Sony and the Jk Wedding Dance

Goutham Dadi

Sony and the JK Wedding Dance

Summary:

In 2009, a home video of Jill and Kevin’s (JK) Wedding dance went viral on YouTube. This was because the wedding broke with tradition and the bridesmaids and groomsmen led the bride and groom in a jubilant, hip hop inflected dance. The wedding party danced to the music which was a recording of the song ‘Forever’ performed by Chris Brown and the music belonged to the Sony Music entertainment label ‘Jive’. Coincidentally, in the same year, Social Media experienced unprecedented growth and YouTube was one of the Internet’s most trafficked destinations. So, as a result by December 2009, this video became the third most-watched video of 2009 in YouTube. Unfortunately, Chris Brown’s very promising career came to a halt four months earlier when he had been arrested on charges of battering his girlfriend. So Sony was facing a few issues, though the video was getting lot of attention.  

Key Issues Faced:

The music in the video which is owned by Sony, was being used without authorization. Sony had three options at that point- Issue a take-down notice, Do nothing and benefit from the attention being paid to their song or Sony negotiating some form of revenue generating or sharing agreement by putting YouTube on notice that they were the owners of hosted material. But Jeff Dodes, who was the executive vice president of marketing and digital media, reminded himself that one should disturb the natural flow of the customer as little as possible. But interpreting this philosophy in the light of the Chris Brown song posed particular problems as the public scandal that had erupted few months earlier meant that it could raise the public’s ire, if there was any attempt to redeem Brown’s reputation through aggressive promotional activity. These were the major issues at that point considering the options and Jeff Dodes approach.