Set Your Content Free!

Great story about a band that has benefited from their music being used in a YouTube video. This illustrates perfectly what all the big media companies have had great difficulty coming to grips with - getting your content out through multiple channels (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc) helps to build a following, rather than cannibalizing your audience. NBC learned the lesson with The Office on iTunes and MIT with their OpenWeb Initiative - in each case giving their content away increased their audience/applications. Click the link below to watch the video and a video of the band discussing the benefits.

Yet another band says thank you for pirating our song

Just last week I posted about the second largest aquarium in the world and how cool it was. Well it turns out that the song by Barcelona used in the video had been pirated. Now in this day and age of YouTube takedowns at the slightest finger wagging by record companies the guys in Barcelona are saying a great big thank you to the person who made the video. The band claims that the video has actually boosted their album sales and concert ticket sales.

So bucking the takedown trend the guys in the band posted a video response to the "Kuroshio Sea" video in which they thanked the uploader of the video and all their new-found friends that came as a result of the posting.

Now that’s the way to handle the times when a fan creates something really cool and actually adds value to your music. Good on ya Barcelona!