Kanye West Will Only Let You Look At Him On His Terms

noah | April 18, 2008 5:00 am
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Given their love of content control, it’s probably not too surprising that Universal Music Group has been issuing DMCA takedown notices to YouTube users who have posted bits of Kanye West’s Glow In The Dark Tour to the video-sharing site–for example, Animal, who threw up a few clips from this week’s Seattle kickoff show only to have them swiftly removed. But as it turns out, Kanye doesn’t want there to be any unauthorized record of his performances on this tour at all–he’s not letting “photography of any kind” go down at his shows this summer, possibly because he only wants people to pay $60 and up to see his crazy staging. (Don’t worry, Kanye–the picture attached to this post is from the Grammys!)

If this email is regarding Kanye West’s Glow In The Dark Tour, please be advised that Kanye is not allowing photography of any kind during his performance on this tour, and be prepared to adjust your coverage accordingly. We will be contacting you regarding ticket requests a few days prior to the show in your market.

I’m not really sure how Kanye is going to make the “no photos at all” edict work, if it in fact is a blanket demand that extends to the show’s attendees–given that every cell phone out there has a camera within, and he’s filling arenas with his shows, is he going to politely go on each tour market’s radio station the day of to ask that everyone leave their cellies in the car? Or is he going to try and go the phone-check route like Morrissey did back when I saw him at the Apollo a few years ago, a brilliant idea that resulted in a fire-code-busting glob of people swarming the theater’s lobby for about 45 minutes after the show ended? While I do appreciate the idea of allowing people in the back rows of the arena to watch Kanye’s concert as an actual live music performance, instead of a mosaic of viewfinders, I also am still amazed at the way that some people (even people who run popular, albeit sorta consumption-crazy blogs!) don’t really get the Internet age. Specifically, the idea that the more you try to control people’s consumption of your content, the more likely they are to rebel against that control and put the results of their rulebreaking on some Web 2.0 site with a vowel-challenged name.

Kanye West Hates His Fans [Animal]

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