Can Anyone Explain Why Any Warner Music Artist Or Website Still Embeds YouTube?
from the do-they-not-know? dept
A bunch of folks have been sending in the BoingBoing post about how the various YouTube videos on Warner Music Group subsidiary Sire Records are all broken due to “copyright claims” from WMG. This isn’t a new story, as we’ve been among those covering the YouTube-Warner Music dispute since December when it became public. Plenty of Warner artists have been screwed over by this move, having their official videos pulled down because Warner demands YouTube pay it for the free service of hosting those videos. You would think, with bandwidth costs being what they were, WMG would be thrilled that a company like Google is willing to host them totally free and manage the infrastructure.
So, this particular story isn’t new or surprising, and doesn’t involve (as the original implies), WMG accusing itself of piracy. However, it does raise a separate question. How backwards are Warner Music and its various sub-labels that they still have taken down YouTube videos embedded on their official sites. After all, it’s been more than four months since this dispute began. You would think that whoever is in charge of running these websites would have stopped using YouTube embeds a long time ago. It’s really not that difficult to replace a YouTube embed with a locally hosted one. However, the fact that Warner hasn’t done so pretty much makes the point, doesn’t it: the company apparently doesn’t have the tech talent to host its own videos. That’s a lot sadder a statement than having just taken the officials videos down in the first place. Update: Ethan from Warner shows up in the comments to say that this was just an honest mistake, and the company had taken YouTube embeds off of all their sites, but somehow missed Sire Records. I’m still not sure how this goes on for four months with no one noticing it… You’d have to think that someone would visit those sites during that time and noticed.
Filed Under: copyright, embeds, videos
Companies: google, warner music group, youtube
Comments on “Can Anyone Explain Why Any Warner Music Artist Or Website Still Embeds YouTube?”
See?
Proof positive yet again that the larger the company, the larger the chain of command problem. This is why corporate hive-mind mentalities that dominate American business (and govt.) have such problems adapting.
Everyone in the military knows that one of the main reasons special forces teams are so effective (other than the elite training) is that they often go to ground without orders, other than “get in there, disrupt the enemy, don’t die, and do what you think is best”. Since they are on the ground and have the best up to date information, they react appropriately.
By the time information is filtered up to these WMG Execs, it’s been “telephoned”, and their reactions are skewed accordingly.
DinosaursWillDie
i’ve linked this occasionally in mike’s blog:
http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/dinosaurswilldie.html
sorry for the re-post, just seemed particularly appropriate.
(parenthetically, it seems that this weird harold troll has disappeared. good news! this is what, gladly, happens when you don’t feed the troll 🙂 .
Re: DinosaursWillDie
Well, the videos are taken down. What’s the problem?
(parenthetically, it seems that this weird harold troll has disappeared. good news! this is what, gladly, happens when you don’t feed the troll 🙂 .
What? Not only was WH fed, he was groomed and cooed over.
“the company apparently doesn’t have the tech talent to host its own videos”
I don’t believe that, I assume their web stuff is outsourced to the lowest bidder and that they would have to pay to have changes made. The big change would be hosting the files and when told of the cost they did a triple take and said videos? we dont need no stinkin videos to sell our music!
Too bad for the artists, especialy the less known ones.
They made a bad deal, signing with them. Will be loosing money everyday. Getting nowhere. When they could be “proudly alone” and MAYBE raising some cash.
Above that, many of youtube videos are not available everywhere, I stumble everyday on Video not available in your country. But, hey, that’s all my fault, I shouldn’t live here…
because
its because they are sofa king we tod did
How interesting. This certainly helps the argument that artists looking to make a name are better off doing it themselves. Why not, the technology and resources are there and they’d be cutting out the middlemen.
soo..... we don't outsource our tech...
The videos on Sire were an honest mistake.
WBR runs its own technology for over 100 artists on the open source Drupal platform, actively sponsoring development of tons of modules and technology. Keeping our artists cutting edge is the highest priority for us and we’re glad Boing Boing pointed out the issue with Sire. And I communicated as much to Cory.
You can read up on what we’re working on on my blog if you’d like or twitter or AIM me (all on blackrimglasses.com)
I’ll also be talking about our tech initiatives in Vancouver next Monday.
Re: soo..... we don't outsource our tech...
Keeping our artists cutting edge is the highest priority for us
Did you not read the damn article?
If this were true, you wouldn’t have had to call Cory about anything, now would you?
Foot, meet thy mouth.
Re: soo..... we don't outsource our tech...
You try to keep the artists cutting edge huh?
Wouldn’t that mean that Warner would want the music on YouTube? Or are they too blinded by the dollar signs they think they might be able to squeeze out?
Also, as so many content management companies like Warner love to say that YouTube adds no value, and that is why YouTube should pay them for all of the stuff YouTube does for them. If this was true, why would you guys have ever embedded YouTube videos to begin with? The fact that you used embedded YouTube videos shows the value that YouTube adds that you guys do not.
If you really want the artists to be cutting edge, you guys should be embracing YouTube, and torrents, and every other possible tech solution out there. Get your artists more attention from people so that the artists can sell non-infinite goods & services. Now that would be cutting edge.