I can’t say I’m much of a fan of OK Go. I can’t imagine too many of you are either. If you know of them, you probably know that they’re primarily known for a catchy song with a clever video that had something to do with treadmills, that was real big on YouTube for a hot minute. To the tune of 50 million views and counting.
Well, they have a new album out this week, and a new clever video for a new catchy song. However, this time around, the band has been forced to accept that they’ll never see 50 million views on YouTube, because Capitol Records, the company they depend on for distribution of their music above any other service, insists on it not being shared outside of YouTube, or outside of the US.
Or lets give them some credit: Perhaps they just don’t care enough about OK Go to ensure that it is.
Fortunately, Antiquiet is one of many sites that exist outside of the jurisdiction of Capitol Records. Have a watch, if you’d like:
When a blog called NewTeeVee put the blame on the band (calling them “morons”), the band’s frontman Damian Kulash commented:
“…we’re incredibly upset that the youtube versions of our videos can’t be embedded. Just one more example of major labels accelerating their own demise. We (and every individual band out there) have exactly zero leverage in this particular battle, however. So we post to other sites as well. The TTSP video will be on vimeo today. This kind of fragmentation means we’ll probably never see the likes of 50 million hits on a single posting ever again, but who cares? Perhaps it’s your passion to sit here and count the numbers, but ours is to make things that we’re proud of…”
A noble statement of dedication to the art, but in a world where career paths are determined by the numbers, it seems like a lot of bands are going to end up soaked when the major labels’ ship goes down.
Of course, these sorts of anti-future restrictions are status quo for the major labels these days, and this particular case is just a footnote in the ongoing saga. We used to scratch our heads when we’d link to a video on the world wide web, only to have readers complain that they can’t watch it because they’re in Canada, or the UK or Brazil or Thailand. Eventually, we came to accept it. We work around it, like Mr. Kulash has by uploading his video to Vimeo. We treat it as a joke, snarky editorial fodder.
However, I think by doing that, we’re being too kind to the corporations that continue to mishandle our favorite product on the planet. We have little sympathy left for the major label record industry. At this rate they’ll soon find themselves little more than licensing houses, and comparing their delivery to the competition’s, we won’t miss it one bit.
…and don’t get me started on fucking Vevo.
ok go is a great band, besides the fancy videos. sounds like power pop should sound. can’t say i’m a fan of them like i am of the white stripes and qotsa but still i enjoying most of their songs
are you going to review their new album by the way? you or someone on this blog
I’m tempted. If so, you’ll probably see it by the end of the week.
Interesting video…shit song.
that white knuckles song is pretty dynamite. i cant even begin to judge this song properly cause of how cool the video is. and yes, labels are stupid, accelerating their own demise…so it goes.
Anitquiet guys aren’t you interested in “new supergroup” Black Country
Glenn Hughes
Joe Bonamassa
Jason Bonham
Derek Sherinian
I think that it could be something, possibly much better than Them Crooked Vultures, Joe Bonamassa is the best blues-rock guitar player of the 2000s and Jason Bonham is great drummer not to mention Glenn
Interesting, but not exactly jizzing with excitement just yet. TCV was our pick for best of 2009, so “possibly much better” is a big bite to take. Either way, no sense making comparisons – this sounds like a completely different concept.
Yeah but TCV sounds like QOTSA album taken with different approach. And was excites me about Black Country is Joe Bonamassa,he has never played in band and without vocal duties he will be on complete loose and he’s monster guitarist easily Top10 cross-genre guitarists nowadays. He can play Tom Morello alike riffs combined with mass of blues feeling.
possibly better was only my opinion I wasn’t blown away by TCV , album is good but I doubt it will stand against time, not many memorable tracks, everything is great but nothing stands out. If I want that kind of music I have better time mixing Led Zeppelin and QOTSA tracks.
bonamassa is bit overrated imo. You can tell he listened to way more clapton then he did real blues players. And really you’re just giving opinions on TCV, every one of those tracks stands out to me, off the top of my head I can tell how each one goes and every little riff change and misdirection inside of it.
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