A band called OK Go explains the major mystery of the universe: WHY don’t labels want the videos to be embedded!!!

We?ve been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can’t be embedded on websites, and in certain countries can’t be seen at all. And we want you to know: we hear you, and we?re sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it?s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago.

As you?ve no doubt noticed, sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Blahzayblahblah.cn run ads on copyrighted content. Back when Young MC’s second album (the one that didn’t have Bust A Move on it) could go Gold without a second thought, labels would?ve considered these sites primarily promotional partners like they did with MTV, but times have changed. The labels are hurting and they need every penny they can find, so they?ve demanded a piece of the action. They got all huffy a couple years ago and threatened all sorts of legal terror and eventually all four majors struck deals with YouTube which pay them tiny, tiny sums of money every time one of their videos gets played. Seems like a fair enough solution, right? YouTube gets to keep the content, and the labels get some income.

The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn?t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn?t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won?t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist?s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we?re ? unbelievably ? stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It?s like the world has gone backwards.

Ha. As for whether EMI make more money selling records or charging YouTube for non-embeddable videos — and whether the goal of being a record label is to extract money off YouTube or sell records — remains the sweet secret of EMI shareholders.