When It Comes to Videos, Record Executives Clueless

This week has been a bit chaotic from a work standpoint. I’m in the midst of researching what has turned into one of the biggest articles I’ve ever worked on in my career, I’ve got a book to review for Think Like a Label, I had a School of Rock opening to attend, and my regular job keeps me running on all cylinders what seems to be 24/7. Friday night, while unwinding with a lovely glass of wine and a very sedated chihuahua, a conversation between myself and über-director, David Herrera about The Cure’s Lovesong, somehow evolved into a discussion on why, in 2013, so many videos are unavailable to view online.
Mr. Herrera pointed out that, on more than one occasion, he has searched for videos on ‘Greatest Videos on All Time‘ type lists, only to find many of them pulled by the record labels or publishers. The thing I find both comical, and slightly ironic about this is that David Herrera himself has actually directed videos that appear on a few best videos of all time lists. If someone wanted to have issue with videos appearing online, he’d be as justified as anyone else. Yet, he’s completely puzzled by it.
While the internet has not given anyone ownership of artist’s property, it has given everyone immediate access to it. Some artists have been smart about this and embraced it. Bands like Radiohead have run rampant with the vast expanse of the internet and not only allowed all of their videos to appear on the likes of YouTube, they experimented with the oft discussed In Rainbows pay what you choose model in 2007, and have also fully supported fan filmed & released concert DVDs in 2010 and 2012 with all proceeds going to charity.
One of Radiohead’s trio of manager’s, and my personal favourite, Brian Message, has been outspoken on numerous occasions on the role of the internet in today’s music industry. He stated that “believing you can control consumers’ internet behaviour is a fallacy” which, of course, is completely true. While no one may be able to control consumer’s behaviour, artists and their teams certainly can make their work accessible to their current and potential fans. Not only is this logical given the current multimedia driven mindset of the average music fan, but if artists are going to take the time and spend money to make videos, wouldn’t it logic dictate that they provide a place for people to actually watch those videos?

What so many executives STILL fail to understand is that people don’t only want access at this point, they expect it. Perhaps the populous is unjustified in this feeling of entitlement, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Call it evolution, call it devolution, but either way, people who should know far better at this point still don’t comprehend that all people want is to be able to Google a band, have said band pop up, and watch or listen to them.
Why, when knowing this to be absolutely true, would a label president or marketing executive think it, in any way, logical to pull promotional videos of their artists from YouTube and Vimeo? Is this not entirely counterintuitive?
Terry McBride of Nettwerk Music Group said in a recent episode of Brian Thompson’s DIY Daily Podcast that music consumers are gravitating away from purchasing songs and albums and subscription streaming services are thriving because of this.
It’s been well over a decade since the labels fought the evil file sharing geniuses at Napster, but even now, after all this time, the record company executives seem to be focusing on only part of what attracted users in the first place. Yes, Napster, or any file sharing site, may have been free (it was stealing, after all), but more importantly, the draw was in the instant gratification.
A big part of the appeal of services like Spotify is that it’s instantaneous; you search for what you want to listen to, and play it.
It’s much the same on YouTube when searching for an artist or video. The results are immediate and there’s no need to wait for a channel’s rotation cycle or countdown to get to what you want to watch.
MTV may have become the antithesis of everything it used to be, but channels such as Fuse are gladly picking up the torch and showing videos from artists of every genre, hosting video countdown shows, and launching the careers of a whole new wave of VJs, which many of us thought would never happen again.
With the number of smart phone and tablet users increasing by the moment, there’s no doubt that how people consume music is changing. What isn’t changing is the antiquated thinking of the powers that be in the music industry.
While I don’t think anyone is disputing that artists should be in control of their work, keeping a career’s worth of music videos in a vault under lock and key to prove a point to the public is, in actuality doing nothing apart from hurting the artist, the fans, and, ultimately the labels who are losing all the free promotion that comes from the public watching and sharing music videos on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Twitter, et al.

The video David Herrera and I were talking about specifically was The Distance by the band Cake. I proudly boast that, as a rule, I can find anyone or anything online and when it was pointed out to me that this video is nowhere to be found on the internet, I thought for sure that I could find it. After all, I’ve found some pretty incredible things in my time. That said, I was shocked to find that nowhere, in all the world, could I find this stupid video.
What I did find were constant reminders from the kind folks at BMG who wanted to make sure we’re all clear on who owns the rights to this song. In lieu of the video, this appears:

This video contains content from SME and BMG_Rights_Management, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Perhaps there are people who are illegally downloading Cake videos and profiting from them. I’m not particularly well versed in the inner workings of the band Cake, maybe it’s been a big issue for them. If so, I hope they find a way to get through it and I’ll definitely tune into their episode of Behind the Music to get the skinny on it. Having said that, I suspect that Radiohead, Pulp, Oasis, Local H, Depeche Mode, and all of the other zillions of artists who have used the internet to continue to share videos, often exclusively, have managed to get along just fine.

Why, after all this time, so many people still fail to understand such rudimentary concepts is bewildering.
At a time when it’s easier than ever for fans to move along to the artist du jour, why are labels and publishers trying to make it so difficult to seek out music via legitimate avenues?
It’s more critical than ever for artists to stay abreast of what those who represent their interests are doing and play a proactive role in their careers.
While videos may have been in hibernation mode in recent years, YouTube is thriving and there is no question that the music video medium is becoming an important marketing tool again.
Perhaps one day soon label execs will figure out that people watching videos can actually lead to increased profits by way of increased sales.
As it stands now, as David Herrera said, they’re playing the intellectual property equivalent of ‘I’m taking my ball and going home!’ -which has clearly worked out well for them thus far.