After checking out +44’s video for 155 (that’s quite a bit of numbers), put together by a friend of the band, Haven Lamoureux, I thought to myself if, with YouTube’s steaming video technology and the recent simplification of video editing, if traditional music videos were on their way out. While the 155 video might not be unofficial, plenty of bands, ranging from Comeback Kid to Set Your Goals (alright, maybe that’s not such a wide spectrum of genres) have unofficial, fan-made videos on their official Myspace pages.
The unofficial video for Comeback Kid’s new single Broadcasting has the distinction of being the “Fake”, but nevertheless, the band put it up on their Myspace.
With all the multi-media available online and modern operating systems coming packaged with decent video editing programs, are unofficial videos the future for bands, especially those signed to smaller labels, who don’t really have the money to shoot a video?
Unfortunetly, the thing standing between the fans, their video editing skills, and the airwaves of MTV and Fuse is the suits like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publisher’s Association (NMPA). The second of which recently joined in a class-action lawsuit against Google (YouTube’s parent company), headlined by the England’s Football Association, the governing body of Soccer in England, for use of user-submitted copyrighted material. Viacom, parent company of Nickelodeon, MTV, and BET, to name a few, filed a separate $1 billion lawsuit against Google in March.
The use of copyrighted music clips and full songs is what the NMPA hopes to get rid of by filing this lawsuit.
If the NMPA wins, Google might have to force YouTube’s moderation crew to be more aggressive when it comes to posting copyrighted material online, which inevitably lead to a sharp decline in fan-made videos.
