How’s this for irony: “Video Killed the Radio Star,” released in 1979 by The Buggles, is about how TV (MTV in particular) would kill radio. And now, 30 years later, Universal has disabled embedding the YouTube video.
Really, it’s good that Universal has embedding disabled. If I could put it in this post, you’d be able to watch it. It might even get stuck in your head. And then, perhaps, you could buy the song on iTunes or Amazon via the link to purchase it that’s over the video. Instead, I won’t, because I can’t. Universal will keep protecting its property by slowly killing it, and their unembeddable video will continue to kill their radio stars.
Maybe in 30 more years they’ll have figured out how to survive on the internet, but at that point there will probably be something else that’s come along that will take them a decade to figure out. [YouTube]
Gizmodo ’79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.
