We here at IMVDb pay close attention to the distribution of music videos online. While we mainly use two trusted sources of online video that house most of the world's music videos - YouTube and Vimeo - we also recognize the need to be able to break out of that mold with things like interactive videos.

Early this morning, Kanye West released his much-anticipated video for "Black Skinhead" (which had seen a work in progress leak earlier this month), and he spent a good part of the morning pleading with people on Twitter to use only his version of the video, meaning the one that is on kanyewest.com.

ATTENTION all sites just posting merely the video version of BLKKK SKKKN HEAD...

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) July 22, 2013

if you put a link to my site people will be able to chop & screw the video. this is a step towards the possibilities of internet based video

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) July 22, 2013

please don't diminish the user experience by just posting it as a normal video … please link them to my site

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) July 22, 2013

As you can see, West has done this because he is touting the video as "a step towards the possibilities of internet based video". It's a big thing to ask blogs to link out to another site entirely instead of embedding something, but Kanye apparently thinks this is worth it.

The experience opens with a still (the same one at the top of this article) that explains what you're in for. It doesn't pull any punches:

Users can capture or "photograph" still images of of the video's compelling imagery. Image captures can be synched[sic], posted, and shared across all online and mobile social platforms for a unique secondary experience of the traditional music video.

This is an odd statement, and it's not because it inexplicably has the MPAA, Dolby, and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees logos above it. The problem is it doesn't do what it says - at all. Click on the camera icon during the video and it dumps a jpg onto your hard drive - and that's it. This is a little like providing fee wifi in a coffee shop, which turns around and tells people they they can do taxes while they're in the coffee shop. Sure, they could do that, but the coffee shop provided the absolutely bare minimum to get that done. There's no option to share the video or do any sort of "syncing", it's doing something browsers have been able to do for quite some time, download an image.

One of the things that seems especially baffling about the screen cap download option is the fact that the icon used for the download function is very recognizable as the icon for Instagram. As you might have guessed, the feature doesn't have anything to do with Instragram.

There is also the speed controls, which are interesting but are of questionable value in terms of the experience of the video. Sure, you can slow down and speed things up, but why would you want to? The controls don't work on mobile, either. Kanye describes it as being able to "Chop and screw" the video, which is a reference to the Chopped  and Screwed DJ technique pioneered by DJ Screw, but as far as we can tell the video just lets you speed it up and slow it down.

We love seeing interactive videos (and we love when interactive videos come with embedding options - thank you fourclops), but "Black Skinhead" doesn't really qualify as an interactive video in our eyes, it's a video with an odd video player that Kanye is demanding people go to, and it's hurting the propsects for interactive videos in the future and stunting people's expectations of what can be done with that format. We hope we get to see it on Vevo and YouTube soon.

Adam Fairholm is the co-founder and lead developer of IMVDb. You can find him on twitter at @adamfairholm.