Viral Weezer Video Not Allowed To Be Viral
from the not-so-brilliant dept
The band Weezer has been getting a lot of buzz for its latest video for the song Pork and Beans, which takes a bunch of viral video "YouTube stars" and has them reprising their roles in its own video. Others have done similar things, so perhaps it's not that unique. However, a Techdirt reader named Mike noticed something quite odd about the Weezer video on YouTube. For a supposedly "viral" video -- Weezer or Universal Music has disabled the ability to embed the video in other sites (see update below). Embedding these kinds of videos, of course, is exactly how they go viral. Specifically disabling that feature on a video that's entirely based on viral videos seems backwards.It's difficult to believe that Weezer did this themselves -- as the band has long been seen as embracing the internet and new technologies and distribution means. Hell, just doing this type of video shows how connected to the internet scene they are. So it makes you wonder if it was the band's label, Universal Music, that has stopped the embedding. If they're going to do this, why not follow Viacom's footsteps and ask the video to be taken down completely.
Update: Aha! Within hours of us posting this, the embed feature was re-enabled. No explanation as to what happened. Someone from Weezer or Universal care to comment?
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Filed Under: embedding, viral video, weezer
Companies: universal music, youtube
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Now who came up with this objective, and is it consistent with the deisres of the shareholders and other stakeholders, is another question entirely.
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Hopefully moving forward youth culture and anyone who actually LIKES music ignores them and they die out.
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it gets worse
So, since then, instead of "correcting" the ironic lack of embeds on the Universal page, they went tho opposite way.
Even more awesomely, apparently Weezer's European distributer didn't get the memo and they allow the embedding of the video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Y4BppbBFo&e. Of course, so have many individual users who have filled the vacuum and uploaded the video.
Of course this all means that when Pitchfork or Stereogum post the video (or fix a dead link) for thousands upon thousands of music fans a click through doesn't find it's way back to Weezer's nor Universal's page.
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Email still works
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I know you're trolling but.....
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Blue Album FTW
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Right, because the BAND is the one that made the video. There are music video writers just like in any other form of entertainment. If anything, I think Weezer was approached by someone else pitching the idea of a "viral video video".
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Re:
They still let the guy make it, didn't they?
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Back in the day...
Wasn't it some Buddy Holly song? How well did that do?
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Re: Back in the day...
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Re: Re: Back in the day...
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Re: Re: Re: Back in the day...
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They rip off some utube stuff, put it in their vid and then act like it belongs to them ?
wtf ?
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Re:
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It's Not Weezer's Fault
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Am I missing something?
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Re: Am I missing something?
They changed it to allow embeds sometime after this story was published.
Damn. I should have taken a screenshot of the original, but didn't. I didn't think they'd change it.
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I'm looking at it right now
I futzed the angle brackets, but it seems to be embeddable to me
@Gasparilla: I'm with you, don't see what the issue is. I think YouTube might make it hard to embed, but you can easily see the source and find out what part (in this case muP9eH2p2PI) that you need avert the /v/.
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Re: I'm looking at it right now
Before it said "Video embedding disabled by request" or something similar.
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heh heh
.... tets ?
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Re: heh heh
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re: jason_deluxe
To put it anther way, there's far more "old people" in the US buying crap than there are "young people". And Weezer still matters to us "old" farts (I'm 34).
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i don't understand universal music group....
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http://www.tnpascher.com
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