JK Wedding Entrance Dance

The record company sued them??

You saw the video if you follow this blog. Well, that’s pretty arrogant. You saw the video if you’re not comatose, whether you follow this blog or not…

You know, the wedding party that dances into the church to the Chris Brown song, “Forever.” Such a fun video. When I posted it, I think it had less than 100,000 views. It was over 10 million views by the end of that first week. (It’s over 68 million as I write this…)

Not because of me. I only watched it three times.

Because it was so authentically FUN! What the heck, watch it again. You know it makes you feel good. Just don’t forget to finish reading after you watch, because the important part is coming up…

 

Ok, now here’s the important part. These guys didn’t ask permission before they used Chris Brown’s music as part of their wedding, and they didn’t even ask permission before they filmed the whole event and posted it on YouTube.

Ordinarily, Record Companies have been kind of protective — ok, like demonically protective — of their copyrights, and because they have thousands of lawyers on their payroll, they tend to sue anyone who doesn’t pay them to use what they own. Some poor shlub got stuck for $630,000 for illegal file sharing (and he only downloaded and shared 30 songs, so that’s like $20K per song, which makes iTunes seem like a real steal) just last week, so it’s not like they’re on vacation or let down their guard or any of that.

Somewhere within the bowels of said Record Company, some intern or executive assistant (look, we all know it couldn’t possibly have been a VP or fancy title guy) made an important and risky decision: They let these wedding people use the music as long as they got to add a link to a legal download of the Chris Brown song.

And what do you think happened when 14.25 million people watched such a fun video featuring a great song??

A whole bunch of them decided they loved that song and had to have it, so they downloaded it, and the Record Company made a bazillion dollars (that’s a 1, with a bazillion zeros after it for non-math majors) from this video, which they didn’t even produce.

Don’t believe me? Read the details for yourself: I Now Pronounce You Monetized!

Next thing you know, Record Companies will be paying us to use their songs in our fun YouTube videos…

Nahhhhhh