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
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