OK GO‘s Paul Damien Kulash wrote a fantastic NYT Op-Ed back in the Sony rootkit days (December 2006) about the need for fans to be able to downoad DRM-free music.
Last week he wrote another, this time about YouTube and EMI’s ban on embeddable video…
MY band is famous for music videos. We direct them ourselves or with the help of friends, we shoot them on shoestring budgets and, like our songs, albums and concerts, we see them as creative works and not as our record company’s marketing tool….
Believe it or not, in the four years since our treadmill dance got such attention, YouTube and EMI have actually made it harder to share our videos.
Kudos to Kulash for taking a public stand, especially when your label is prohibiting you from using a medium that made his band famous.
I despise when labels pitch me videos to share with you readers that I can’t embed. It’s ironic idiocy and exhibits a significant lack of strategic oversight by the industry.
UPDATE:
EMI reversed their no-embed policy, which means you can watch their new video right here w/o having to leave:
