Entertainment
The 54-year-old singer is everywhere this week getting the word out about his 14th album, including Fox Business Network's "Varney & Company."
Yankovic had an enlightening interview with host Stuart Varney as to what this whole internet thing is all about, and how the parody singer makes money from releasing his videos online.
Yankovic: "MTV is not really music television anymore, the internet is essentially MTV. The internet consumes things very quickly, things go viral for a day - you can be famous for 24 hours. So I figured the best way to advertise my new album is every single day of release week, put out a new video people get excited about."
Varney: "How do you make money putting things on the internet? Who pays you for this?"
Yankovic: "Well, they don't pay me for it, but I get the video for free because I'm partnered up with Funny or Die, College Humor, Yahoo, and Nerdist. They're all looking for content and I'm looking for a video so we partner and it's a win-win situation."
Varney: "How do you get the money?"
Yankovic: "The partners do. They don't pay me, they pay for the production of the video and hopefully, that will make people want to buy the album because the videos are essentially commercials for the album."
Perhaps most interesting, however, is that Yankovic revealed his new album is the last of a 32-year record deal.
"This is the end of my album deal. I've been under contract since 1982," he explained. "So this is album number 14, it's the end of a 32-year album deal."
And now that the deal is over, the singer plans to change his business model.
"After this I think I'm just going to be releasing singles," Yankovic explained. "Because the stuff I do is topical and timely and if I wait until I have 12 songs and put out an album, chances are a lot of those songs aren't going to be topical and timely."
As Varney then pointed out, "What you're doing is putting content on the internet and that's why Time Warner is so valuable - $80 billion not enough to buy them, it's going to take a whole lot more."
Watch the full interview below:
Watch Yankovic's videos he's released so far this week.
"Tacky" parody of Pharrell's "Happy":
"Word Crimes" grammar lesson parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines":
"Foil" aluminum foil parody of Lorde's "Royals":
"Handy" parody of Iggy Azalea's "Fancy":