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Friday, September 01, 2006

OK Go talks about YouTube

This Ok Go, Interview is so cool. In it Damien talk's about creating their own music video at his sister's house and putting it up on YouTube:
"CM: Now a days we live in such an MTV and music video age and a lot of people are coming directly into listening to your music via your videos and even not just on MTV but on the internet with places like Youtube. What are your thoughts on that? Isn't it right that you've got like one of youtube's all time top 10 video downloads?

Ok Go: Yeah, we're loving YouTube these days. We put up are new video and within three days it was the most viewed clip of the whole month and within a couple of weeks it had been viewed 3 million times and one day it was apparently the most linked thing on the internet. Do you know Technorati? Well on there we were like the most linked thing period. Trying to figure out what that means. I mean, I wonder how it was in 1985 and they'd be like 'Prince you've got a hit' and supposedly it's before my time but Bruce Springsteen supposedly put out 2 or 3 records and let it slowly build up to making this bona fide hit and that was in the age of big promotion and very careful 5 and 10 year programmes by record labels, now obviously now -a -days they don't have the money or the attention span to do that anymore. But you wonder what it would of felt like when you were like 'Springsteen, we're gonna get you on all the big radio stations!' Because what apparently constitutes a hit or one version of a hit is like you put something on the internet and it's downloaded 3 million times in a week.

We weren't on tour at the time and we'd actually just come back from a festival in Moscow of all places, and it was the first week we'd had off in a year and half and we were sitting at home like 'Arrggh', then we put this video on the internet and the next thing you know our phones are ringing off the hook but it's just the internet. It's just this weird space less thing you don't see a million people, just see a whole bunch of comments on blogs it's such a weird weird experience.

CM: Regarding your videos, do you have a lot of input on what you're going to do?

Ok Go: Yeah, the video we put on the internet are label didn't even know we had made it. We made it with my sister at her house in Orlando, it was just something we wanted to make. It's hard in the rear view mirror to analyse the promotion value of something like this as it was just something we wanted to make and it was this awesome idea and my sister was like 'I've got this great idea, you've gotta dance on treadmills' and we're like 'That's a great idea!' and we had a week off and this was a year ago now and we were in the area for a show; we'll stay your house and we'll make this video. You know, your luckiest when you don't have to involve your label or you don't have to involve distribution, promotion and logistics and all that kinda shit. Because the only reason you join a band in the first place aside from drugs and girls is because you want to make shit you just want to make cool stuff. So when someone has a great idea and you go do it without involving all the bullshit, that's the best kind of idea entirely. The sad fact is that usually you have to go ask someone for money and you have to like find someone to distribute your record and all this kind of stuff and all those logistics they're the shitty part of it, but if you make things without all that it's even better."
Good stuff!

A video blog is in the works...