like a magician, motivational speaker or even an impromptu conference.  That only opens the door to putting more people in seats at venues more cost effectively.

This does not herald the end of companies like Ticketmaster but it signals a future where the majors will need to justify their costs with more services.  That has been the complaint of consumers for years.  Who knew that DIY ticketing was the mechanism for forcing the issue?

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