It's worth reading OK GO's open letter to the people of the world in which they discuss their record label's refusal to make their new YouTube videos embeddable - despite the fact that the immense popularity of OK GO's viral YouTube videos is what made the band rich and famous in the first place. OK GO apparently argued with EMI and lost, but they clearly think their label is being penny wise and pound foolish: the penny per play on YouTube may not be worth the loss of spreadability. To counter this, the band has also put their video up on Vimeo, which does (for the moment) still allow embedding, though they're aware this will split their hit count. But: "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." (Meanwhile, its worth saying that the band are clearly geniuses when it comes to spreadability: their new song and video feature the Notre Dame Marching Band. The sound you hear is that of a million high school and college marching bands tuning up: there's more than one way to get your song out there!)
OK Go - This Too Shall Pass (vimeo.com)
In other news, you can watch yours truly give a talk called Things We Don't Have In The Future...and How Fan Arts Can Help to the freshmen class at the University of the Arts, which is doing a shared First Year Experience called ReMix, ReWrite, ReAct. I served as tour guide to some fantastic fan art and vids: if anyone needs to be thinking about remixing and read-write culture, it's the artists of the future!
