Last summer, when the supremely dandified alt-rock band OK Go made a witty backyard video that parodied boy-band dance routines, its music label didn’t get the joke and refused to release the clip – so the group burned a couple of DVDs and slipped them to friends and fans. Within weeks, copies were being posted on YouTube. Soon fans started posting videos of themselves performing the same wonderfully hackneyed routines – in a city park, on a basketball court, in a school corridor while a guy asks a girl to the prom. Eventually OK Go launched a YouTube “channel” featuring interviews by their fans and a dance contest (the winner gets to join the band onstage). Now kids in Vietnam are copying their dance.
MTV was never like this. Twenty-five years after the pioneering cable channel brought music videos to TV, YouTube has shown how much more you can do – which explains why cofounder Chad Hurley was one of the “it” boys at investment banker Herbert Allen’s Sun Valley mogul-fest this summer.
Unlike television or even other Web sites, YouTube makes it easy for bands and fans to establish a dialog through video. The clips are a snap to email to friends, and it’s almost as simple to paste them onto your own Web site, blog, or MySpace page. Posting videos and comments is also a breeze. “It sort of provides an infinite information jungle gym for our fans,” says Damian Kulash, OK Go’s lead singer, “one that’s always growing and morphing.” And one that’s constructed as much by the fans as by the band itself.
– Frank Rose
Music Reborn
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