In this Discussion
- agentnumone January 2010
- bathslash63 January 2010
- beckysioux January 2010
- bikesuit57 January 2010
- brianpage9 February 2010
- clocktooth4 January 2010
- cloud85soy January 2010
- DJRose January 2010
- flowergrass13 January 2010
- flygoal8 March 2010
- friendlydogs833 January 2010
- georgecost65 January 2010
- handpain9 January 2010
- jedi_grrlie January 2010
- knee4repair January 2010
- lathe6breath January 2010
- man82brick February 2010
- radargrey5 January 2010
- RBagley January 2010
- sand6hand January 2010
- sandra8peru January 2010
- starship8 January 2010
- Sunnyside January 2010
- swissfeast68 January 2010
- thomas61may January 2010
- touchtree90 January 2010
- violet8cheek January 2010
- week4pump January 2010
Open Letter From OK Go
To the people of the world, from OK Go:
This week we released a new album, and it’s our best yet. We also released a new video – the second for this record – for a song called This Too Shall Pass, and you can watch it here. We hope you'll like it and comment on it and pass the link along to your friends and do that wonderful thing that that you do when you’re fond of something, share it. We want you to stick it on your web page, post it on your wall, and embed it everywhere you can think of.
Unfortunately, as of now you can’t embed diddlycrap. And depending on where you are in the world, you might not even be able to watch it.
We’ve been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can't be embedded on websites, and in certain countries can't be seen at all. And we want you to know: we hear you, and we’re sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago.
See, here’s the deal. The recordings and the videos we make are owned by a record label, EMI. The label fronts the money for us to make recordings – for this album they paid for us to spend a few months with one of the world’s best producers in a converted barn in Amish country wringing our souls and playing tympani and twiddling knobs – and they put up most of the cash that it takes to distribute and promote our albums, including the costs of pressing CDs, advertising, and making videos. We make our videos ourselves, and we keep them dirt cheap, but still, it all adds up, and it adds up to a great deal more than we have in our bank account, which is why we have a record label in the first place.
Fifteen years ago, when the terms of contracts like ours were dreamt up, a major label could record two cats fighting in a bag and three months later they'd have a hit. No more. People of the world, there has been a revolution. You no longer give a shit what major labels want you to listen to (good job, world!), and you no longer spend money actually buying the music you listen to (perhaps not so good job, world). So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle, and every label, large or small, is scrambling to catch every last drop. You can't blame them; they need new shoes, just like everybody else. And musicians need them to survive so we can use them as banks. Even bands like us who do most of our own promotion still need them to write checks every once in a while.
But where are they gonna find money if no one buys music? One target is radio stations (there's lots of articles out there. here's one: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20...ouse-senate.ars ). And another is our friend The Internutz. As you’ve no doubt noticed, sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Blahzayblahblah.cn run ads on copyrighted content. Back when Young MC's second album (the one that didn't have Bust A Move on it) could go Gold without a second thought, labels would’ve considered these sites primarily promotional partners like they did with MTV, but times have changed. The labels are hurting and they need every penny they can find, so they’ve demanded a piece of the action. They got all huffy a couple years ago and threatened all sorts of legal terror and eventually all four majors struck deals with YouTube which pay them tiny, tiny sums of money every time one of their videos gets played. Seems like a fair enough solution, right? YouTube gets to keep the content, and the labels get some income.
The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.
Let’s take a wider view for a second. What we’re really talking about here is the shift in the way we think about music. We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper. So we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.
So what’s there to do? On the macro level, well, who the hell knows? There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but this is not the place to get into them. As for our specific roadblock with the video embedding, the obvious solution is for YouTube to work out its software so it allow labels to monetize their videos, wherever on the Internet or the globe they're being accessed. That'll surely happen before too long because there's plenty of money to be made, but it’s more complicated than it looks at first glance. Advertisers aren’t too keen on paying for ads when they don’t know where the ads will appear (“Dear users of FoxxxyPregnantMILFS.com, try Gerber’s new low-lactose formula!”), so there are a lot of hurdles to get over.
In the meantime, the only thing OK Go can do is to upload our videos to sites that allow for embedding, like MySpace and Vimeo. We do that already, but it stings a little. Not only does it cannibalize our own numbers (it tends to do our business more good to get 40 million hits on one site than 1 million hits on 40 sites), but, as you can imagine, we feel a lot of allegiance to the fine people at YouTube. They’ve been good to us, and what they want is what we want: lots of people to see our videos. When push comes to shove, however, we like our fans more, which is why you can take the code at the bottom of this email and embed the "This Too Shall Pass" video all over the Internet.
With or without this embedding problem, we'll never get 50 zillion views on a YouTube video again. That moment – the dawn of internet video – is gone. The internet isn’t as anarchic as it was then. Now there are Madison Avenue firms that specialize in “viral marketing” and the success of our videos is now taught in business school. But here's a secret: zillions of hits was never the point. We're a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff. We chase our craziest ideas for a living, and if sharing those ideas takes 40 websites instead of one, it doesn’t make too big a difference to us.
So, for now, here's the bottom line: EMI won't let us let you embed our YouTube videos. It's a decision that bums us out. We've argued with them a lot about it, but we also understand why they're doing it. They’re aware that their rules make it harder for people to watch and share our videos, but, while our duty is to our music and our fans, theirs is to their shareholders, and they believe they’re doing the right thing.
Here’s the embed code for the Vimeo posting:
<object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8718627&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"; /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8718627&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><p><a href="
Go forth and put it everywhere, please. And buy our album. It’s great.
Yours Truly,
Damian (on behalf of OK Go)
This week we released a new album, and it’s our best yet. We also released a new video – the second for this record – for a song called This Too Shall Pass, and you can watch it here. We hope you'll like it and comment on it and pass the link along to your friends and do that wonderful thing that that you do when you’re fond of something, share it. We want you to stick it on your web page, post it on your wall, and embed it everywhere you can think of.
Unfortunately, as of now you can’t embed diddlycrap. And depending on where you are in the world, you might not even be able to watch it.
We’ve been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can't be embedded on websites, and in certain countries can't be seen at all. And we want you to know: we hear you, and we’re sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago.
See, here’s the deal. The recordings and the videos we make are owned by a record label, EMI. The label fronts the money for us to make recordings – for this album they paid for us to spend a few months with one of the world’s best producers in a converted barn in Amish country wringing our souls and playing tympani and twiddling knobs – and they put up most of the cash that it takes to distribute and promote our albums, including the costs of pressing CDs, advertising, and making videos. We make our videos ourselves, and we keep them dirt cheap, but still, it all adds up, and it adds up to a great deal more than we have in our bank account, which is why we have a record label in the first place.
Fifteen years ago, when the terms of contracts like ours were dreamt up, a major label could record two cats fighting in a bag and three months later they'd have a hit. No more. People of the world, there has been a revolution. You no longer give a shit what major labels want you to listen to (good job, world!), and you no longer spend money actually buying the music you listen to (perhaps not so good job, world). So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle, and every label, large or small, is scrambling to catch every last drop. You can't blame them; they need new shoes, just like everybody else. And musicians need them to survive so we can use them as banks. Even bands like us who do most of our own promotion still need them to write checks every once in a while.
But where are they gonna find money if no one buys music? One target is radio stations (there's lots of articles out there. here's one: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20...ouse-senate.ars ). And another is our friend The Internutz. As you’ve no doubt noticed, sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Blahzayblahblah.cn run ads on copyrighted content. Back when Young MC's second album (the one that didn't have Bust A Move on it) could go Gold without a second thought, labels would’ve considered these sites primarily promotional partners like they did with MTV, but times have changed. The labels are hurting and they need every penny they can find, so they’ve demanded a piece of the action. They got all huffy a couple years ago and threatened all sorts of legal terror and eventually all four majors struck deals with YouTube which pay them tiny, tiny sums of money every time one of their videos gets played. Seems like a fair enough solution, right? YouTube gets to keep the content, and the labels get some income.
The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.
Let’s take a wider view for a second. What we’re really talking about here is the shift in the way we think about music. We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper. So we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.
So what’s there to do? On the macro level, well, who the hell knows? There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but this is not the place to get into them. As for our specific roadblock with the video embedding, the obvious solution is for YouTube to work out its software so it allow labels to monetize their videos, wherever on the Internet or the globe they're being accessed. That'll surely happen before too long because there's plenty of money to be made, but it’s more complicated than it looks at first glance. Advertisers aren’t too keen on paying for ads when they don’t know where the ads will appear (“Dear users of FoxxxyPregnantMILFS.com, try Gerber’s new low-lactose formula!”), so there are a lot of hurdles to get over.
In the meantime, the only thing OK Go can do is to upload our videos to sites that allow for embedding, like MySpace and Vimeo. We do that already, but it stings a little. Not only does it cannibalize our own numbers (it tends to do our business more good to get 40 million hits on one site than 1 million hits on 40 sites), but, as you can imagine, we feel a lot of allegiance to the fine people at YouTube. They’ve been good to us, and what they want is what we want: lots of people to see our videos. When push comes to shove, however, we like our fans more, which is why you can take the code at the bottom of this email and embed the "This Too Shall Pass" video all over the Internet.
With or without this embedding problem, we'll never get 50 zillion views on a YouTube video again. That moment – the dawn of internet video – is gone. The internet isn’t as anarchic as it was then. Now there are Madison Avenue firms that specialize in “viral marketing” and the success of our videos is now taught in business school. But here's a secret: zillions of hits was never the point. We're a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff. We chase our craziest ideas for a living, and if sharing those ideas takes 40 websites instead of one, it doesn’t make too big a difference to us.
So, for now, here's the bottom line: EMI won't let us let you embed our YouTube videos. It's a decision that bums us out. We've argued with them a lot about it, but we also understand why they're doing it. They’re aware that their rules make it harder for people to watch and share our videos, but, while our duty is to our music and our fans, theirs is to their shareholders, and they believe they’re doing the right thing.
Here’s the embed code for the Vimeo posting:
<object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8718627&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"; /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8718627&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><p><a href="
Go - This Too Shall Pass</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user2495615">OK Go</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>;
Go forth and put it everywhere, please. And buy our album. It’s great.
Yours Truly,
Damian (on behalf of OK Go)
Comments
Hopefully it won't be long before advertisers start realizing that unexpected ad placements could be a benefit -- in fact, if, say, Google's AdSense and Analytics products had some kind of love child, they could make a service to connect brands with fans and potential customers in places on the Internet they never would have thought of looking. Who knows; it might even be more effective than traditional advertising (which is dying off anyway, like the old music industry).
I LOVE the This Too Shall Pass video. It's creative, fun, entertaining, a great song...everything about it oozes awesomeness. I shared it by copying and pasting the link from YouTube and placing it on my FB page. Should I not have done this? I'll take it down immediately if so, and will gladly link it the "right" way. I saw it written on the responses on FB to this letter that someone said they liked the video so much they went and bought the album. Well, so did I. And, being a high school music teacher, hopefully encouraged plenty of more people (students, colleagues) to become fans of OK Go.
This is more from just not knowing what "embedding" really is. Man, am I really that old? When did this happen?? My parents were supposed to be the ones who don't understand the internet...
All I want to do is what is right for artists, and in this case, for OK Go. Keep up the great work, guys! Without a doubt some of the most creative work I have had the privilege of hearing/seeing.
I added the link to my FB page and I emailed the link to all of my contacts. I also must admit that I did embed the video from vimeo on my MS page but I get zero visitors there so no harm done.
Damian's such a great writer.
<a href="
<img src="http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/UJKythlXAIY/hqdefault.jpg">;
</a>
You can just replace that string of random characters with your video ID, let people embed the link/image, and when people click on it, they get taken to the youtube page. Blogs can use the code to post a link easily, you guys/EMI get money, everybody (mostly) wins.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Also, you might consider running a one-off Tshirt that says, "I embedded Ok Go" or the also fabulous, "Ok Go Embedded me." "Embedded by Ok Go." ?? You get the idea.
I also like the tone in your writing about the labels, which might be taken as sympathetic, not something often found in discussions about who has the rights to music and its distribution.
One point I'd be interested to hear a band's perspective on is the trade-offs in signing up with a label in the first place. However unreasonable labels are in how they're willing to distribute music, they were that when you signed on, and it would have been foolish to think they were not, or were going to change in the near future. You weren't that foolish, but figured that what you'd be able to do with a label was better in sum than what you could do without a label.
And one sacrifice you were obviously willing to make is control in how your music is distributed, or can be published, whatever we'll call that. If control or freedom in that area was valuable enough to you, you wouldn't have chosen to sign up for a label.
I'd love what you've said here, and I'd love it even more if you were explicit with your responsibility for the situation in that you signed up with the label in the first place, knowing fully that this situation could come about. I see that this is the closest I've seen a band do that, just in that you are making points that labels do benefit bands, and do need to make some money to continue to do that.
"Need" is obviously contingent on your band wanting to achieve certain things, none of which are *necessary*. To achieve those things, you needed some money you didn't have, and decided to sacrifice some freedom with your music, in exchange for the advance money. One effect is that the embedding that had a lot to do with your earlier success is not possible, because you decided to enter an agreement with a label that had control over such things. If you hadn't, you could still release videos that can be embedded.
"Need" is obviously contingent on your band wanting to achieve certain things, none of which are *necessary*. To achieve those things, you needed some money you didn't have, and decided to sacrifice some freedom with your music, in exchange for the advance money. One effect is that the embedding that had a lot to do with your earlier success is not possible, because you decided to enter an agreement with a label that had control over such things. If you hadn't, you could still release videos that can be embedded.
While I'm certainly not a member of the band and therefore can't say for certain, I think it's important to remember that the band signed to Capitol in 2001, and while there were certain sacrifices that obviously had to be made, control over the distribution of their videos on the Internet may not have been on the top of their list or the label's, considering YouTube, et al didn't really come into play until 2005 or 2006. That sort of thing was probably on the horizon, but maybe not the forefront of everyone's mind, and probably not something that was going to effect how a contract turned out.
Also, while I'm certainly not a proponent of the majors (Rachel can attest to that...), you make it sound like it's a bad thing that the band wanted to achieve a certain level of success and decided that signing to a major was the most effective way to get to that point. I mean, honestly, every band is different and you can make a living, or at least a good portion of your living, off music without being signed to a major, or any label, period, but it's certainly much more difficult. Let's face it, if your goal is to live off your music AND not get yourself on a label, you better be rich already or pretty damn effective at generating revenue. And you'd be hard pressed to find a band that wants to toil in obscurity, unless they've got some kind of backwards hipster fantasies.
It's probably also worth noting that for the video for "A Million Ways," and possibly also for "HIGA" (please correct me if I'm wrong), was made more or less without label permission, with a song that technically belonged to the label, and they full well could have been sued for it. Which I think would have been a stupid move on the label's part, but the point being they took a gamble and distributed the song regardless and it paid off. I don't think they've resigned themselves to sitting in a box, twiddling their thumbs and hoping for everything to resolve itself quite yet.
Anywho. I think the tone of this is more of "the system is messed up and needs to change," which it obviously does, rather than "man, we were such dumbasses for signing to a major that won't let us embed videos, we should have seen this coming." In sum, yes, obviously, the band had some level of responsibility in terms of what sacrifices it made for security, but the sacrifices a band makes in terms of control and distribution today may not have been exactly what they were in the early part of the last decade, and experience is one hell of a teacher.
That's my two cents, anyway. Damian, if you're around, feel free to correct me.
trying to boil it down, I feel like we've seen many bands end up distancing themselves from their label whenever the label approaches a situation like embedding "the old way", and the the band tries to respond to unhappy fans. or if the band isn't doing this themselves, the fans are trying to, while the aspect of the benefits the band receives from a label, and the trade-offs the band themselves made can be dismissed as "necessary".
this statement was easily the most reasonable of its kind I've seen, and one that didn't feel like was trying to put any distance between the band and the label. so I was encouraged and was interested to try to push the question a little further.
in fact, I hope this sort of communication proves to be an effective way to try to shape the industry to better accommodate things like YouTube. a tone that acknowledges that labels help out bands, and deserve to make some profits from doing so.
I guess what Jedi_grrrlie and I are left to wonder then, is what kind of answer are you looking for when you push the question? Damian's spelled it out pretty well; being a musician is effing expensive and if you want quality you gotta pay for quality, so sometimes you need a sugar daddy to write the checks. Independent artists can record, self-produce, and all that business for a fraction of the price (I know from personal experience), but they're not moving in with David Fridmann for a few months to record whatever comes to mind.
Yeah they are trying to achieve certain things one being a successful album. what would the point of embeddable videos be if they didnt have great music made with/ distributed by/ etc the funds of thier label to promote with those videos?
Message I get being in Canada:
We are working on bringing the site to users around the world.
That message has been up for years [?] - or pretty close to it at this point if not correct. It is like someone was hired at EMI to remove all the benefits of the world wide web from their business operations.
And danofames I might take it a bit easier on the band depending on when they last signed or renewed their contract. It is entirely conceivable they signed that dealing limiting their means to distribute their music in ways they weren't even aware they were going to want to do so down the road.
I think these situations are examples of why various artists are leaving major deals now as new opportunities that benefit the artists are not aligned with the interests of labels [making money right NOW].
I'd just like to point out that Calle 13, the Puerto Rican reggaeton artist, has some videos on Vevo which can NOT be accessed in Puerto Rico. (Though the definition of irony is debated, I'm sure that counts as a good example) Sadly, Vevo is just a place to browse videos, it's still subject to a lot of the same restrictions videos have elsewhere on Youtube.
Good luck to OK Go. Love you guys <3
I GOT THE SOLUTION FOR THIS. I GOT IT, I GOT IT......
This is exactly why we started the company RedAntenna.com last year. RedAntenna make EMBEDDABLE (viral) MiniShops with streaming Video, music and downloads. Fans can watch video, listen to songs and buy, pay and download directly from the embeded MiniShop- no matter where it is online.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEASE let us show you guys what we can... This exact problem is the reason why we started RedAntenna.com.
Best Anders Hjorth
FULL DISCLOSURE: My company works with this exact issue, so I have an interest in solving their problems with our Embeddable MiniShop. - but hell this is the problem we are trying to solve.
Here's an idea. How about making a funny YouTube viral video that will drive traffic to the video on your mySpace site?