I admit to not being a fan of Pearl Jam, but they did something to at least make me reconsider my position on them. Yesterday they released their newest music video “Life Wasted” on Google Video for free and under a Creative Commons “some rights reserved” license. Unfortunately, free streaming and download is only available until next Wednesday (5/24) so they only really got it half right.
Why not keep it free forever? It’s not like it probably won’t show up on YouTube eventually once someone catches it on their DVR and when did selling music videos really become a big moneymaker? If anything I would keep the low resolution version free and simply sell a higher resolution one for the people who really want to see it. Music videos are meant for promotion and using Google Video is a great vehicle to make this happen, especially when people start to share the video on their own sites as I have done here.
It’s cool that Pearl Jam is doing this. It’s not revolutionary and I have to wonder why you don’t see this from every band. Songs are being released on MySpace daily and you don’t read about the negative effect that is having on a band’s sales so why would releasing music videos be any different?
I don’t worry about content thieves that much anymore.* Most of the time when someone takes an article from here they at least provide a link back to the site and I have to wonder how many people are reading my content on my site versus the number that reads it elsewhere? I’m guessing not that many even bother to read it elsewhere and if they do and like it, there is a good chance they will come here to the original source and stick around. In a twisted form of logic when we complain about content thieves (the ones that provide proper attribution) we are acting like Sony who doesn’t want their content being seen in as many places as possible.
* That doesn’t mean I am happy when someone steals my content and makes whatever amount of money from it without proper attribution. I just hate legal issues and having to worry about something that many times I have control over. Best to stick with producing content and having fun. Let your mom worry who is stealing what.
Originally posted on May 20, 2006 @ 4:37 pm