Sometimes I get a wild hair to watch Buffy fan videos on youtube (yes I’m a sad sad person.) Now before anyone freaks out about copyrights and blah blah blah, people who write fanfic or make fanart are in no way making money from what they’re doing, and it could be argued that part of what keeps the fan factory running and makes continued merchandising, comic books, etc. even possible in things like the buffy fandom (since the show is long over and the only thing keeping the machine running IS the fans) is this level of dedication from the fans, and creating new stories with the characters for free fan consumption as well as things such as the following video. It’s practically viral marketing that nobody had to pay for. (Anyway that’s my mini rant on why fanfic and fanvids and fanart aren’t evil.)
As for music used in fanvids, not sure how to class that. I do know it’s pretty hard for the average person to figure out how to convert a youtube video into music they can steal and put on their MP3 player. I also know more money is made in the music industry from the tours and merchandising then will ever be made from the CDs themselves. With things like itunes, it’s no problem now to hop over and buy a song you really like. There are songs I never would have heard if not for a youtube video. Songs which I would purchase and put on my ipod.
I do wonder if we’re going to go totally digital/MP3 players with music. Because CDs have all these protections on them where you can’t rip your own music that you bought to your own computer for the purpose of putting it on your own ipod to listen to it. That’s all under fair use and should be allowed for your own music. Of course the deterrent is there to try to keep people from sharing music online. But no one likes it when they can’t move their own stuff to a different format. And it’s not IMO fair to profit from someone twice selling them a CD AND MP3’s. I’m really not sure CDs are gonna hang around that much longer given all this. CDs have become clunky and annoying and most people don’t want the whole CD anyway.
Sorry, got off track there…anyway…
If you ever have fanfic or fanart made about your work it means you’ve arrived, so in my opinion, writers who HAVE arrived in this way should be grateful their work has inspired such fervor and be gracious about it. Most people never see that much success. It seems deeply petty to complain about it. By that point you’re making enough money you can afford to be gracious. And the bonus is that the fans in some sense start running your promotion for you because it goes viral.
And being supportive of your own fans (to a degree) is great PR. Building further good will.
Anyway, I found this video the other night and really thought it was cute. The clips match the words and beat really well:
