For those of you who didn't catch it, OK Go's homemade YouTube video for "Here It Goes Again" was one of the hottest viral videos of 2006 and essentially launched that band's career. Many of those views came from blogs and websites that promoted the video by embedding it on their page. The band knows it, and their record label, EMI, knows it.
Unfortunately, EMI is now preventing YouTube from enabling the embedding capability of OK Go's newest videos. (otherwise, I would embed one or two to the post for ya'll to see). So, no one can post OK Go's videos to a blog or facebook feed or whatever.
EMI argues they are doing this because YouTube won't pay them any royalties when the video is viewed from non-youtube.com websites. Kulash argues that the economic benefits of wide-spread viralization of their videos would far outweigh the lost revenues from those not required to visit youtube.com to view them. I tend to agree.
But whose to blame here really? How has YouTube not been able to monetize embedded videos successfully? (and if they can't, why do I still see those annoying ads in every YouTube video I watch?). And why is EMI so close-minded when they saw the success that viral videos brought their clients 4 years ago?
Moreover, is the progress of successfully monetizing social media actually limiting the opportunities available for users to those which can be successfully monetized at all?
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