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OK GO Gone From EMI

Despite bursting onto music's world stage thanks to the viral video for "Here it Goes Again," featuring the band dancing maniacally on treadmills, OK Go have parted ways with EMI and will re-release their new album, Of the Color of Blue Sky on their own label, dubbed Paracadute Recordings. The band's new viral video, "This Too Shall Pass," features the members getting pelted with paintballs and as it turns out, this whole video thing, which is largely responsible for the band's success, facilitated their split with their label, since EMI prevents fans from embedding the YouTube vid on other sites.

The anti-embedding policy appears to be quite counterintuitive, especially for a band that has been living and dying by its kitschy videos, and singer Damian Kulash even penned an op-ed on how their label's forbiddance of embedding videos negatively impacts their career in The New York Times. Sales for the new record –digital and individual tracks, in particular- have increased as the video spread across the web, so the correlation is there. The album was initially released in January.

—Amy Sciarretto
03.15.10

Tags: OK Go