Ok Go Singer Explains How Lack Of Embedding Videos Hurts Everyone

from the embed-me dept

As he's done before, Ok Go's lead singer Damian Kulash has taken to the NY Times Op-Ed pages to discuss the fact that his own record label seems a bit clueless. Basically, he's repeating what he said a few weeks ago on the band's website, claiming that YouTube only pays royalties on videos streamed on site, rather than embeds (someone from YouTube told me this is untrue, but when asked for specific confirmation I got no response). However, what is interesting, is that Kulash highlights two things:

1. Their original video (the treadmills one) was made entirely on their own outside of EMI's influence, and the success of that video has helped make EMI and the band a lot of money:

   In 2006 we made a video of us dancing on treadmills for our song "Here It Goes Again." We shot it at my sister's house without telling EMI, our record company, and posted it on the fledgling YouTube without EMI's permission. Technically, this put us afoul of our contract, since we need our record company's approval to distribute copies of the songs that they finance. It also exposed YouTube to all sorts of liability for streaming an EMI recording across the globe. But back then record companies saw videos as advertisements, so if my band wanted to produce them, and if YouTube wanted to help people watch them, EMI wasn't going to get in the way.
   
   As the age of viral video dawned, "Here It Goes Again" was viewed millions, then tens of millions of times. It brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents, and by the time we returned to the studio, 700 shows, one Grammy and nearly three years later, EMI's ledger had a black number in our column. To the band, "Here It Goes Again" was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement.

2. Once EMI disabled embedding on that video, the number of views dropped drastically, harming everyone's bottom line:

   When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.
   
   Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube's deals with record companies aren't public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400.

Now, I'll quibble with Damian's final point there. First, it's still not entirely clear if it's true that YouTube doesn't pay for embed streams, but even if that's the case, I'd argue that of the 10,000 views per day, it also increased the number of direct views (I quite frequently will click through on an embedded video to see it at YouTube itself -- often to see more about who posted it, or sometimes the comments on the video). Second, if you recognize that embeds and things that get passed around are quite a bit like radio used to be, you have to imagine that some percentage of the 10,000 streamers per day went on to buy something from Ok Go that resulted in EMI making money. Cutting that by 90% just doesn't make any sense. Perhaps it's no wonder that EMI is on the verge of going out of business.

Damian does go on to claim that record labels are an important part of the business in funding new acts, and helping them do more expensive things early on, while aggregating risk. Indeed. I don't deny that at all -- and, as I've said plenty of times before -- there's still a place for labels that wish to do things like that. The problem is that the labels have set up their business models to rely on a single revenue stream, album sales, that is increasingly less important. The rest of the music ecosystem is thriving and will continue to do so, and if it's not the old record labels giving advances and aggregating risk to promising bands, others will step in to fill that gap. There's too much opportunity and too much money for it not to happen.

Filed Under: damian kulash, music, ok go, viral
Companies: emi

EMI Tries Fake Word Of Mouth Campaign To Promote Ok Go

from the yer-doing-it-wrong dept

Well, well. We've written about the band Ok Go a few times here, as a band that definitely does seem to "get" what's going on in terms of how to connect with fans and promote their music well. Many years ago, the band had spoken out against DRM, and, of course, they produced one of the most popular music videos of all time -- the famous "treadmills" video. I would have embedded that video here, but Ok Go's label, Capitol Records/EMI decided somewhere along the line that no one should want to share one of the most viral videos ever, and disabled all embedding. Brilliant.

So, when Ok Go put out a new album with a new "viral video" EMI once again banned embedding, apparently not realizing how this viral stuff works. Ok Go wrote about it, and basically made it clear that they'd tried over and over again to explain this stuff to Capitol/EMI, and the folks at the label simply didn't get the value of making the video viral.

Well, now, instead of allowing a real "word of mouth" viral campaign with the video, it looks like EMI/Capitol has decided to bootstrap a fake viral word of mouth campaign, by sending around emails (and even submitting directly to us) a request to "get a free Ok Go" song if you just Tweet about it. Seriously. So rather than letting people organically share what they wanted to share, EMI is trying to bribe people into promoting something else.

EMI, you're doing it wrong.

In the meantime, the platform that EMI is using for this is easily defeated. You have to log in to Twitter Connect via a special promo page, and it asks you to send a specific twitter message about how you just got a free Ok Go song... but you can edit the message to say whatever you want. And, here's a little trick: if you edit the message to be more than 140 characters, it doesn't actually send to Twitter, and you still get the free song.

And wait, didn't EMI insist in court that it never authorized free MP3s to be available online?

Anyway, the problem here is that EMI is trying to force people into doing things a specific way (not embedding, must tweet), rather than simply being open, sharing and (perhaps) suggesting they share things if they like with a friend. That's much more authentic and real. This feels very fake and corporate. You build trust by actually putting stuff out there and seeing how people respond, rather than bribing them and limiting how they can share.

Filed Under: music, ok go, promotion, viral, word of mouth
Companies: capitol records, emi

North Face Lawsuit Against South Butt Going Viral With Facebook App

from the can-you-tell-a-butt-from-a-face dept

Following North Face's incredibly short-sighted decision to sue parody clothing maker, South Butt, it seems that the story is going viral in a variety of ways. Not only is the press and various blogs talking about it, but Paul Alan Levy alerts us to the news that South Butt has released a Facebook app that helps you "sharpen your skills" to see if you can "tell a butt from a face." As Levy notes, this sort of application and attention gaining effort shows why these types of lawsuits are likely to bite you in the butt. Even if there's a legal basis here (and that's questionable), the backlash against such a lawsuit is clear (and was widely predicted when North Face first made its threat). Anyone filing lawsuits these days needs to realize how the court of public opinion can weigh in quite loudly on such things.

Filed Under: backlash, facebook app, lawsuits, trademark, viral
Companies: facebook, north face, south butt

Man Who Re-Uploaded Viral Baby Swinging Video Charged With Child Abuse?

from the are-they-serious? dept

It's really stunning how often we see the wrong people being blamed for things. It seems like once the internet gets involved, government officials let their brains go away. The latest example is sent to us by reader Stack, and it involves a man in Australia who has been charged with publishing child-abuse material. What did he do? He took a video of a man swinging a baby around, that was already all over the internet, and being shown on various news programs, and uploaded it to a video sharing site, LiveLeak, which focuses on videos of news or current events. To be clear: the guy who's being charged is not the guy in the video, doesn't know the guy in the video and had absolutely nothing to do with the video whatsoever, other than uploading it to LiveLeak.

As noted, the video itself is widely available. This guy was just sharing it on yet another video sharing site... and yet he gets charged with publishing child abuse materials. Should all the news programs that are showing the video be charged as well? It's a viral video. That means people share it. It's raised some interesting and important discussions about whether or not the guy in the video was putting the baby in danger (though, the baby apparently didn't seem to mind), but to charge this guy for simply distributing the video makes no sense at all. It's yet another indication of the nanny-state mentality where governments somehow decide that people shouldn't even be allowed to see anything controversial, lest they be so weak that they immediately have to copy it. Most humans don't work that way, and one of these days, maybe government officials will figure that out.

Filed Under: australia, child abuse, videos, viral