The Song Fight Bulletin Board

DRC: It's just another day in the neighborhood. It's just another day around the way. I'm feeling good today.

QotD: How important do you find Music Video to the music world currently?

With MTV moving to more reality based programming, are music videos as important as they used to be or are they a dying art?

Cute, at best. But I'm no longer the demographic to care about such things.

I love music videos. But they do change the way I perceive a song from that point on. If I hear a song without a video, then I'm making my own images and interpretation of what it's about. If it's a vid of the band just rocking out, then it's cool and just beefing up their image as a band.

Although entertained by good mini movie type music vids, they kind of lock me into one meaning. If that meaning doesn't fit me at the time, I tend to lose interest in the song very quickly, even if I still love watching the vid.

MTV? whats that?
Youtube my man, that's where is at! specially with people like LaBlogotheque, that might be responsible for introducing the art of "improv performance" into the states.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LaBlogotheque

but like Roymond mention, is all about demographics.

i stopped even looking at mtv when they got into "reality" tv. just not interested.
i do like to check out music videos of various sorts on the tube, especially when i am making song-a-day posts (yes, it's been a long time since i did one).
so, videos are cool but mtv is not.
-bill

I haven't seen MTv in years. It's all about the Interneckz. I love U2B

I was visiting some relative in Cincinnati in the fall 1981, and the husband of my second cousin, or whoever in the hell I was visiting, spent all day everyday in front of the TV watching this brand new station called MTV. That was enough for me. I swear he had turned into a cabbage. Haven't watched it since. Well, I have watched a couple of "Behind the Music" and "Unplugged" episodes, but that's about it. Still, music videos are hard to get away from, even if you don't have a TV.

I'm usually introduced to bands by their music videos on youtube. I think music videos have a solid place in today's industry, but MTV plays a much less prominent role.

Every few years, one of the execs who was behind MTV tries relaunching yet another music video channel, like The Box and The Tube, and it always fizzles out because of lack of long-term interest. This is also why there was MTV -> VH1 -> MTV2 all of which start out as MTV's "music video channel' and then ends up degrading into the same crap as MTV itself. Music videos aren't in and of themselves a reason to tune into a station, I guess. (Although when The Tube was around I did like it for background music on occasion.)

There are still some great videos being made, though, and they still have a great role in bringing peoples' awareness to them. But the means of distribution has definitely changed. When OK Go! put their clever, low-budget video on YouTube first, that was a huge turning point. YouTube is definitely a great distribution channel for videos because people can see the videos for free whenever they want. It's the same reason why Internet music distribution is going to be huge - people can find what they want based on recommendations of friends, rather than only having specific label-/station-manager-approved crap available on someone else's schedule. (Of course OK Go wasn't the first to do Internet video distribution. Fatboy Slim and Lemon Jelly had both been doing it for years before then, and both of them got plenty of new listeners thanks to their self-hosted non-streaming takes-forever-to-start QuickTime movies. Where YouTube helps is it's low-bitrate, reasonable-quality, and fast streaming, so people don't have to be infinitely patient to watch a video for the first time.)

MTV did have some nice genre-focused shows though. I never had MTV growing up but one time I caught their techno/electronica show (Amp?) and saw a whole bunch of stuff which I fell in love with (Cibo Matto, Orb, and Aphex Twin come specifically to mind).

MTV International is pretty cool. Some very fine Indian hostesses, for instance.

We didn't have MTV on our cable system when it first started, but we were among those who called up our cable station and said "I want my MTV..." and they did get it fairly early on, '82 or '83 or so. Even bought a t-shirt. Watched a lot at the start, less and less as time went by... and, yeah, now it's all reality shows and the like, you really have to look around to even find the videos...

These days I'm much more inclined to turn on the "Music Choice" channels we get - no commercials, broken down by genre, and you're not expected to sit there and watch (yeah, I know...). The channels that correspond most to the stuff that videos are being made for ("Hit List," "Alternative," and a couple others) are still very repetitive, same songs show up every couple hours, but it's cool to have a "singers and standards" channel (Dean Martin, etc.) and things like that.

Charles (KA)

king_arthur wrote:These days I'm much more inclined to turn on the "Music Choice" channels we get - no commercials, broken down by genre, and you're not expected to sit there and watch (yeah, I know...). The channels that correspond most to the stuff that videos are being made for ("Hit List," "Alternative," and a couple others) are still very repetitive, same songs show up every couple hours, but it's cool to have a "singers and standards" channel (Dean Martin, etc.) and things like that.

Charles (KA)

Although not a music video show, I'm a Music Choice fan also.
1. Digital music
2. Your choice of genre
3. No commercials
4. Stuff that a radio station would never play
5. Unedited
6. PLUS, if you do look at the TV screen, it is popping up facts about the band, the song, etc.

MTV lost me when it turned into rap 24/7 and then those mind numbing reality shows. If MTV had a different show for each genres, it would once again be successful. I loved it when it had people like Ricky Rackman's Headbanger's Ball and was just metal with out the interruption of something lame, like Vanilla Ice.

Do none of you guys get Fuse? They play alot of music videos. They have slots for normal videos, they have slots for genre specific videos, they even have a TRL-esque show where ppl request videos. It's not 100% music videos but the shows they have that aren't about videos are mostly movies and they are often music related.

Rone Rivendale wrote:Do none of you guys get Fuse? They play alot of music videos. They have slots for normal videos, they have slots for genre specific videos, they even have a TRL-esque show where ppl request videos. It's not 100% music videos but the shows they have that aren't about videos are mostly movies and they are often music related.

Never heard of it, so I just looked it up. Sounds great, except one problem, I don't get it. It's channel 347 where I live and it says I need to subscribe. I already pay Cox Cable $175 bux a month for the crap I have, so no more will be given to those bastards. Fuse just lost a new viewer. Pay, cha!

Rone Rivendale wrote:Do none of you guys get Fuse?

I do and enjoy it greatly.

I think music videos are very important. I enjoy an experience which is more than just aural. Music videos give music a visual aspect as well.

hey, am surprise non of our Canadian friends have chimmy up here to mention the Much Music Channel.
i thought they had pretty decent music programming a couple of years back.

drë wrote:hey, am surprise non of our Canadian friends have chimmy up here to mention the Much Music Channel.
i thought they had pretty decent music programming a couple of years back.

I just group MM with MTV. I don't really think either are that good anymore.

Reïst wrote:

drë wrote:hey, am surprise non of our Canadian friends have chimmy up here to mention the Much Music Channel.
i thought they had pretty decent music programming a couple of years back.

I just group MM with MTV. I don't really think either are that good anymore.

And in the US, MuchMusic became Fuse.

I haven't had cable for well over a decade, and haven't really watched any music videos since then. So I'm really REALLY out of the loop. Even Youtube doesn't really work for me. So it goes.

*is a dinosaur that lives under a rock*

As far as normal people go though, most people only seem to like music they've watched videos of, and when asked to describe what an artist actually SOUNDS like, can't really do much aside from tell me what the video was about.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is: they're still important to most people, yes. (People are visual creatures...?)

I am rambling.

Tiffany, that's what I was saying. I am a man, so I am a visual creature to the fullest. Music vids make you see stuff and junk...
......oh crap, I'm rambling too.....and forgot what I was thinking.


....Dang it! But yeah.

Aardwolves wrote:As far as normal people go though, most people only seem to like music they've watched videos of, and when asked to describe what an artist actually SOUNDS like, can't really do much aside from tell me what the video was about.

Well, then color me abnormal.