Because it’s the season to share. But not on youtube.

For a while now, I’ve claimed that one should watch the music industry for the biggest and baddest examples of doing business in the modern age. Sometimes, things get figured out for the better, such as artist contact and promotion through fan sites. I’m sure down the road I’ll be posting information about things I’ve seen some of my favorite bands do to promote and distribute their music and merchandise using the strength of online advertising and other more traditional means. Sometimes online business in the music industry is not so pretty, such as any discussion of DRM, but… that’s another blog entirely.
One of the biggest albums of the year for me is Who killed Amanda Palmer by Amanda Palmer. I had heard her before as a member of the Dresden Dolls, but when I heard she was coming out with a solo album produced by another favorite artist of mine, Ben Folds, I could hardly wait.
I originally heard one of the songs on the album via youtube. The first set of videos were released regularly with fanfare from her website, her blog, and eventually a myspace page. These videos were also somewhat linked to one another, and apparently carried clues as to “who killed Amanda Palmer”.
Well, of course, I was driven to the WKAP website from there. I preordered a CD of the album. As part of the promotion, I was sent a signed copy (she signed thousands), a t-shirt, and I was granted access to a site where I could download the entire album digitally in anticipation of having it.
But wait, there’s more.
From that same site, I was able to order concert tickets (which I did), preorder a book with text by Neil Gaiman, and catch up on information about the artist herself. All-in-all, it was a well thought out, well rounded campaign that I’m sure ushered in at least some new business despite the fact that it didn’t have all the push and publicity of some major pop acts out there. I would post a video to show you how great it all is, but… I can’t.
This morning, through Amanda Palmer’s blog, I found out that all of those videos on youtube have been removed by her label’s parent company, Warner Music. They’re removing the videos after talks of increasing revenues from youtube’s advertising sales fell through (NY Times article here).
This is a very complex issue, of course, but for an artist like Amanda Palmer, someone who has done such work to promote her art online, who has had to build a digital grassroots brand, this has to be maddening. For her, youtube is not a direct revenue generator, but a free and trusted means of advertising and promotion. By removing her videos from youtube, Warner Music has basically decided to remove a major avenue of promotion to her audiences, and to me, this is backward thinking.
By removing these videos, Warner Music has removed itself from a major location of where its consumers are. In an attempt to grow one leg of gaining profit, it’s cut off another. More over, the average uploader on youtube is a home user, one who has little to no hope of ever seeing revenue from what they post. By rejecting their major form of communication in hopes of getting money, you can tarnish the perception of that business in those social circles. One has to ask, is this really a risk worth taking?
Happy Holidays, and Bah Humbug, Warner Music.