Ok [Don't] Go: Record Labors Take a Step Back in Marketing Strageries

Ok Go's video for their single 'Here It Goes Again' made the band a house hold name when it came out. It was a smash hit with its eye catching treadmill choreography and the band owe a lot of its fame to it. Take a peek yourself-

OK Go - Here It Goes Again from OK Go on Vimeo.

As Ok Go know it, music videos can be an important part of a musicians career. Record labels know this too, but apparently they are too concerned with music listeners pirating music to take advantage of the media. That's right, goodbye embedded videos. Ok, not entirely, but enough to make a ruckus.

EMI is getting stingy with dinero. I agree that labels must find new ways to earn money, but prohibiting embedding videos for bands who basically owe their fame to their videos spreading like a fire online make little sense. Just because EMI can make a little money from having their videos strictly on Youtube, they forget the long run effect when thinking of the short term benefits. Many of these bands want their videos to be of the maximum use to their fans- enough for Ok Go to switch record labels. On top of this, even if these videos are prohibited from being embedded, there are other sites that have the same exact videos with the feature - like vimeo and myspace (I had to find this week's song of the week video and Ok Go's 'Here It Goes Again' on Vimeo because of this no embeddingness by the way).

Licensing restrictions tied to videos that cannot be embedded has also limited oversees fan's access to these videos. To me, this sounds like a disaster!

Blogging has played a huge part in getting bands out there. Bloggers are even beginning to create record labels themselves.

Are record labels as short sighted and greedy as this makes them seem? EMI needs a reality check and a better plan. Pirating is not great news to them, but as Matt Rosoff from CNET's Digital Noise mentioned - it's not going anywhere. It's time record labels find a way to use this to their advantage.