Bands will do almost anything to get exposure these days. OK Go has pushed that envelope, from ridiculously awesome YouTube videos to movie appearances ("I Love You, Man"), but lead singer Damian Kulash tried another, less conventional vehicle recently.
He wrote an op-ed in The New York Times.
Kulash, whose band plays tonight at Historic Turner Ballroom, discussed efforts by record companies to strangle the "viral" video market. An excerpt:
"A few years ago, reeling from plummeting record sales, record companies went after YouTube, demanding payment for streams of their material. They saw videos, suddenly, as potential sources of revenue. YouTube agreed to pay the record companies a tiny amount for each stream, but -- here's the crux of the problem -- they pay only when the videos are viewed on YouTube's own site.
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.
"Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube's deals with record companies aren't public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400.
"It's decisions like these that have earned record companies a reputation for being greedy and short-sighted. And by and large they deserve it. But before we cheer for the demise of the big bad machine, it's important to remember that record companies provide the music industry with a vital service: they're risk aggregators. Or at least, they used to be."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kulash and his band split with EMI and will soon issue "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky" on its own label.
With all the focus on business, it's easy to forget that the band produces catchy power-pop songs and puts on high-octane live shows.
Fans who attend the all-ages show tonight ($16 at the door with Earl Greyhound & The Booze opening) will see that for themselves.
Chicago, it seems, already knows it well. Tomorrow night's show at The Metro in Wrigleyville is sold out.
