OK go stop your record label from screwing up your career

We've spoken of our good friends from Chicago, OK Go before, and their fascinating low-budget videos of them dancing like they've got nothing to lose.

And, of course, with the crazy internet fascination for the dancing, you would think that the band's career would be all peaches and cream, with record sales going through the roof.

Oh ho ho! You would be wrong, my friend. A fascinating article in today's Billboard puts an actual timeline to the entire OK Go phenomenon, and with just a little tiny bit of reading between the lines, one can see exactly how close their label, Capitol Records, came to ruining the band's career.

Looking at it objectively, it's just another example of why the music business is failing hard and fast. It is, quite simply, the inability (based in fear) to capitalize on new technology to further artistic endeavors. That whole mp3 problem? If the labels had jumped on that when it was first developing, things would be booming. Now, the only people making money in the music business is Apple Computers, and they don't even have a label.

The Ok Go story is truly unbelievable though, because it shows over and over again that the label, rather than capitalizing on word-of-mouth from the band's own homemade videos on YouTube, instead continues to try the stale marketing techniques of traditional routes - namely, work a song to a specific venue with appropriate marketing and hope for the best. Ignore fan reaction and what the public is responding to.

Looking at it so clearly spelled out, it's astonishing.

The most astounding part is revealed when it's shown that despite millions of people viewing the band's popular video "A Million Ways" on the internet, Capitol continues to push a different song entirely to radio, and never even submits "A Million Ways" video to MTV or VH1.

It's like somebody should write a memo to Capitol that's like: ATTENTION CAPITOL RECORDS! IF YOU HAVE A MILLION PEOPLE WATCHING A VIDEO OF A CERTAIN SONG, THEN THAT IS THE SONG THAT YOU SHOULD BE PROMOTING!

Thank god OK Go hung in there, and now it appears that MTV will play the crap out of their new video "Here It Goes Again", despite the best efforts of Capitol to keep it from being released. And it should get the crap played out of it, it's a great video!

But, damn, if somebody has not learned by now from these videos that it is NOT about the money spent, but about the buzz that true innovation creates, then I do not understand how the music business is gonna make it to the end of the year, much less into the future.