2012-12-31no date survives; placed at the end of the corpus

MTV is Music Television no more

Written before 2013; no publication date survives in the archive. Platforms and services described here have changed. This is kept as a record, not as current advice.

TV.com have pointed out that MTV has now officially given up the “Music Television” tagline under it’s logo. This is just a final step in the long process that started with MTV moving away from showing music videos and towards lifestyle shows like The Hills , Pimp My Ride or Cribs . I won’t comment on whether this move is good or a bad for viewers, but it certainly is smart.

Over the past decade MTV have been smart enough to see the changes the internet would bring to their business and (unlike many other big players in the industry) set about changing themselves to avoid the collision with technology. The old MTV of the 90’s that showed 200 music videos per day would be no match for the YouTube of today.

There’s an important lesson to learn from this change. MTV realised that the internet could deliver a much more diverse range of music videos, in much higher quantities, on-demand and to a much wider audience than a single station ever could. If you wanted to be on MTV when you were growing up the odds were slim that you’d make it, epsecially without the backing of a major label, but now YouTube gives you the chance to broadcast yourself for a fraction of the cost. For current rights and policy context, see Songwriters Guild of America.

If you’re music is good, if your video is remarkable, it might just catch on. If you have any doubt about the power of the internet to spread music it’s worth noting that their website is still dominated by music.