

MTV blames Internet piracy for its demise as a music channel into reality TV FUD - sylviebarak
http://aroundthe.net/random-wtf/mtv-destroyed-by-piracy/

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ianferrel
>Napster had cast its stone straight into the music goliath’s eye, and no one
had seen it coming.

>MTV was forced to react, and fast. The network realized that the cheapest way
to operate was to start producing its own content, rather than fork out the
oodles of cash needed for a half decent music channel. And thus, hits like
“Punked,” “Pimp my Ride,” “Singled Out” and more recently “Teen mom” and
“Jersey Shore” were born.

That was some serious foresight, running _Singled Out_ from 1995 to 1998, in
response to Napster, released in 1999.

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chopsueyar
Even more foresight, "The State"...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_%28TV_series%29>

No mention of MTV2, either. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV2>

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Bandrik
"Wait, the M stood for Music?" -Any member of today's youth

I used to love MTV back in the 90's. Beavis and Butt-Head, Daria, Celebrity
Deathmatch, and of course... music videos. I would stay up till 1am just
watching the random music videos they had. I also remember watching
commercials for Final Fantasy VII and Oddworld. I miss the 90's.. =/

~~~
ugh
Believe it or not, I actually used MTV (Germany) to discover music from 1998
(when I was ten) to maybe 2002 (when I was 14). That used to actually be
possible.

The music I discovered isn’t even bad and withstood the test of time
remarkably well. (Of the top of my head I’m thinking of all the Discovery
singles by Daft Punk, the first Gorillaz video Clint Eastwood and the Red Hot
Chili Pepper’s Californication.) And Celebrity Deathmatch was awesome.

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arn
The timing of this is way way off. MTV stopped being a music station well
before internet piracy. And over a decade before YouTube.

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uxp
Does anyone have the canonical source of MTV claiming that internet piracy
contributed to its demise? This entire article seems contrived and made up,
with dates and times completely missing the mark.

Singled out stopped airing in 1998, where Napster was released in 1999.
Wikipedia says that the shows "Total request" and "MTV: Live", which were
shows that did center around music videos, were created specifically because
critics complained that MTV was not playing enough Music Videos, in 1997.

 _Despite targeted efforts to play certain types of music videos in limited
rotation, MTV greatly reduced its overall rotation of music videos throughout
the first decade of the 2000s. While music videos were featured on MTV up to
eight hours per day in 2000, 2008 saw an average of just three hours of music
videos per day on MTV._ [1]

So, Youtube started to have influence on how people watched music videos half
a decade prior to it's launch in 2005? Someone should have done a bit more
research in writing this article than the 10 minutes I just spent trying to
confirm everything they said.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV>

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Natsu
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the music industry screwed itself by
raising rates until they all but killed the most profitable, popular and legit
outlet they had?

But the natural reaction to piracy seems to be to screw one's paying
customers, if the events of the past 20 or so years are any indication.

~~~
rick888
"Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the music industry screwed itself by
raising rates until they all but killed the most profitable, popular and legit
outlet they had?"

This may be the case. But, I don't believe that people pirating music ever
wanted to actually buy the music. You can now get 99 cent songs without DRM
and there are tons of services like Pandora, Grooveshark, and Last.fm (where
you can preview entire songs before buying). Both of these were points brought
up as a reason for piracy around the time of Napster. Piracy is still worse
than ever.

I'm still waiting for the new set of excuses.

~~~
Natsu
You get punished for being an honest customer.

I bought a game a while back. It refused to install because of some broken
StarForce DRM. Sure, I should've researched the game first to avoid that
notoriously bad DRM, but it was an impulse buy. That's another way they're
killing themselves; it's a real pain to have to research everything instead of
buying whatever looks fun.

Alas, the only good brands I know of these days are PopCap and GoodOldGames,
which are great, but that really limits what you can buy.

So I wasted a lot of time for nothing by trying to pay the artists. And no, I
didn't pirate the damn game even though I should've been entitled to, I just
wasted a ton of time.

Punish people like that enough and you won't have any customers left. People
respond in kind. They don't care about your beef with the pirates, but they do
care about getting hurt in the crossfire.

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phamilton
How did napster affect music videos any more than radio does? Listening to
music is very different from watching music videos.

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jonburs
Napster allowed you to choose what music to listen to (and when and where you
wanted to listen to it). On the radio (and MTV, when they actually played
videos) the choices were made for you.

Kind of like network / cable TV -> DVRs, Hulu, Netflix streaming...

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leeskye
The Internet killed the Music Video star

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pyre
That just doesn't roll of the tongue in the same way.

~~~
tlrobinson
The Limousines beg to differ: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx5tSmOY_iM>

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te_chris
So...they couldn't afford to play music videos BUT they could afford all the
money it would've cost in production of thousands of hours of tv and all the
costs involved? Seems like a bit of revisionism is going on here...

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andresmh
so people are willing to pirate music but not reality TV shows?

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adrianb
They thought about that, and so they made sure that the reality shows were
really crappy.

