Ok Go Explains Video Embedding Issue, Blames YouTube (Partly) And EMI (Only A Bit); Sells Uniforms

from the but-that-doesn't-make-much-sense dept

So last week we discussed how EMI was seriously harming the ability of the latest Ok Go video to go viral, by putting on geoblocks and forbidding embedding. The band had said it was upset about this and pointed people to a Vimeo version -- despite the fact that EMI is suing Vimeo for posting music videos (um, oops) and Vimeo supposedly hates commercial content.

The band has now come out with a more detailed explanation that puts more of the blame on YouTube, while also explaining how the band gets to "snort drugs off the Queen of England" (so it's got more important things to deal with). Well, specifically, the band points out that way back when, Google agreed to give record labels a bit of money every time someone watched one of their videos on YouTube. That much is well-known, of course. However, the band claims that this little bit of money is only paid on videos that are seen directly via YouTube, rather than on embedded videos. Why? Well, because advertisers on YouTube only let ads be shown on YouTube itself, so they're not suddenly showing up on some random website (though, of course, those same advertisers probably have no problem using Google AdSense, which does the same thing, but....). So the band suggests the issue is more with YouTube and its refusal to count embedded videos in the views... though it claims it's been arguing with EMI to allow the video anyway.

This still seems backwards and shortsighted by EMI. Even if it's not getting paid for the embedded videos, it seems quite likely that the embeds actually lead to more views on YouTube itself, as people click through. Instead, now, all of the views are going to go to Vimeo. The company EMI is suing. Sensible.

In the meantime, though, Ian from Topspin alerts us to the news that Ok Go is using the Topspin platform to offer up, as a part of its "reason to buy," the uniforms and props from the video shoot. Of course, I would imagine those things would be in higher demand if EMI let people embed the video in the first place...

Filed Under: embedding, ok go, regional blocks, viral videos
Companies: capitol records, emi, google, vimeo, youtube

EMI/Capitol Records Works Hard To Make Ok Go's Viral Video Less Viral

from the marketing-geniuses dept

You probably know of the band Ok Go's famous treadmill video: It helped attract a ton of attention to the band. The band's lead singer, Damian Kulash, has been quite outspoken about why bands need to be fan friendly, and even took to the pages of the NY Times to discuss the evils of DRM, and has spoken before Congress on music industry issues as well. The band has always done quite a lot to try to connect with fans and not hinder them in any way -- which is part of why it has such a huge following.

So, with the band coming out with a new quirky video, you would think that it would be readily available all over the place. However, Martin points us to the news that the video was put up on YouTube by the band's label, Capitol Records, a subsidiary of EMI, but it did so with geoblocking and with embedding disabled. In fact, if you go to the original treadmill video, you'll see that Capitol Records has disabled embedding on that video as well. Notice that I have it embedded above? That's because I used the embed code from an earlier post back when embedding was allowed. Yet now, go and click on the video... and it gives you an error message saying embedding has been disabled. All those people who helped spread that video? Capitol Records broke them all. Nice of them. It's impossible to fathom what the folks at EMI/Capitol are thinking here. They are making it more difficult to make a viral video viral. Both blocking it from being viewed in various regions and blocking embeds makes no sense at all.

Of course, the band recognizes this and are pissed off about it:

As for the issue of geoblocking, we're incredibly upset that the youtube versions of our videos can't be embedded. Just one more example of major labels accelerating their own demise. We (and every individual band out there) have exactly zero leverage in this particular battle, however. So we post to other sites as well.

In fact, the band itself has now put the video up on Vimeo as well, which does allow embedding: Of course, given that Vimeo has these bizarre and nonsensical rules against commercial use, and this is obviously a commercial video, you have to wonder why this is allowed. Oh yeah, also, it's worth remembering that Capitol Records just sued Vimeo for copyright infringement -- so I can't see the label being all that thrilled about this. Either way, the video is going up in a variety of other places in embeddable format, but not by Capitol Records, meaning that it gets more fragmented, less viral, and hurts Capitol Records. And people wonder why EMI and the other major labels are collapsing.

Filed Under: embedding, ok go, regional blocks, viral videos
Companies: capitol records, emi, vimeo

Is Vimeo Arbitrarily Taking Down Videos It Deems As 'Commercial'?

from the that-makes-no-sense dept

With Vimeo recently getting sued by EMI for supposedly encouraging infringement of their music in videos, it's interesting to note that Vimeo is apparently arbitrarily and ridiculously aggressive in cutting off anyone who uses the service for any sort of "commercial" purpose (found via Shocklee). The story is quite bizarre, but apparently Vimeo has buried in its terms of service that you can't use the service for commercial reasons -- though almost no one knows this. Yet, Vimeo itself seems to decide rather arbitrarily if your videos are commercial or not and then gives you a 24-hour notice to remove your videos. This is rather disappointing. Vimeo's player is actually quite nice (much nicer than YouTube's), and I've recommended many others to use its service. I had my own odd problem with Vimeo last year when for some unknown reason the company completely deleted my account and locked me out of using the service. Eventually they restored the account, but no explanation for the deletion was ever given (and it made me look bad, because I had been discussing stuff with someone, who then accused me of deleting my posts).

The other oddity is the claim that Vimeo says you cannot embed Vimeo videos on sites that show ads, as that's "commercial use." Once again, we get into the difficulty of figuring out what is commercial use? If I embed a Vimeo video in a blog post is that commercial use? This is a blog, but it's part of our business. Similarly, some of the speeches I've given in the past couple of years were put online using Vimeo. Are these "commercial use"? Are they then commercial use if I happen to embed the video in the blog? What if I embed someone else's video in this "commercial" blog? Like -- as we did with the Vimeo getting sued story -- embedded a video from Vimeo itself? It's nearly impossible to figure out what is and what's not commercial. About the only thing you can say is that you probably shouldn't use Vimeo for anything, because its policies appear to be totally arbitrary and prone to suddenly losing the videos you thought you had legitimately posted.

Filed Under: commercial, non-commercial, videos
Companies: vimeo

Vimeo Sued For Lip Dub Videos

from the ah,-copyright-law dept

Three years ago, video hosting site Vimeo got a lot of attention for itself with a "recruiting" video of sorts that was one of the first popular "lip dub" videos, which are now quite popular. In it, pretty much the entire Vimeo staff is seen singing and dancing to the song Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger. However, it looks like that particular lip dub may now get Vimeo, and parent firm InterActive Corp. in a bit of trouble. Copycense points us to a new lawsuit filed against Vimeo by Capitol Records (really, EMI) alleging copyright infringement. The way they're getting around the DMCA safe harbors and the Veoh ruling is pointing to Vimeo's own lip dubs and its apparent encouragement that others should make lip dubs as well. Of course, it's difficult to argue that lip dubs damage the labels in any way. The popular lip dubs seem to do a lot to expand the recognition of a song and an artist, and some musicians have been known to encourage such things. But, of course, that's not how the major record labels tend to view things...

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

Filed Under: copyright, inducement, lip dubs
Companies: capitol records, emi, vimeo