The OK Go Fracas
What if I told you a stroke of genius, a relatively cheap video based on concept more than expensive special effects, could become an Internet phenomenon and you’d break an act. Would you like that?
Of course.
To the point you’d see the value of Internet video and make sure that it never happened again.
Every day people e-mail me video links. I’d say they go direct to YouTube maybe fifty percent of the time. Which makes me believe those passing on the clips didn’t find them on YouTube, but at these other sites, where they’ve been embedded. Yes, the miracle of the Internet, you can find something and share it with everyone, right from your own damn site! Like allowing anyone to come see a TV program or hear a record in your home!
But not if someone won’t pay for it.
That’s how the Net works. You pay for it first, then you figure out how to spread the word.
No, that’s not true at all. You spread the word, then you figure out how to pay for it. That was the genius of Napster. And when it was adjudged that the site was guilty of massive copyright infringement, the major labels made a deal and we’ve been trading files via Shawn Fanning’s service ever since!
No, that’s not what happened. The rights holders thought they could keep us in the past, but they were wrong. And have almost lost their business as a result.
So here we have OK Go, proprietors of the treadmill video, trying to have another hit. What are the odds? Miniscule. Especially if you broke on a novelty. Hell, just ask Shaggy. You’d think that EMI would do everything to help this act, which has already established a beachhead, be successful.
But no, like Scripps trying to teach Cablevision a lesson, EMI is disallowing embedding of the clip. They don’t want to set a precedent. First they want to work out the money!
Tell that to a band. Which is hard to keep together even when everything’s going right, when the money is flowing.
Yes, we signed you to a deal, we locked you up, and now you’re caught up in our petty little wars. If your career is sacrificed, that’s the breaks.
Huh?
Who’s going to sign with a label then?
With distribution flattened, doesn’t the label want to appeal to the act? Show how hip it is, how it can help them?
Read Damian Kulash’s screed. Who’d sign with a major label after that?
And unlike the pre-Internet days, this will not be an insider story, told by OK Go members at a bar twenty years hence, which will be perceived to be sour grapes anyway. Rather, this is a real time response which already has traction. I know, because not only has this story been bubbling online for over a week, I’ve been e-mailed Damian’s post ad infinitum today.
You see it’s just like Leno and Conan. We feed off inequities. We’ve watched enough "Judge Judy", we make judgments ourselves, fuck a court of law, EMI is guilty!
Which is exactly what Guy Hands wants, as he continues to lose money trying to maintain control of this sinking ship.
What if EMI became home to the artist? What if EMI gave up fifty percent of all revenue to new acts? What if EMI staked its future on being the solution as opposed to the problem?
But EMI is just the leading edge. The three other majors are not far behind. Ill will has been brewing for twenty years. Unless they win in the court of public opinion, they’re doomed.
If the labels want to maintain control, they have to first get the hearts and minds of the artists. But they’re losing those.
I think Damian is a little mealy-mouthed at the end. That’s what dealing with the man will do to you. You end up being nice, seeing the other guy’s side, instead of being vitriolic. Isn’t it funny that the Internet is full of anger, but the usual suspects are duplicitous, kissing butt in the old world?
We want acts to own the truth.
The truth is OK Go’s fighting for its career with its hands tied behind its back.
Piss off EMI.
And never sign with a major label if you want control of your act.
Mmm…Â You grew up with your own Web page, you made YouTube videos, and now you want to sign with a main line company and sacrifice not only control, but your integrity?
Never gonna happen. The younger generation’s gonna go it alone. They read horror stories like this and they say no way. So, the usual suspect labels will only be able to sign the lamest and the most compliant. That’s not a business model for the future, wherein major label control of radio and TV means ever less.
People want to be Radiohead, not Rihanna.
And Radiohead’s got no label.
