The Problem with Best-Of Lists

The first video MTV ever played was The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Well, YouTube killed the MTV star.

The music video is, above anything else, a promotional tool for artists (and labels) to market songs and albums. If people aren’t purchasing records anymore, then what’s the point?

Since the rise of YouTube and streaming services, music is now “on demand” the way movies and TV shows are. In such an instant gratification world, it almost seems crazy to expect MTV’s key demographic of teens, high schoolers and college students to wait to hear the music they want. It’s all available online, on demand!

For ages, music videos and live performances uploaded to YouTube was seen as a nuisance and a threat to the traditional means of consuming visual music. This was a threat to music-related TV stations around the world, and as a generation of young people started going online to consume music—both audial and visual—it was the death knell for these stations as we knew them to be.

Thanks to dwindling ratings, VH1 and MTV started showing less music videos and music-related content for reality programming. VH1 removed their “Music First” slogan out of their logo in 2003, and, channeling KFC, Music Television officially became MTV in 2010.

For them, it’s a lose-lose, so why wouldn’t they want to get a piece of their pie? TLC airs Storage Wars, Toddlers and Tiaras, Honey Boo Boo, Cake Boss, and 19 Kids and Counting. So much for The Learning Channel.

I rest my case.

In other words, if you want your MTV, it’s called the internet. Stop your moaning about MTV not playing music videos. Go online. It’s more convenient, anyway.