They shut down Faith Hill’s YouTube site for our comrades from the north

Faith Hill Take Me As I Am

The digital rights war rages on with one useless volley after another. Researching Faith Hill for Poor Taylor Swift showed everyone she can’t sing, I hit the Warner Music wall on YouTube.

“Faith Hill – Take Me As I Am (Video)”

“This video is unavailable.”

“This video contains content from WMG, who has decided to block it in your country.”

Makes sense to you right. Faith Hill is not a hot star anymore so she lives on her fan’s memory of the glory days in the 1990s when before she got married and had a family.

Country fans are loyal as long as you treat them right. They will keep buying an older star’s music and attending concerts for decades. However, people are accustomed to music on demand. Let’s say yesterday you heard Faith Hill’s song Take Me As I Am on CMT. You are driving to work and the song gets in your head. When you get to work, you can’t check it out on YouTube.

Legally it’s hard for you to have the video on your computer or iTouch/iPhone. It doesn’t seem to be for sale either on her official website, iTunes or Amazon.com. You can buy the CD Take Me as I Am. That’s it.

So a Canadian fan who might have seen her tour in Canada last summer or the year before is out of luck. Warner only want US fans to watch her videos on YouTube. They let you watch small sized ones on her official website but if you try to buy the music, it takes you to Apple iTunes Store US which is also not available in Canada.

If you are a determined fan, you can see Take Me As I Am with a Google search which gives you several choices: 1) a Boston live performance with bad audio 2) another copy that has badly pixelated video  3) a decent but not perfect copy and a few more after that. Which one of the three presents the artist in the best light?

Video # 1 – Live performance with low level hum and other sound problems

Video # 2 – pixelated from conversions

Video # 3 – soft focus from conversions, distorted sound

Personally, I prefer Video # 2 since the sound is better. I could clean up the audio in video # 1 but who has the time for a tier 2 country star. I’d rather pay $1.99 to iTunes for the video but I can’t do that.

Marketing 101 – “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.” Jesus Christ could give Warner Music a lesson or two on marketing.

Warner Music is working on the premise if you want to hear Faith Hill – pay. If you want to see Faith Hill – pay more. Good luck to them in this age of digital music.

I like Faith Hill as a singer. She has a very good voice, not perfect she sometimes breaks my eardrums on the high notes but that is a trait if high pitch female singers. They could work to take that out in the recording but apparently not. Ever since first saw her perform as the opening act for Alan Jackson in Moncton, NB Faith Hill has impressed me.