I wasn’t going to post the video from those treadmill-botherers OK Go for the HEATH ROBINSON (Rube who? Heath invented the idea before Rube, guys machine video for ‘This Too Shall Pass’ as everyone is embedding it all over the place.

But that’s exactly it – if EMI had their way, you probably wouldn’t have seen it. Bloggers et al wouldn’t have been able to embed it, and OK Go wouldn’t have had this viral hit on their hands. See the State Farm plugs during the video and the end? They sponsored the video so it could be embedded. Nice bit of advertising for them (6 million views on YouTube already) but a reflection of how crazy the industry is and how silly EMI are about embedding even though one of their acts depends on it for their lifeblood and marketing.

As Damian from OK Go wrote in the NY Times last month:

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…

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…

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.

Quite a damning piece from one of their bigger and more visible stars, really. EMI as we know has been swimming on the sea lost for some time, really needs to get a clue re: video embedding, social media and mashups and out of it’s short-term mindset if it wants to improve it’s lot. Otherwise talented people like Damian and OK Go will go elsewhere (I suspect people are already wary of EMI, causing the situation with Terra Firma, as rats leave the sinking ship).

Contrast this with Universal which recently gave it’s blessing to Pheugoo’s Lady Gaga mashup.

Yes finally it’s the second part of Space Disco and run – the robots are taking over!

Just a Romantic Robot (66Mb, 72mins)

Boltlist:

• Risque – Starlight
• Giorgio Moroder – From here to Eternity
• Dee D. Jackson – Automatic Lover
• Alexander Robotnick – Dance Boy Dance
• Casco – Cyberbetic Love
• ‘Lectric Workers – Robot is Systematic
• Telex – Moskow Diskow (UK 12″)
• Harry Thumann – Underwater pt 1
• BBC Radiophonic Workshop – Tomorrow’s World theme
• Cerrone – Rocket in my Pocket
• Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force – Planet Rock
• Cybotron – Clear
• Universal Robot Band – Dance (and Shake your Tambourine)
• Dee D. Jackson – Falling Into Space
• Cybotron – Dreammaker
• Space – Ballad for Space Lovers
• Julian Bream and John Williams – Duo In G Opus 34, by Ferdinando Carulli (Adventure Game Theme)
• Flight of the Conchords – Robots (live)

Yup put on your disco silver moon boots, your silver wig and fake NASA crash helmet. cos it’s the first Space Disco special – straight from 1977 with a rocket in it’s pocket!

Liszt in Space: (67 mins, 54Mb) http://media.libsyn.com/media/radioclash/rc_135.mp3

Tracklizst:

To Boldly Go Where No Disco Has Gone Before

• Space – Magic Fly
• Meco – Star Wars
• Jeff Wayne – Eve of the War
• Universal Robot Band – Disco Trek
• Stu Phillips – Outer Space Disco (Battlestar Galactica OST)
• Rah Band – Crunch
• Stu Phillips – The Casino on Carillon – It’s Love, Love Love (Battlestar Galactica OST)

Spaced Invaders:

• Barron Knights – Space Invaders
• Hexstatic – Bass Invader
• Yellow Magic Orchestra – Theme from Space Invaders
• Jonzun Crew – Pack Jam
• Player One – Space Invaders
• Smith n Hack – Space Warrior
• Conceputol – The Space Invaders (from WFMU)
• The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Theme (from 7″)
• Kraftwerk – Neon Lights

As mentioned here before Open Right Group (podcasters might know them as Suw Charman spoke at the PodcastCon in another capacity) have been lobbying the Government and the Gowers Review, commissioned by the Treasury, into not extending the current UK copyright laws

Cliff Richards and others were lobbying to extend musical copyright from the existing 50 years, to “95
years or even ‘life plus 70 years’” according to the original Open Rights Release the Music press release. Now according to The Times and others, this has been not recommended by the review; interestingly according to The Times the review recommends relaxation to help musical innovation and creation:

“The report suggests that exemptions to copyright law should be allowed for “transformative works”. This would permit the use of copyright material in new and creative ways, so long as it did not detract from the value of that material or offend artistic integrity. It calls on the EU to amend the law to allow for that exception.”

Now although the example given in the article is about hiphop; the interesting thing is if “tranformative works” applied to mashups and cutup culture, and the effect across the industry if these suggestions are taken on board by the government? At the moment bodies such as the MCPS-PRS look down on what it calls ‘unlicensed interpolations’; but if sampling is (preferably) allowed in the same US ‘Fair Use’ provision, or at least made less painful, that would be a great step forward…interesting that the Gowers Review recognises the issue that here in the UK the copyright law is way behind the US in this regard.

EDIT: Open Rights Group has just put up their press release in response…I agree with them about the restrictions to ‘transformative work’ – all parody should be allowed, who defines what is ‘offensive’?

And not offending the artist gets into the same sort of jumble we have now, where apparently all Outkast remixes have to be approved personally by Andre 3000 (a friend working at SonyBMG told me that once)!
The other interesting related news via a Second Life interview with Warners CEO Edgar Bronfman (thanks to Andy Churchill to alerting me to this) is that Warners are looking into letting people mashup their back catalogue:

AP: Taking a question from the audience, McLuhan Ennis asks: “Can you give a description of the what you describe as middle ground? Say, within the context of a mash-up, what would be an example of fair use?”

EB: It’s our hope we can find a way to generally license much or all of our content for users to adapt in any way they see fit. We want people to use their creativity to take our content and do what they think is an interesting thing.

And there is discussion in the GYBO thread that Universal* is doing likewise – so the concept of the legal mashup – would that take the fun out of it? Certainly as I said in the thread mashups are far, far, far away from being mainstream. Music industry is all about the money, and things that’ll make money get released/cleared quickly. Average of 2-3 years to release is not quick, in the case of the handful of legal mashups that have been cleared and released…

* interestingly last year or so Universal opted out of using PRS and now uses another rights-company, a Dutch one I think…I wonder if it partly was because the PRS as discussed at PodcastCon is positively stone-age and inflexible in it’s approach, compared to other rights companies? And the PRS apparently won’t let the rights-owners give their own songs away for podcasters to play for free, which if true is positively silly and autocratic…