Dollar Dance: The Economics of the JK Wedding Video

On Friday and Saturday nights during my college years at Grinnell we would all head over to the Harris Center for dance parties. As Grinnellians grow older they don’t have as many places to bust a move, but when a wedding comes for a Grinnell alum the old Harris dance moves come out again. Jill Peterson who graduated one year after me and her husband, Kevin Heinz, took it to a worldwide level with their JK wedding dance video, which has been a Youtube sensation.

If you haven’t seen it, the video is along with this post. Now here is where the story could have turned sad. They used Chris Brown’s song “Forever” for their processional number. Many YouTube videos have been pulled off because of use of a copy righted song. But who ever controlled the rights to “Forever” realized that by posting the JK wedding video with links to iTunes for “Forever” more copies of the song will be sold. As the Google blog (which owns YouTube) documents this strategy has worked with “Forever” jumping to the top of the internet charts.

h/t to newmarksdoor