Damian Kulash Jr., the lead singer and guitarist of the band OK Go, wrote an interesting op-ed piece for the New York Times about music videos and video embedding. He talks about the success of his band's song, "Here It Goes Again." The music video for the song - also known as the treadmill video - spread virally around the Internet because of a combination of a great, unique video and video embedding.
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.
Things have changed greatly over the past couple years. Ok Go's label, EMI, no longer allows its music videos to be embedded. Damian Kulash Jr. says views of its treadmill music video plunged 90% when EMI disabled embedding.
Embedded videos — those hosted by YouTube but streamed on blogs and other Web sites — don't generate any revenue for record companies, so EMI disabled the embedding feature. Now we can't post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. If you want to watch them, you have to do so on YouTube.
But this isn't how the Internet works. Viral content doesn't spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face.
The numbers are shocking: 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.
Damian Kulash Jr. is right about blogs, videos and about how the Internet works. EMI should turn the embedding option back on and embrace the viral nature of the Internet. Not only would it help OK Go's treadmill video get more views again but OK Go's latest music video for "This Too Shall Pass" would likely garner a lot more views as well.
