OK Go’s very public fight with their label over the fate of their music videos reached the pages of the New York Times this weekend as the group’s lead singer Damien Kulash penned an op-ed piece detailing how EMI’s “no embedding stance” has affected the band’s popularity and income. As Rolling Stone previously reported, at the heart of the battle is OK Go’s desire to make their upcoming music video for Of the Blue Colour of the Sky’s “This Too Shall Pass” an embeddable YouTube clip, even though EMI bans embeds because the label only gets royalties when viewers actually visit YouTube. Kulash previously authored an open letter to EMI objecting to their policy.

OK Go’s first hit was their video for “Here It Goes Again,” which the band filmed with their own money. The clip went on to become one of the most viewed music videos of the decade, thanks in large part to the blog community that embedded it on their sites. However, EMI eventually changed course and yanked the embeds. “The numbers are shocking: When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000,” Kulash writes in the Times. “Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.”

The band will debut their second video for their single “This Too Shall Pass” on March 1st. (Watch a behind-the-scenes clip of the viral video here.) The single’s first video, which featured the group walking through a field dressed as a marching band, is currently posted on YouTube, but remains unembeddable. “In these tight times, it’s no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos. But it needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet,” Kulash writes in conclusion. “Curbing the viral spread of videos isn’t benefiting the company’s bottom line, or the music it’s there to support. The sooner record companies realize this, the better — though I fear it may already be too late.”

Related Stories:

• OK Go Hire Big Brains for “This Too Shall Pass” Video: Watch a Clip
• OK Go Struggle With Label’s Rules Banning Embedded Video
• OK Go Channel “Purple Rain” On Funky January LP “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”

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Before you cast your votes, be sure to check out one of Rolling Stone’s first features on the band, a 1978 profile that finds AC/DC on the road in support of their then-new album Powerage. Plus, check out the band’s amp-bursting odyssey from High Voltage to Black Ice in our AC/DC essential album guide. A handful of our favorite cuts are below:

AC/DC in Photos: Four Decades of Big Riffs and Schoolboy Uniforms

• “Back in Black”
• “(If You Want Blood) You Got It”
• “Thunderstruck”
• “Let There Be Rock”
• “T.N.T.”

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• Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton launched their co-headlining tour after landing on the cover of our new issue. The pair talked old rivalries with David Fricke and Clapton discussed the art of rock singing.

• Guns n’ Roses rocked a second secretgig in New York, then Axl Rose spoke his mind in a message board post and lengthy tweet that addressed, among other rumors, that he banned Slash-wear from Gn’R gigs. Slash’s response? Axl shirts are a-okay at his own solo shows.
• Ke$ha asked herself the hard questions in a video interview, then carried on her record-breaking run on the chart. Know who was impressed? Alice Cooper.
• We gave you the scoop on new music from the National and Hanson, showed off MGMT’s new album cover, and let you hear new tracks from Broken Social Scene and the Soft Pack.
• Yoko Ono united an all-star cast of rockers at a landmark Plastic Ono Band show. Derek Trucks looked back at the Allman Brothers’ own epic Beacon Theatre gigs. And Pete Townshend wondered if there’ll be any more Who concerts.

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