Years after striking viral gold, OK Go pen this thoughtful, despondent piece: “It’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago … [W]hile our duty is to our music … [EMI's] is to their shareholders.”
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i love when people say “youtubes”.
I was with them up until “I can understand.” This kind of behavior is actually incomprehensible and any businessman who would make this kind of decision should be thanked for his service and issued the paper hat and spatula that will be the future tools of his trade.
The faster bands can ditch their labels and start making music for themselves, the better. OK Go built their career basically DESPITE their label, and to have the label now disrespect that is…well, that’s always been the music business, ask Little Richard, but it doesn’t HAVE to be that way anymore.
The workers have direct access to the means of production now, and when they don’t use it they only have themselves to blame when EMI hands them a balance sheet that says “you don’t get squat.”
Note to labels:
Web is the only reason music videos have not become obsolete. There is no better way to get the word out about your band than a cool video getting passed around, shared and blogged all over the place.
Also, exclusive site premieres are useless. People want to watch, share and blog videos from YouTube. Recently, I’ve seen a lot of labels give premieres to sites, only to end up getting ripped and posted to YT by random users. Don’t waster your time!
That is a great read, and have been preaching this same mentality for years. Music Videos should not be made to make money themselves, music videos should be made as promotion, free to the world to advertise a band. These dinosaur record labels have no idea what they are doing and scrambling to keep their pockets fat. Making videos hard to access and looking at them as product is another step in the direction of killing music videos. Hopefully record labels die before the videos… Long Live Music Videos!
I’m tired of people acting like piracy is just “part of the mp3 age”, and that the labels are at fault for being “slow to adjust”. On the face of it, this is true, but its not just that labels are being sluggish or dumb. Their main method for making money has up and vanished and they are scrambling to keep themselves afloat.
Contrary to popular belief, labels aren’t all evil. Without them, you probably wouldn’t be aware of a ton of the artists you listen to today. Not to mention that those bands wouldn’t be able to tour the nation and put on a kickass show for you without the label.
Labels take care of a lot of the non-artisty things a band needs to do, plus they’ve got the expertise and connections to help artists book shows, make merch and distribute their album. That way, the artists can focus on writing and practicing music (which is what we want them to spend their time doing).
So sorry if it takes you an extra click to get to youtube and watch the video, but to me it sounds like a small price to pay.
Who gives a fuck about OK Go? they blow.
Is the new album actually good?
it’s too bad music reviewers have a very narrow field of view and anything not in that plane doesn’t get talked about. It’s funny how reviews are made specifically with year end list in mind. OK Go’s album is just as good as MGMT’s record. They were both made by the same guy. those records have his sonic signatures on them. Not the bands.
All OK Go did was make great music videos using nothing but their own ingenuity and records that have a nice pop sensibility and they get shit on while other groups make more esoteric crappy, forgettable music and they’re raved about. I think OK Go’s new record is great. It seems like I would get beat up in some circles for saying that cos they happen to fall on the wrong side of luck when it comes to the subjective, random collective choosing of what’s cool and what’s not.
And by the way. It’s funny how quickly chillwave will get old, this year TONS of bands will be putting too much reverb on their mixes. That’s a lemmings-fag move if you ask me. reverb drenched, or to use most reviewers euphemism, “Hazy” records are already SOOO cliche. That’s as bold a choice as severe auto-tune, if not more cos it affects the whole mix.
OK Go’s new record is great. But the influential sites will be too busy clamoring over shit 80′s sensibilities with too much reverb for another 6 months.
On Monday March 1st OK GO will premiere their brand new EMBEDDABLE video at okgo.net.
OK GO partnered with State Farm to create a Rube Goldberg Machine for “This Too Shall Pass”
I’m working with State Farm to bring you this news.