WhoseTube?

Melbourne, Australia

MY band is famous for music videos. We direct them ourselves or with the help of friends, we shoot them on shoestring budgets and, like our songs, albums and concerts, we see them as creative works and not as our record company’s marketing tool.

In 2006 we made a video of us dancing on treadmills for our song “Here It Goes Again.” We shot it at my sister’s house without telling EMI, our record company, and posted it on the fledgling YouTube without EMI’s permission. Technically, this put us afoul of our contract, since we need our record company’s approval to distribute copies of the songs that they finance. It also exposed YouTube to all sorts of liability for streaming an EMI recording across the globe. But back then record companies saw videos as advertisements, so if my band wanted to produce them, and if YouTube wanted to help people watch them, EMI wasn’t going to get in the way.

As the age of viral video dawned, “Here It Goes Again” was viewed millions, then tens of millions of times. It brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents, and by the time we returned to the studio, 700 shows, one Grammy and nearly three years later, EMI’s ledger had a black number in our column. To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement.

Now we’ve released a new album and a couple of new videos. But the fans and bloggers who helped spread “Here It Goes Again” across the Internet can no longer do what they did before, because our record company has blocked them from embedding our video on their sites. Believe it or not, in the four years since our treadmill dance got such attention, YouTube and EMI have actually made it harder to share our videos.

A few years ago, reeling from plummeting record sales, record companies went after YouTube, demanding payment for streams of their material. They saw videos, suddenly, as potential sources of revenue. YouTube agreed to pay the record companies a tiny amount for each stream, but — here’s the crux of the problem — they pay only when the videos are viewed on YouTube’s own site.

Embedded videos — those hosted by YouTube but streamed on blogs and other Web sites — don’t generate any revenue for record companies, so EMI disabled the embedding feature. Now we can’t post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. If you want to watch them, you have to do so on YouTube.

But this isn’t how the Internet works. Viral content doesn’t spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

The numbers are shocking: 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.

Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube’s deals with record companies aren’t public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400.

It’s decisions like these that have earned record companies a reputation for being greedy and short-sighted. And by and large they deserve it. But before we cheer for the demise of the big bad machine, it’s important to remember that record companies provide the music industry with a vital service: they’re risk aggregators. Or at least, they used to be.

To go from playing at a local club once a month to actually supporting yourself with music requires big investments in touring, recording and promotion — investments young musicians can’t afford. My band didn’t sign a contract with EMI because we believed labels magically created stars. We signed because no banker in his right mind would give a band the startup capital it needs.

Record companies, on the other hand, didn’t used to expect that all their advances would be repaid. They spread the risk by betting on hundreds of artists at once, and they recouped their investments by taking the lion’s share of the profits on the few acts that succeeded.

At least, this was all true when we signed our deal in 2000. Today, as the record industry’s revenue model has collapsed with the digitization of its biggest commodities, companies are cutting back spending on all but their biggest stars, and not signing nearly as many new acts. If record companies can’t adapt to this new world, they will die out; and without advances, so will the futures of many talented bands.

In these tight times, it’s no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos. But it needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet. Curbing the viral spread of videos isn’t benefiting the company’s bottom line, or the music it’s there to support. The sooner record companies realize this, the better — though I fear it may already be too late.

Damian Kulash Jr. is the lead singer and guitarist of the band OK Go.

I don’t like coffee anymore.

The stench of gunpowder

(a short story about sticking to your guns)

This is a true story. This event, all names and people involved are real. Although my brother denied it this christmas.

When a was a runt, about 7 or 8 i imagine, i had a small cap gun on a key ring. It was a revolver. It didn’t work very well as it was one of those cheap as shit things you used to find in happy shopper/post offices or some shit. Although once it did work when i was aiming it at my cat merlin and it scared the shit out of him, probably sounded like when he got hit by that car and some of his skull came off a few years erlier, honestly, ive never seen a cat that scared, i felt like a right cunt.

Anyway, I had a box full of caps that didn’t work in the gun, hell, maybe they were the wrong type. So one saturday afternoon when my cousins Mart and Em were over, we went up to the shed in the field next to my house. I can’t remember much else except being around this work bench my dad used to fix shit. Matt, my brother produced some of the caps from his pocket and grabbed a hammer and nail, as the gun didn’t work he was planning on setting them off himself. I got nervous because i was a fucking wiener, I said “Don’t do that, it could explode and hit someone in the eye”. Obviously being older and attempting to be bad asses Matt and Mart told me to shut up and stop being stupid.

At this point, i should have walked away. I didn’t want to be a part of it, i was stood about 2-3 meters away watching to see the flash and smell the intoxicating smell of cap guns that i enjoyed so much. Matt slammed the hammer down on the nail into the cap, a piece of plastic flew off and hit me in the white of my right eye. I started balling like the chubby annoying twat i was. They told me to shut up because it wasn’t funny, then realized i wasn’t joking and told me it was ok, it just bounced off. Bullshit.

A couple years later i find out my right eye has this weird blood thing at the back of it… possibly natural but they had never seen it before. Since then, i’d like to say i didn’t play with guns but there was that incident last year with the revolver and the police. I’d like to say i stick to my guns and boycott things properly, but i never live up to my own expectations let alone follow through with what i say.

Moral of the story is,

Squint more.

Devon invented the Cornish pasty

Cornish pasties may have actually originated in Devon, an historic document indicates.

Archivists have found the mention of a pasty in city records dating back to 1509 and 1510.

The reference to a “10d” pasty is included in an audited civic account book for Plymouth.

But a Cornish chronicler of the pasty hit back, saying that cave drawings revealed evidence of pasties in the county in primitive times.

Historian Dr Todd Gray said the earliest record of a Cornish pasty was in a Devon recipe in 1746.

A reference has now been found in a 16th Century document at the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office which reads: “Itm for the cooke is labor to make the pasties 10d.”

Dr Gray said: “As far as we know it is the first reference in Devon and Cornwall to pasties.”

A version of the word pasty is visible in the top line

The item is thought to have been listed as an expense for an important civic event, as claret was also listed in the receivers’ accounts record.

Dr Gray said the pasty of the time would have been bigger than today’s, and with less meat.

“If we look at the evidence it is possible that it then spread west or that it was already there.

“At least we know that in the South West they have been eating pasties for 500 years.”

However Les Merton, author of The Official Encyclopaedia of the Cornish Pasty, said evidence of the pasty could be found in Cornwall from 8,000 BC.

He said: “There are caves at the Lizard in Cornwall with line drawings of men hunting a stag and women eating a pasty.

“At that time it was wrapped in leaves and not pastry, but the leaves were crimped, so I would say there is positive evidence of pasties in Cornwall from primitive times.”

I saw Dawn French in her house

First thing is first, its a bad thing, so i want to get it out of the way. Friday night at Jacobs Ladder was a heap of shit. Mainly as i expected a ska night and all they played was bullshit with the rhythm of a fucked washing machine.

On the bright side, i went to Fowey. It’s like a fairy tale town (with a battle ship). We climbed to the castle and saw Dawn French in her house sitting about the place. I recon anyway.

We also had a curry, played with a rabbit, ate some birthday cake and i won at monopoly as usual.

Oh yeah, and we watched Ponyo, which is funny and cute as shit. Good shit. Watchshit. You’ll like it.

Nice.

I LOL’d at how awkward this relationship status update become!

I LOL’d at how awkward this relationship status update become!

‘Became’ you fucking retard.

Past Participle required.

Sarah Hooper became a fan of I HATE CHEATERS, LIARS AND USERS!!! and a cuddle is all you need sometimes ♥.

Sarah Hooper became a fan of I HATE CHEATERS, LIARS AND USERS!!! and a cuddle is all you need sometimes ♥.

just made my morning.

After 2 years of sitting on the waiting list, i finally have Spotify. Trojan rocksteady time