Damian Kulash has really taken it to the mattresses with EMI.

You may remember about a month ago, the frontman of virally famous OK Go posted an open letter to the band’s forum complaining about how its label, EMI, had quashed their recent attempts to get the word out about their new album and tour via viral video.

The band has gotten where it is by shooting memorable videos on the cheap then allowing fans to share the videos on blogs, social networking profiles, etc. (See the “treadmill video.”)

“My band is famous for music videos,” begins Kulash’s Saturday, February 20, op-ed for the New York Times.

Band-label feuds are nothing new, but the fact that this one has reached the Times, features a fairly obscure group of musicians and is all about viral video and social media makes it a study in the question of whether or not free digital media will save the sinking music industry.

Major labels have fought the free sharing of content. This is just the latest battle. Kulash explains that labels like EMI only get paid royalties for their bands’ videos when people watch them on YouTube proper. But, he argues, “Viral content doesn’t spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most.”

This is why it’s so frustrating to come across the phrase “Embedding disabled by request” where you’d normally grab the code for a YouTube video to place it on your blog. That drives bloggers like me crazy.

What difference does it make whether a video is watchable on a blog or on YouTube itself? You can still watch the video free, right? Or, you can post a screencap with a link, like I did with the video above.

Well, it turns out that breaking the circuit does make an impact in the overall result.

Kulash reveals: “When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.”

He continues: “Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube’s deals with record companies aren’t public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400.”

Only by thinking of media like video as marketing tools instead of products with price tags on them, Kulash says, will labels begin to thrive in the post-album landscape.

We couldn’t agree more.

Plus, EMI could use some good will. Not only is it losing billions, the giant has faced public outcry over rumors it was going to sell the Beatles’ famous record studio, Abbey Road. (EMI says it’s not. Kinda.)

On the Local: OK Go recently played in Kansas City. Read our friend Tim Finn’s review.

Weird: OK Go also recently plied its videomaking skills to conduct a tour of EMI’s posh German headquarters. Huh? Not exactly the behavior of a band feuding with its label. Then again, we could see German execs who are clueless about the reality situation going, Let’s get zees funny yanks vits ze funny videos to do a shoot of our headqvarters.

OK, bad German accent approximation, but you get zee idea.