By Matt Rosoff – CNet News
The major record labels continue to prove that they absolutely have no idea how the Internet works or how to capitalize on it.
This week’s story involves the rock band OK Go. Four years ago, the band shot some quirky homemade videos and posted them on YouTube. Users saw the videos and embedded them on their own Web pages. OK Go was able to cut through the noise created by thousands of album releases every year and become well-known in certain circles, if not exactly world famous.
Now, the band is promoting its new album, “Of The Blue Colour of the Sky,” and has released a video for the song “This Too Shall Pass” on YouTube. Do you love it? So much that you want to embed it on your music blog? Too bad–you can’t.
On Monday, OK Go singer Damian Kulash wrote a post on the band’s message board to explain how this happened. Major label EMI owns the rights to the recording. And although EMIcan theoretically earn a little money from advertisements each time somebody plays one of its artist’s videos on YouTube, it can’t collect the money when the videos are embedded on another site. [Read More]