For the birds

By David Ocker (Tip: Andrew at J:TMOU)

OK, Go ahead and embed

Hadn't intended this to become an OK Go fansite, but oh well. When I got wind of this last week, two days after they'd posted it, there had already been millions of views. And why the hell not?

Now, apart from the fun of the Rube Goldberg mechanism involved, the most significant to note about this video is that it's embedded in this post. As noted in the post about the marching band video for this song, the group's label (EMI) had forbid them from making their videos embeddable (a fun word to say over and over and over). Why? Because YouTube has yet to figure out a way to track embedded videos and EMI wanted to make sure it was squeezing all the sugar they could out of Google (YouTube's parent). The fact that fewer people would see it or write about it or eventually buy it apparently didn't occur to them.

All if took to change EMI's hivemind, apparently, was the screeching of millions fans and an op-ed in the NYTimes by frontman Damian Kulash. Maybe we should turn these kids loose on the healthcare debate.

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Update: OK Go leaves EMI 3/10/2010.

Also: NPR is streaming a pair of tracks from the new album (and has been since January).