2 ms·

MTV as we gen-xers knew it, has been dead for decades at this point. Young people get their music from short-form clips, youtube, or word-of-mouth. I was sad to

MTV as we gen-xers knew it, has been dead for decades at this point. Young people get their music from short-form clips, youtube, or word-of-mouth. I was sad to see MTV go long ago, but there are better ways to get your music fix.

mindcrime 1y ago
I was at a Motley Crue concert about 1996 or so, during the "Corabi Crue" era, and John Corabi at one point says "I used to think MTV stood for Music Television. Now I realize it stands for Moron Television." I LOL'd.
- alexjplant 1y ago
  As a fan of 80s hard rock (i.e. one with a closet full of Van Halen vinyl and a Jose-style Marshall and blue Charvel in my living room) I wouldn't exactly characterize Motley Crue's music as a vanguard of intellectuality either...
  - mindcrime 1y ago
    > I wouldn't exactly characterize Motley Crue's music as a vanguard of intellectuality Speaking as a huge Motley Crue fan... neither would I. :-) Nonetheless, Corabi's comment really resonated at that moment in time.
- dh2022 1y ago
  I also liked Dennis Miller's quip that "nobody knows anymore what M stands for in MTV"
gdulli 1y ago
I'm glad I had the chance to watch MTV anonymously rather than be surveilled by Google and hundreds of its partners and grand-partners. Also glad I listened to full songs and not 60 second clips in the background of tiktoks.
rchaud 1y ago
As an old millennial whose source of new music is now Tiktok, I disagree there are better ways to get new music. The concept of a 24/7 music video channel exposed me to all kinds of music in the '90s and early '00s that I would have simply skipped over if it played on the radio, or came up on Spotify (unsubscribed years ago). Part of the reason AI bands can rack up millions of listens on streaming platforms is because real bands are largely anonymous outside of the tiny album art thumbnail. To learn about them, you have to follow them on a separate social media platform. On MTV, there would be shows that interviewed bands before premiering their video, or had programs like like Pop-up Video that showed band trivia underneath the music video. I discovered Beck while watching the Pop Up video for "The New Pollution". The visual identity of a band or artist presented through the music video was key to introducing new sounds to me. The music video now is dead for all but the largest, best known artists, and their videos are predictable fodder made only to distribute on Youtube.
tracker1 1y ago
I genuinely miss it a lot... that and decent radio coverage. Phoenix had a few great stations that had not just the mainstream music but a lot of indie and smaller/local artists played. You just don't get much of that in the algorithmically generated content playlists today.

mindcrime 1y ago

I was at a Motley Crue concert about 1996 or so, during the "Corabi Crue" era, and John Corabi at one point says "I used to think MTV stood for Music Television. Now I realize it stands for Moron Television." I LOL'd.

alexjplant 1y ago
As a fan of 80s hard rock (i.e. one with a closet full of Van Halen vinyl and a Jose-style Marshall and blue Charvel in my living room) I wouldn't exactly characterize Motley Crue's music as a vanguard of intellectuality either...
- mindcrime 1y ago
  > I wouldn't exactly characterize Motley Crue's music as a vanguard of intellectuality Speaking as a huge Motley Crue fan... neither would I. :-) Nonetheless, Corabi's comment really resonated at that moment in time.
dh2022 1y ago
I also liked Dennis Miller's quip that "nobody knows anymore what M stands for in MTV"

gdulli 1y ago

I'm glad I had the chance to watch MTV anonymously rather than be surveilled by Google and hundreds of its partners and grand-partners. Also glad I listened to full songs and not 60 second clips in the background of tiktoks.

rchaud 1y ago

As an old millennial whose source of new music is now Tiktok, I disagree there are better ways to get new music. The concept of a 24/7 music video channel exposed me to all kinds of music in the '90s and early '00s that I would have simply skipped over if it played on the radio, or came up on Spotify (unsubscribed years ago). Part of the reason AI bands can rack up millions of listens on streaming platforms is because real bands are largely anonymous outside of the tiny album art thumbnail. To learn about them, you have to follow them on a separate social media platform. On MTV, there would be shows that interviewed bands before premiering their video, or had programs like like Pop-up Video that showed band trivia underneath the music video. I discovered Beck while watching the Pop Up video for "The New Pollution". The visual identity of a band or artist presented through the music video was key to introducing new sounds to me. The music video now is dead for all but the largest, best known artists, and their videos are predictable fodder made only to distribute on Youtube.

tracker1 1y ago

I genuinely miss it a lot... that and decent radio coverage. Phoenix had a few great stations that had not just the mainstream music but a lot of indie and smaller/local artists played. You just don't get much of that in the algorithmically generated content playlists today.