Maybe MTV Cares About Music Videos After All

One of the things that always stunned me about MTV, which I presumed to be a relatively young company with some sense of “what kids want,” was its inability to put together a user-friendly website. For years, MTV.com was a nightmare—impossible to navaigate, flash heavy, and low on interesting content. I would never open a link from MTV.com because I knew it would either freeze my computer or feature enough ads that no 30-second clip could possibly be worth the wait. This online ineptitude, combined with the rise of programming like The Hills and death of TRL, made it pretty easy to make the argument that MTV had turned its back on the music video—the very artform that its empire was built on. If you wanted to watch music videos, you logged onto TouTube. And when Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube to take down the videos it owns, you thought to yourself, “Wow, these a-holes really don’t want me to watch The Humpty Dance.”

But now, it’s possible that the recently launched MTV Music could single-handedly resurrect the company’s role as the curator of the music video. The site has opened up MTV’s massive archive of videos to the public, all for free. Most refreshingly, there are very few ads (the site’s simple design aesthetic only incorporates banner ads and you don’t have to watch any pre-roll video advertising). In addition to the music videos, the site offers rare footage from Unplugged shows, live performances, and other special events.

The site’s slogan is, “I want my MTV music,” and it seems MTV, for the first time in a while, has actually served a genuine desire in the music community. We’ll see how it develops (there are definitely a lot of videos missing at this point), but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.