Ok Go

Last week my sister in a post about how much she hates running on a treadmill (running outside I can sort of handle, running on a treadmill I can't get the hang of myself) she embedded a video of some Granbury High School students recreating the OK Go video for Here It Goes Again. It's possibly more enjoyable than the original, because, as my sister put it "you are routing for them not to make a mistake."

Here it is:



Now, I can't embed the original, but I can link you to it on YouTube. It's here. (I can also link you to a really cool side-by-side comparison version, here. I could embed that one too, but I won't.) Why can't I embed the original? Isn't the viral nature of their video how OK Go achieved the modicum of fame that they have? Why yes. The problem is that now that they're successful and have a major label, their label has a deal with YouTube that pays EMI a tiny bit of money every time someone watches it. Except, as the band explains:

The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.

Open Letter From OK Go, regarding non-embeddable YouTube videos

No, I don't spend my days trolling OK Go forums, I happened to read about it on Boing Boing (which I don't really read much anymore as noted by its removal from the "Blogs I Read" box).

OK Go does, however, have a new video for a new song off their new album. And, it is embedable (presumably because it's hosted by Vimeo not YouTube with whom EMI must have a different deal). Here it is, featuring the Notre Dame Marching Band:

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.