Tag Archives: Internet

Welcome to Act III of the OK Go/EMI drama: According to EMI, the pop band has decided to leave the record company and form their own independent label, Paracadute Recordings, under which they will take over control of their third album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky . Here is the full statement from EMI: “OK Go, the band whose inventive internet campaigns and self-directed music videos have set records and won the band a GRAMMY® Award, and EMI Music’s Capitol Records, the band’s label since 2001, have agreed to part ways by mutual agreement. OK Go has formed their own independent label, Paracadute Recordings. They will take on all distribution and promotion functions for their latest album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky , which was released in January. ‘We’d like to thank the people at EMI Music who have worked so hard on our behalf,’ said OK Go singer Damian Kulash. EMI Music said: ‘We’ve really enjoyed our relationship with OK Go. They’ve always pushed creative boundaries and have broken new ground, particularly with their videos. We wish them the greatest success for the future.’” How Did We Get Here? As we have reported in the past, OK Go took arms against the sea of troubles that arose back in January when EMI and YouTube disabled embedding on a video for one of their new singles, “This Too Shall Pass.” The band has built its reputation to some degree on the popularity of its viral videos, and Kulash and the rest believed that the lock-down version of “This Too Shall Pass” was hindering fans’ enjoyment of the video as well as any publicity the band might garner from sharing. Kulash released a public statement on the band’s site and even wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on the issue. An interesting tidbit from the op-ed: “When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.” Blogs, fans and news outlets were buzzing, and it was clear that people were interested in the issue of ownership and the battle between achieving virality and making money. In fact, according to a release from Big Hassle Media, who represent OK Go, Kulash’s blog post about the issue went viral itself, garnering more than 500,000 hits in just two days. The State Farm Factor Therefore, the band had the world’s attention when they released another video for the same song last week, this time featuring a Rube Goldberg machine and fully embeddable, thanks to sponsorship from State Farm Insurance. Just for point of reference: At press time, this video, which was released on March 1, has nearly seven million views. The first video, featuring the Notre Dame marching band, was released on January 8. As of now, it only has 1,181,070 views. When asked whether he thought the controversy surrounding the first video contributed at all to the success of the second, bassist Tim Nordwind said, “It’s hard to know if Damian’s op-piece has made a huge difference, but for people who pay attention to it, yes, I think that it’s one reason that people are paying attention. Or maybe even possibly rooting for us… I think what people are responding to is that it’s just kind of an awesome video. I think people are reacting to the Herculean effort that it took to make this thing.” According to State Farm Advertising Manager Todd Fischer, the band and the insurance company had been in talks since the fall of 2009 about the possibility of making a sponsored video. “Both of us kind of looked at each other as iconic brands in our own sense — the OK Go guys liked what State Farm has been doing in the music and entertainment space… On the flip side, we obviously — like so many other people — had great respect for what OK Go had done in the social media space and how they had used their videos to connect with young adults and with music fans along the way.” Although the insurance company has done branded integration with movies and TV before, this the first time they’ve been involved in a viral music video, an avenue by which they saw an opportunity to connect with a whole new market. We’ve reported in the past on several viral video campaigns that made use of this growing medium as a way to grab the attention of the Internet-savvy set — the Ray-Bans tattoo commercial and the Chuck Liddell Reebok spot spring to mind. Fischer says that the partnership speaks to the evolving manner by which we consume media. “You see a lot more brands starting to play in the space [of viral videos]… I think it’s changed the way people look at a 30-second television ad spot because they also think of how it will translate to the online space, because of the power and the influence that online has in reaching so many more people these days.” On OK Go’s side, the band was able to create the video that they wanted, while also attracting tons of media attention. “We had this idea to do a Rube Goldberg project and it was a slightly more expensive idea than what we had had in the past and they were willing to sponsor it, but also let us do whatever it was we wanted to do,” Nordwind says. According to Fischer, the company would also be game to partner with the band again, as well as other bands that might have similarly innovative ideas. What Does This Split Mean? This chain events, as well as the most recent chapter in the drama, raises the question that everyone’s been asking as of late: Does OK Go — or any band for that matter — require a relationship with record company in order to survive? According to an representative from EMI, the label was instrumental in setting up the partnership with State Farm. EMI has a unit called Brand Partnerships, Licensing and Synchronization that basically brings bands and brands together — they’re the ones who get songs into commercials (which is becoming a more and more common way for a band to make money). According to a rep from EMI, the label approached State Farm and pitched the idea to the company. “Basically our label sort of worked as a middleman,” Nordwind says, “but it was basically us sort of dealing with State Farm. But to be really honest, the label and State Farm were very hands-off with us. They really just let us do what we wanted to do.” Therefore, the question becomes: Is the band/label situation a kind of Rube Goldberg machine in its own right — an overly elaborate system built up to achieve a simple outcome? Can OK Go achieve the success on their own? It will be interesting to see what results from their breaking away from EMI, and how they continue to use the medium of the Internet to spread their music. We’ve reached out to the band for further comment and will update this post if we hear anything more. Tags: EMI , music , OK Go , State-Farm , youtube