Lily Allen Shows Off Newish Song, EMI Shows Off Newish YouTube Strategy

Usually when a new track makes its way to the Web, YouTube fills up with unauthorized rips of the track, featuring visuals that are promo pics (sometimes stitched together with your Windows Media Maker wipes, often static) and maybe the lyrics on the side. They’re also embeddable, so people (cough cough) can stick them on their blogs, or what-have-you. Parlophone decided to beat the YouTubers at their own game, though, creating an embeddable video that not only streams the song, it gives details on how to preorder the album. Sure, there’s a glitch in that it only gives instructions on how to order It’s Not Me, It’s You from Amazon UK—I hope, hope, hope this doesn’t mean it’s going to suffer the “released in the States months later with a Mims remix” fate that Kylie Minogue’s X did—and yeah, I know that the whole idea of making music available easily should seem patently obvious, but I’m feeling generous, and with major labels, you kind of have to treat every Internet baby step like you would that of a just-about-to-toddler.

Lily Allen – The Fear [YouTube]