An Argument for MTV Music

There’s been a bit of controversey over the launch of MTV’s latest endeavor, MTV Music, a site that offers a large collection of streaming music videos.

I’m not a fan of MTV, never have been, but the arguments against MTV Music have irked me such that I feel a need to defend them. It’s too easy to hop on the popular “I HATE EVERYTHING MTV!!!” bandwagon.

The prevailing three arguments I have heard against MTV Music are:

1. That MTV is “too late”, or
2. That it’s a “feeble” attempt to save a long gone MTV
3. That it simply cannot compete with YouTube.

I’d like to take each of those three arguments head on.

1) It’s not too late.

I’m not going to say MTV is at the head of curve, but at the very least they made it in time. Maybe at just the right time. Hypebot just released the results of a UK digital music survey which reveals that:

• YouTube has overtaken MySpace (41% Vs 25%) as the preferred social network for music and in doing so has reaffirmed the value of music videos.

• Nearly 1 in 2 (47%) prefer to watch a music video if it’s available and a surprising 71% say the artist’s official music video is the most desirable digital content.

• 71% say they can find all the music videos they want on YouTube

So this is not a bad time to be thinking about music videos.

2) It’s a return to form.

As we all know, MTV was meant to be music television, and it has not been for a long time. This new website exhibits a return to MTV’s core competency.

MTV’s television station might be a lost cause. But as many marketing/business guru’s like Seth Godin have correctly stated, oftentimes the only way to reinvent a broken company or to take on a behemoth in your industry is through a new platform. This is the only reason why Google Docs has an actual chance at replacing the Microsoft Office suite. It’s a new platform, a new paradigm. I’m arguing that MTV’s attempt to return to form online is taking advantage of that very idea.

One might argue that the library right now is not as obscure and far-reaching as what you can generally find on the web, but HULU also started out with a meager offering when it first started and has exponentially increased since then. I’d be willing to bet MTV will expand the library as usership and demand increases. (If they don’t, they are stupid.)

3) MTV Music and YouTube are not really in competition. YouTube’s purpose is to stream user-generated content for the masses. MTV Music’s purpose is to stream official music videos. Different business, different market.

If you still think they compete, then I will argue that MTV Music has several competitive advantages over YouTube. The first is the fact that the majority of YouTube music videos are infringing on copyright. MTV Music is legal, plain and simple. When South Park Studios started putting high quality streaming episodes online, guess what happened to the ones on YouTube? They disappeared. Not only did South Park pursue the copyright infringement on YouTube (which it had the right to do), but the site also created a disincentive to post infringing material: it was already available, in higher quality, for free. We’ve seen this proliferate now throughout the networks. When I want to watch a show online now, I check Hulu first.

Furthermore, as has happened with most user-generated content sites, good content gets mixed in with the bad content and it’s hard, if not impossible, to tell the two apart. You end up trying to watch a video made from someone holding their 20 year old handheld camcorder up to their TV set. And anybody who has ever tried to find the official music video of a band on YouTube probably has had the frustration of wading through 5-10 horrible fan videos first. Almost worse, I’ve come across REALLY GOOD fan videos, and I couldn’t tell if it was or wasn’t the official music video. This is not a problem for MTV Music. They provide the offical, reliably high-quality, free streaming music video.

I’d like to know what your responses and thoughts are. Post some comments!