Music Videos and the Internet

[holyroller]

The internet (especially youtube) is full of music videos.

One thing im curious about, is why are record companies so interested in protecting these from people seeing them (or hearing the music). I can understand in cases where there is a dispute between the artist and the record company.

Originally these videos were designed to be promotional and it was in the artists best interest to allow as many people as possible to see this.

In recent years on sites such as youtube and other video sites. They have been removing sound from the videos, stopping embedding, etc.. personally I think this is very short sighted of the record companies, instead of using the internet as a way to achieve greater audiences for their artists music, they are becoming over protective and restricting them. Also surely this is more likely to make people use unethical means to get hold of the music and videos and as most of us know, it isn't hard to track songs down if we so wish.

Should record companies not loosen up and try and benefit from the masses of free publicity they can get for their artists?

Anyway, was just a thought, curious to hear others opinions.

 

[dgridley]

You can rip audio from video with certain apps so I expect they feel people might record the audio from the music videos..

If I were an artist, I'd rather have the exposure and make the videos available.

 

[holyroller]

You can rip audio from video with certain apps so I expect they feel people might record the audio from the music videos..

If I were an artist, I'd rather have the exposure and make the videos available.

Yes, but you could do the same in the past from the TV. Most people can get the music if they want it (either by paying or illegal download).

A few artists have released their music free either via websites or other media and have used it to gain exposure (RadioHead, Prince, etc..), if the band/music is good they are rewarded by higher exposure and potentially a sell out tour with lots of merchandise sales. Of course with some of the manufactured pop music if they didn't sell any records/downloads, they probably wouldn't cover their costs.