The viral phenomenon that was OK Go's homemade, treadmill-o-riffic music video for 'Here It Goes Again' may never be duplicated, thanks to tightening restrictions on embeddable licensed content. The group's lead singer and guitarist, Damian Kulash, laments these frugal industry policies in a New York Times op-ed titled 'WhoseTube?'
"Believe it or not," Kulash writes, "in the four years since our treadmill dance got such attention, YouTube and EMI [OK Go's label] have actually made it harder to share our videos." OK Go shot to fame when their no-budget video for 'Here It Goes Again' garnered tens of millions of views.
"In these tight times, it's no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos," says Kulash, who opens the article stating the band sees their videos "as creative works and not as our record company's marketing tool."
The Times op-ed seems to have been precipitated by Kulash's recent post on OK Go's official forum. Kulash began by linking to a video for 'This Too Shall Pass.' The clip is a fun, meticulously-choreographed romp with the potential to spread like Web-wildfire -- if only embedding it wasn't strictly verboten.
According to Kulash, embedded videos are exempt from the revenue YouTube pays record companies, meaning viral success comes at the peril of record labels' coffers. The dispute is a textbook case of artistic freedom clashing with an increasingly tough-to-meet bottom line for the music industry. "To the band, 'Here It Goes Again' was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement," Kulash says in his Times piece. He continues:
"Now we can't post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. This isn't how the Internet works. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face." Kulash's screed is bold, defining "biting the hand that feeds" in his plain statement that record labels have a well-deserved reputation for greed and short-sightedness.
Showing posts with label OK Go. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OK Go. Show all posts
OK Go News
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 ******* idea how it works. The last accounting we saw said that for 600,000 streams, we got $31. How can that be worth this?”
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 ******* 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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