Time has this interesting interview with Damian Kulash of OK Go explaining why that band’s music videos, among the most popular ever on YouTube, can’t be embedded. The piece links to this letter from Damain to the band’s fans intricately breaking down the difficulty of monetizing money in the wake of cratered CD sales:
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 letter ends with the band’s new video’s Vimeo embed code, but also explains that only the YouTube plays are monetized, so the only person making any money for posting this is me.
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.
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