Vía @amandalynferri, una de las protagonistas del mítico lip dub de Flagpole Sitta:
I roared with a belly laugh when I read this headline in bed earlier today. Could Capitol Records truly be this misguided? Do they not realize that if you to were sort Internet brands by those most emblematic of creativity — not piracy — that Vimeo would line up at the top? Lip-dubbing is harmless and perfectly fun, and ultimately will define the aesthetic of an Internet generation. Other than for some petty legal jockeying towards a greater strategy can I imagine why this record company would sink such a potentially valuable lifeline — Lip-Dubbing and Vimeo create tremendous relevance and usefulness for their catalog!
If anything better underlines my point it’s an email I received from Sean Nelson, the frontman of the band Harvey Danger, whose song Flagpole Sitta we’ve now infamously lip-dubbed:
That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you’s.
Capitol, you’re a bunch of goof-balls. This lawsuit is the tactical equivalent to pooping on someone’s birthday cake.
I, for one, am willing to boycott Capitol artists unless they reconsider, and I implore other labels to pivot and spur conversations with Vimeo in order to determine a simple process to give people access to copyrighted music for personal video that is satisfactory for all.
In my opinion music (specifically anything rock n roll roots) is on planet earth to be fun which can often lead to stupidity and creativity. Songs are short which is why the lip dub has been such a success it combines stupidity, fun, and creativity in a short enough time span that allows you to have the same experience on repeat, labels are blind for not trying a way to take advantage of this. To add another quote on top of Zach’s that I read this a few months ago from Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger.
“It was an office full of really attractive nerds kind of singing and dancing to the song. That’s my favorite thing that ever happened.”