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Music

MTV: Internet kills the Video Star

By thomascrampton ⋅ October 30, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

If video killed the radio star, this week the Internet just killed the VJ.

I just had a great nostalgic moment playing the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” on the new MTV Internet platform that was launched on Tuesday. The platform is intended to counteract YouTube’s defacto dominance as the best place to find old music videos.

“Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video shown on MTV in North America, so it seemed the best song to test the new MTV platform. The platform is nice, if minimalist. There seems to be little advertising, but I presume that will come over time.

More from Ars Technica:

MTV has launched a new site Tuesday called MTV Music that opens up the company’s massive video archive and puts it on the web for free.

MTV Music expands upon the music video offerings already posted to MTV.com by offering an entire back catalogue of videos that go all the way to when music videos were born. The library includes more than 16,000 videos, sprinkled with ‘exclusive’ MTV concert footage and MTV ‘Unplugged’ performances that used to be all the rage.

And that’s just the beginning. According to a blog post on MTV’s Splash Page, more videos are being added by the day. In addition to the consumer-facing side of MTV Music, the company has also launched an API that allows developers to build applications that make use of MTV Networks Content.

MTV is owned by Viacom, the company that filed a USD 1bn lawsuit against YouTube for ‘brazen’ copyright infringement in 2007 (the suit is still pending).

Among other things, Viacom wanted to have full control over any of its content that gets posted-something that YouTube could not provide. MTV Music is also differentiating itself from YouTube by being light on the ads.

All 16,000+ videos lack any form of advertising except for banner ads at the top of the page, while Google is currently testing video ads on some of its videos in order to monetize the massive (and otherwise un-monetizable) amount of content on the site.

Like YouTube, MTV Music allows users to not only watch videos on the site, but to also leave comment, give ratings, and embed the videos on their blogs or personal websites.

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Comments for “MTV: Internet kills the Video Star”

  • MTV is making its way to the top, Youtube had been very popular around the world and people had uses it for quite a time. I think no one can ever replace the fame of youtube.
  • I agree with MTV mooving along the web, but I think its a little waste, considering youtube as a competitor.. even unintentionally
  • just being the first don't mean you can have the bread and eat it. although MTV was very revolutionary. The thing about the youth is, they don't watch MTV anymore. I don't have the statistic, but IMO no one in the next generation, which means 10years from now will even think MTV was a cool generation. There are so many lame shit in MTV. Just watch a 20/20 program on youtube about the beginning of video generation and the introduction of the Video disc. the punch line side at the end of the Magdoc. "Music and Video will be, always about the music..." Oh really, maybe for the lame generation X, but if we really have to question the N generation and beyond, the cool kids know whassup. this is my five cents. I won't know how to even answer a child what we are doing when i was there age...is so lame that is.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vz7Z42Fl9s
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9KRtuEttIQ
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...