to preface: i am so bored with what’s being played on mtv… same bloated exaggerated multi million dollar videos trying to redeem terrible music!
anyway i was watching the other day and suddenly this video comes on that looks WAY out of place. the artist was called cody chesnutt, so i did a little google search and found out that somehow he’d managed to get a $5,000 video on mtv with no major label backing. i wonder how he beat the system?
anyhow this gives me hope that maybe some decent artists will start getting airplay sometime in the near future… it would be nice.
i know i know, seems unusual!
it was during one of their ‘you hear it first’/‘artists to watch’ things where they actually play more than 15 seconds of each video.
i guess that’s true that they can claim that they ‘broke’ the artist, but i feel like they often won’t play anything that is low budget. then again there was that ‘thursday’ video that looked pretty homegrown…
does anyone WANT to watch videos anymore? i mean allegedly the reason mtv has halted the programming of videos is due to ratings/advertising potential. so my question is - if there was a station devoted to videos 24 hrs a day, would you watch it? for longer than 2 mins? i doubt i would… guess that means i’m part of the problem!
The popularity of VH1 Classic (even moreso than M2, MTV Hits or the other VH1 flavors) indicates that yes, people will watch videos – however, they prefer them without the bling-bling, skanks in thongs, tarted out teenagers, waggling bottles of booze, stupid animated segments, dropped audio to mask profanities, chicks in bathtubs or unkempt looking dudes in t-shirts screaming incoherently for no apparent reason whatsoever.
See, the decline in videos is in direct positive correlation with the decline in mainstream musicianship. VH1 Classic is an outstanding source for seeing videos back before the big corp’s destroyed everything. Until the big record companies go bankrupt (or decide to stop mass-producing garbage), we’re never gonna see another band like Metallica, who makes it big based on talent and drive and touring - with no radio or airplay (where they are now is another topic that I don’t want to touch here). This is why I download any music released on major labels, and buy music produced on indie labels.
As a film student, I enjoy watching new videos for the creative aspect. Like tlw mentioned, I think the problem is that MTV’s range of videos, when they do manage to air them, is woefully small. All of the videos look the same, and the same videos are played over and over. God forbid last month’s song makes it to this month’s video run!
I stopped watching MTV years ago because they descended into suckitude (i.e. they forgot about the “M” in “MTV”). I recently got MTV2, however, & I watch that because they play gaspvideos!