PopDarts

"First it was MTV, then it was Apple, and now it's YouTube..." (Source: Reuters).

...So begins the latest Reuters article on Warner Bros.' probably-very-boring battle with YouTube over licensing fees for its music.

As this story develops (see earlier post here), the questions that come to mind are mostly along the lines of:

Do the labels really have anyone to blame but themselves for lagging so far behind the curve on this one? For not anticipating the rapid changes in Web-based technologies during the past 10 years? The past five years, even? Especially given that they had a fairly early heads-up in the form of the original Napster? 

But then I stop and remind myself that I never in my wildest wet dreams imagined that something called a Google would one day make my life so much easier (and me, so much lazier).

And I guess it's probable that, like me, the suits over at Warner and Universal and Sony — who also has quietly begun removing its artists' videos from YouTube  — don't have engineering degrees from MIT or masters in CS from Illinois. So, like me, they probably naively assumed that it couldn't get any better — or worse, in their case — than Kazaa and Morpheus!!! 

(Oh, college... ;-)

Alas, in the end, there's still a pretty big difference between those music execs and me: they have — er, had — money. Money to invest in R&D. In new talent (backstage; not just at the mic). 


But instead of spending it on developing ways to monetize online file/content sharing, they wasted it all on pursuing petty lawsuits against your idiot college roommate who simply forgot to deactivate the upload option on his Limewire install. 

Meanwhile, other smarter people were heeding the lessons the music industry refused to acknowledge, and as a result, you and I are now part of tiny little movement called Web 2.0. Together, we're proliferating the Web with so much content, the record execs can barely keep up with what we were doing last week, much less what we have planned for next year! So what do they do now? 

Well, like the Reuters article said, "...and now it's YouTube."

TBC

- Blitz

Music Labels are back in the headlines — and not for the obvious reasons. Nope, it's not abysmal CD sales they're ODing over this week (though it should be — by all indications, CD's are lower on consumers' minds than warmed over cow dung this Chrismukah season). It's YouTube, Stupid! Dur!

For three years, YouTube has been collecting rips of A-list music videos and streaming them for free to the entire fraggin' world, which as we in the world of online marketing know, can never ever ever do good things for our brands. I mean — free?! 


No, seriously. What's that?

Those Rihanna videos I sneak in between conference calls are without a doubt illegal rips that the major labels don't want me to see, right? I'm sockin' it to the man when I download that Britney leak* every week, right?! And YouTube strives to foster a truly organic Web 2.0 experience, without the tarnish of skeezy corporate business dealings like third-party licensing agreements and partner commission fees...RIGHT? 

RIGHT, VIRGINIA??!?! 

Since  all of these things are positively, unequivocally true, why is the L.A. Times  vomiting up lies this morning about how the labels have supposedly been "licensing" all these videos to YouTube all along?! {Read it for yourself at latimes.com.]






To demonstrate exactly how useless YouTube is at furthering important long-term branding initiatives like increasing artist exposure, I've embedded an obscure, low-budget piece-o-shadoobs clip by Beyonce. Before you watch, you should know that you've probably never seen this video, because it never gets played at clubs — especially not the shiteous American Music Awards performance of the song — and hasn't done sheise on the Hot 100 and doesn't daily inspire a closeted teen boy to break out the uni and learn every step of Beyonce's choreography as if he were already standing up on stage with her at the Grammys. This song is nothing. No one's heard of it. 

L.A. Times: The removal of Warner Music Group's videos from YouTube over the weekend highlights the growing tension between music labels and websites over what is becoming an important source of revenue for the beleaguered recorded-music industry: advertising and licensing fees from music videos, the foundation that built MTV but which has now largely migrated to the Internet... Read More