OK Go Struggle With Label’s Rules Banning Embedded Video
If any band knows the power of viral videos, it’s OK Go. Five years ago, the band broke through when clips for “A Million Ways” and “Here It Goes Again” (the “treadmill” video) were passed around the Web. The band assumed the same would be the case for the first two videos from its new Of the Blue Colour of the Sky album (for “WTF” and “This Too Shall Pass”). But that was before the music business began groping for any additional ways to generate income in light of plummeting CD sales.
Thanks to a 2006 agreement between Google and the major labels, the two clips are officially confined to MySpace and YouTube and can’t be posted anywhere else. In the Google arrangement, which was renewed with the labels last year, the four majors receive at least 50 percent of ad revenue based on streams of videos on YouTube.
OK Go’s response? Go around the system. In an open letter to fans posted on the band’s site on January 18, singer-guitarist Damien Kulash explained the situation — and then provided a code so that bloggers and fans can embed both videos on their own sites. “We’ll put ‘em up anywhere we can,” says Kulash. “Our label is unlikely to start suing us for putting our videos up.” OK Go plans to make at least four more videos from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, including one in which Kulash will be thrown across a room in a giant slingshot.
According to Kulash, OK Go didn’t realize the restrictions until angry fan e-mails began arriving at the band’s Website. “It’s kind of a stupid decision,” says Kulash. “It doesn’t matter all that much to me if people are passing around our videos on one platform over another. But if the casual person who just wants to stick it up on their Facebook page can’t embed it, they send you a nasty comment and move on. You’ve just lost the two to 200 people who might have read that page.”
Although EMI declined to comment (but did not dispute Kulash’s claims), a YouTube spokesman confirms that the label made the decision to prevent those particular videos from being embedded elsewhere. OK Go manager Jamie Kitman says the band asked the label if they could skirt around the rules. “But they said, ‘That’s the policy — what can we do?’” he says. “It’s unthinkable to us that they wouldn’t want to spread videos virally, but they have a corporate policy.”
Kulash says he understands the industry’s rationale. “As fucked up as the industry is, it does provide investment money for bands,” he says. “For them to continue to do that, they do need some income.” But he also says that’s about all he comprehends about streaming videos and additional income. “Basically I have no fucking idea how it works. The last accounting we saw said that for 600,000 streams, we got $31. How can that be worth this?”
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Once again the record companies has ruined a good thing. And they wondered why people aren’t buying CDs anymore, it idiotic moves like this.
It’s time for artists to go independent so they can have complete control of their music. Just ask Radiohead, it worked out very well for them.
The band should be able to get by on the basis of their talent, not how viral their videos can be. The new record is great. Its odd, too, because their other two albums that i heard were just mediocre pop-rock at best. Now that their music has a psychedelic feel to it and its GOOD people arent buying it. Figures.
if the label wanted to monetize the video – sell it as a bonus track when you buy the album on iTunes and Amazon. And/or sell it ala carte for a reasonable price: $0.99 alone or $1.49 for the song’s MP3 and video. If more videos are coming, have buyers “subscribe” to the album like a season pass. Done and done.
OkGo never “assumed” that they would get the same viral success from their new videos. In the letter, they outright say that lightning will not strike twice:
“With or without this embedding problem, we’ll never get 50 zillion views on a YouTube video again. That moment – the dawn of internet video – is gone. The internet isn’t as anarchic as it was then. Now there are Madison Avenue firms that specialize in viral marketing’ and the success of our videos is now taught in business school.”
The album is great, though. It took a few listens, because it is not concise or catchy like their other albums. But as it started to sink in I realized it’s pretty fantastic. That’s a risky move in a time when people tend to buy singles and skip the albums.
You Tube is owned by Google
Myspace isn’t owned by Google. It’s owned by News Corporation.