OK Go Leaves EMI, Starts Their Own Record Label | Hacker News Reader

OK Go Leaves EMI, Starts Their Own Record Label

laughingsquid.com

65 pointsinmygarage10 comments

It sounds like the reason is that the label was getting between the band and their fans.

There's probably a financial component too, but that's not being emphasized. OK Go seems to think that the most critical thing for their continued survival is the tight relationship between them and their fanbase. Anything that jeopardizes that needs to go away. There's some good lessons there for us web startups.

Good luck to them. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead seem to be doing quite well on their own, and hopefully a smaller player like OK Go can make it work as well.

Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, OK Go, they all already have established fanbases because they signed with a major label. We still have a long way to go until an artist can establish a significant fanbase without the help of a label.

I agree with you in the case of NiN and Radiohead. But while OK Go did have one single that charted via traditional means, their last two big successes came in large part due to the popularity of online videos.

The videos for "A Million Ways" and "Here it Goes Again" were fairly low budget affairs that were likely within the range of an independent band.

While I'm sure that the label did provide some help, it seems to me that their breakout success was largely achieved in ways that can be duplicated by a talented unsigned group.

I know Jonathan Coulton is not a representative case, but he's always been totally independent, AFAIK. I mean, he also doesn't have mainstream success in the way that Ok Go has mainstream success, but whatever he has has been built up from nothing.

This is basically what everyone always says when someone suggests that it's possible to be successful in the music biz without being signed to a major label. Every time they say it, the list of exceptions gets longer and the bands get smaller. At what point does everyone realise that the emperor has no clothes?

Their letter from January explaining why their record label won't let them embed videos is a fascinating explanation of exactly how overwhelming the sea change swamping the music industry is.

http://okgo.forumsunlimited.com/index.php?showtopic=4169

I just heard an interview with Damien on NPR. He's actually a really smart guy, although it doesn't really come across in the submitter's video.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1245329...

I went to the same HS as Damien and knew him through sculpture class. Very smart, very funny and quite a gifted artist. He was also nice to me as a freshman when he was a senior. Most people were surprised when he broke out in the music industry b/c we thought he was going to be a painter or a sculptor. Then we saw the videos and said, "oh, yeah, that makes sense."

And you can add to that a source of inspiration. Ironically, I saw this post on HN after just submitting an "Ask HN" which came to me while watching a live performance of OK GO! on YouTube. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183847

The lot of them are such a great business case study by the way. The way they created their "brand", their marketing prowess and their ability to continually, continually, continually be so masterful in the art of word-of-mouth and virality.

The announcement from the band's website:

http://www.okgo.net/2010/03/10/onwards-and-upwards/

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