30frames

Hey guys,

It has been a long time since I posted. How long? Well the stock market was still a place you might want your money. Tina Fey was still most famous for her ‘day job’ on 30 Rock.

Also, that was before the launch of MTVmusic.com. I have lost major stretches of my waking life clicking around through the old clips on mtvmusic. Yeah, for the intertubes!

Other sections of the net still do some music video things better than mtvmusic. Youtube gets the latest Britney news out there. Onsmash still has the best collection of what is ‘new’ at least for urban music (and stony studio interviews). Right now mtvmusic is kind of a nostalgia machine (check the top viewed list for Buggles and Dire Straits) – but I assume that as the site develops it will get more ‘modern’ traffic.

I wish mtvmusic had a better ‘these are the newest clips we have added’ section. Even the main mtv site does that better. I wish that the ‘date added’ for the videos on mtvmusic was the date the video was released to MTV and not just the date some intern added the digital file to an mtv server. Didja know ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ was from 2007?

But these are minor quibbles. The picture quality on mtvmusic is great compared to the YouToogles. You can sort by director and see that two of the first three Isham-helmed clips are Metallica and the third is Nsync. They even have the alternate ‘pop-up’ versions of some clips.

Older videos never aired on MTV with director’s credits. Who knew, way back in 1988 that there even was such a thing as a music video director? Some of these classic clips have had the once unlisted credit included on mtvmusic. Others have not.

update: Check out the old-school opening slate on 'Billie Jean' - a hand-written label off the original tape box.

Obviously the site is not ‘done’ and more functionality and monetization (catchphrase alert!) is sure to come. The search function seems to work one day and then not the next, but that will get dialed in. It finally seems like MTV is in on the joke the internet is pulling.

This is change we can believe in.

Labels: Britney Spears, Isham, MTV, music video, NSync, video link, YouTube