The most recent issue of The New Yorker is the media edition. Despite a little too much coverage on all things Rupert Murdoch, the issue shed some light on YouTube for me, catching me up with technology that is all the rage with kids these days. Now granted, despite some recent techno-meltdowns I have had in the last few weeks, I was already familiar with YouTube. But I didn’t know how it worked and I certainly didn’t understand how people were getting famous on it.

A while back I linked out to a FABULOUS video that I viewed as proof that the music video had not died. That, I believe, was a simplistic interpretation of the clip.

The music video was dead. The internet, with online communities like YouTube, has saved the music video.

Let that sink in a moment. It’s huge.

This weekend I had the honor of seeing OK Go perform in downtown Cincinnati, as part of festivities to celebrate the re-opening of Fountain Square. Wonder Boy and I pre-gamed it at Frank the Tank and Sugar Boy’s house and then headed out to listen to some rock. Now, in the spirit of complete honesty, I don’t actually know a ton of OK Go stuff. Basically, the reason I wanted to go to the show was to see the song from the video and because it was free. F-R-E-E.

I’m digressing here and I know it. Anyway, the show was fabulous, even with a few audio glitches. Seeing them in stage helped me to understand how four hipster boys who like skinny-legged pants could be convinced to do a dance routine. I mean, if these boys are willing to sing excerpts of Les Miserables, why not do a little choreography on treadmills?

With the exception of Sugar Boy, who would have only been excited if Madonna herself had been onstage, we all enjoyed the show thoroughly.

And then…

The boys came back onstage. “There are five minutes until the fireworks go off” they said. Prerecorded music started playing. The boys got into formation. And I’ll be damned if they didn’t start doing the ENTIRE DANCE ROUTINE from Here it Goes Again, sans treadmills, of course.

I don’t pay for cable. (Please refer above… I am cheap.) But I have seen this video. I know this band. I know this song. I get the reference to a music video because of the strength of viral marketing online. Despite his responsibility for Fox News [barf], Rupert Murdoch is the current owner of YouTube. This old school guy who has wrecked most of TV News might hold the key to reviving music videos.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.