I’m really not sure what I think about this. Several years ago I made a video of me playing cowbell along to Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. I was walking along, the song came in my head, and I immediately thought of adding this cowbell part. Here it is:

It’s only 35 seconds because my camera at the time could only do 35 second clips. (Sadly, it is still the best video camera we have in the house.) A year ago I found the clip I shot on my hard drive, edited it, and posted it to Youtube. It got 70 hits in the first few minutes it was up… before it was promptly pulled because it had infringing music in it.

I contested the claim, saying, hey, fair use but I got a robot answer denying me and so, although I was pissed, I said whatever. I briefly thought of taking the song out and leaving in the cowbell parts, as a protest, but never got around to it.

Last week, while going through my youtube account, I noticed that the video was back… and publicly visible. What the heck? Turns out that United Music Group has changed their policy on infringing videos (at least on mine). Now they will let it up, but only if they get to put ads around it so people can buy the song.

Now I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’m happy my friends and family can see my video. On the other hand, what the hell? Did I just make a commercial for United Music Group? Would this video even exist if I hadn’t thought of it and done it? No. But now they’re using my video to sell music?

My inner self is warring between “Yaaay!” and “Those fuckers!” and I don’t know who is winning at the moment. Probably “Yaaay!” because I’m not really getting ripped off or anything. It’s just… weird. Last year I was a cheating criminal thief and my video needed to be TAKEN DOWN because I was DESTROYING AMERICA’S MUSICAL CULTURE but now, suddenly, hey, it’s okay if someone can make a buck.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.