Musician Makes Music Out of Feud With United Airlines

July 9, 2009— -- United Airlines has learned a valuable lesson: Don't mess with a musician's prized possession.

Canadian folk singer Dave Carroll tried for nearly a year to get United to pay for his $3,500 Taylor guitar that he said baggage handlers broke. When the airline still refused to cough up any money, he did what any songwriter would do: He wrote a song about it.

"I called it my Michael Moore moment -- my epiphany when I decided what would Michael Moore do if he were a singer-songwriter and I decided to write three songs about United Airlines," Carroll told ABC News.

That first song and its accompanying YouTube video, called "United Breaks Guitars," has become a viral hit, with just over half a million page views since it was posted on Monday.

"I decided to go with a light-hearted approach to this and have some fun with it, rather than come across as angry and bitter, just to laugh about the whole experience and share the story with people," Carroll said.

The video finally got the attention of the airline, which is now trying to make nice with Carroll.

Note the pun in the statement United sent to ABCNews.com: "This has struck has a chord with us. We are in conversations with one another to make what happened right, and while we mutually agree that this should have been fixed much sooner, Dave Carroll's excellent video provides United with a unique learning opportunity that we would like to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us."

"Of course it is a valuable lesson," said ABCNews.com columnist Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com, an airfare comparison shopping site. "This happens to a lot of people who don't make as big of deal about it. Typically people end up having to just eat things, because they don't want to take drastic measures, like making a video."