In the first installment of a planned video blog of their American tour, A23’s Tom Shear recorded a nine-and-one-half minute video describing the band’s plan to connect with its fans through social media during the tour. Mr. Shear invites fans to follow the band on Twitter, friend him on Facebook and follow the band via a video diary he plans to update during the tour on its YouTube channel, A23CompassTour2010. The final five minutes of the video is a montage of the band’s just-completed European tour set to the song Impertinence from their new album Compass.
Shortly after posting the video, YouTube removed it, apparently at the request of Warner Music Group even though Warner only acted as a distributor of his record label and even that relationship ended last year.
The band's leader Tom Shear slammed Warner on his blog:
I understand a company wanting to protect its intellectual property. But this is an example of one of the dozens of completely tone-deaf actions the record industry has taken in an attempt to combat piracy that actually ends up hurting the same artists they claim to want to protect. The music industry is more competitive than ever. I thought doing an 'almost real time' tour diary of our U.S. tour would be a great promotional tool and something fans would find interesting too. But now I'm being held hostage by a company I have absolutely no business relationship with whatsoever. And what's the sense of blocking music on YouTube anyway? Does Warner think people are pirating music on YouTube? Yes, there are unofficial postings of songs and fan videos but these are FREE PROMOTION. No one is going to take files with YouTube's terrible audio quality and think it's an acceptable replacement for the real thing. Fans aside, the idea that an artist can't post their own damn song in an attempt to promote themselves (and thus garner more sales for the label) is so ass-backwards it defies comprehension. This is why you're losing the battle, Record Labels.
And now the video is back up.
What does this have to do with blogging? It just reinforces the point I made the other week - don't blatantly violate copyright laws, but don't let yourself be rolled either.
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