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Rumpus Book ClubYouTube and The Music Industry: OK Go Tells It Like It Is
While technology has bought us many splendored things over the years, it has also caused the entertainment industry to take a long hard look at the way it has been doing business.
For the music industry that meant tackling the MP3 revolution and independent record labels, but it has also come to mean the monetization of music videos. While major record labels have struck a deal with YouTube to ensure that they receive payment for the millions of views their artists’ music videos receive, internet culture continues to move faster than big business can keep up.
The newest issue facing bands in the era of twitter and blog hype? Embedded videos. Since YouTube has yet to come up with a way to track viewership of embedded videos, and major record labels have yet to get paid for said viewership, major record labels have made it so that their videos can no longer be embedded. Musicians from the band OK Go have shed light on this problem through a rational and well-written letter to their fans:
You no longer give a shit what major labels want you to listen to (good job, world!), and you no longer spend money actually buying the music you listen to (perhaps not so good job, world). So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle, and every label, large or small, is scrambling to catch every last drop.
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