Viral Weezer Video Not Allowed To Be Viral
from the not-so-brilliant dept
The band Weezer has been getting a lot of buzz for its latest video for the song Pork and Beans, which takes a bunch of viral video "YouTube stars" and has them reprising their roles in its own video. Others have done similar things, so perhaps it's not that unique. However, a Techdirt reader named Mike noticed something quite odd about the Weezer video on YouTube. For a supposedly "viral" video -- Weezer or Universal Music has disabled the ability to embed the video in other sites (see update below). Embedding these kinds of videos, of course, is exactly how they go viral. Specifically disabling that feature on a video that's entirely based on viral videos seems backwards.It's difficult to believe that Weezer did this themselves -- as the band has long been seen as embracing the internet and new technologies and distribution means. Hell, just doing this type of video shows how connected to the internet scene they are. So it makes you wonder if it was the band's label, Universal Music, that has stopped the embedding. If they're going to do this, why not follow Viacom's footsteps and ask the video to be taken down completely.
Update: Aha! Within hours of us posting this, the embed feature was re-enabled. No explanation as to what happened. Someone from Weezer or Universal care to comment?
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Filed Under: embedding, viral video, weezer
Companies: universal music, youtube
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it gets worse
So, since then, instead of "correcting" the ironic lack of embeds on the Universal page, they went tho opposite way.
Even more awesomely, apparently Weezer's European distributer didn't get the memo and they allow the embedding of the video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Y4BppbBFo&e. Of course, so have many individual users who have filled the vacuum and uploaded the video.
Of course this all means that when Pitchfork or Stereogum post the video (or fix a dead link) for thousands upon thousands of music fans a click through doesn't find it's way back to Weezer's nor Universal's page.
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