Humans like having a few options, but they hate having too many. This is something you likely deal with every day: the internet gives you all the information you could possibly want at your fingertips, but you are easily overwhelmed by this. Admit it: despite what the internet has to offer, your interaction with it is filtered through a handful of websites and Google news. When information is overly abundant, we all need somebody to tell us what to spend our time on.
This principle is becoming increasingly relevant in the realm of music videos. Everybody is looking at YouTube as the next big thing: as something revolutionary that will change the game. Most agree that YouTube is indeed changing the face of music video distribution.
This is only partially true.
What YouTube does is twofold: a) increase the amount of available music video content, and b) makes it incredibly easy for this content to be distributed. YouTube does NOT, however, actually distribute this content to consumers. YouTube handles every piece in the distribution pipeline except the last, and most important, piece. Somebody must eventually decide to put that YouTube video somewhere where people can find it. These individuals are the ones calling the shots.
If I’m making mountains of cocaine in Columbia, I don’t need to worry about who’s dealing because the customers are already looking for my product. Now imagine people don’t even need my product, or know it exists. Somebody needs to convince them that they want what I’m distributing. In music video land they can take many forms: critics, tastemakers, blogs, whatever you want to call them. These people are Dealers and they tell you what you should be looking for. As a non-essential, secondary product music videos NEED these middlemen to survive. Music videos need salesmen even though music videos aren’t really products. Most of you are familiar with the greatest music video salesman of all time: MTV.
I often hear that YouTube (or Democracy or Zudeo… whatever the new hot thing is) will be the new MTV. No offense, but that’s just stupidly wrong. These services have about as much to do with MTV as music videos do these days (ba-zing!). While technology services such as YouTube constrain what is available, how it is seen, and even the amount of people who can *theoretically* see it, they do not ultimately control who *actually* sees it. YouTube is operating in a dealer vacuum and this problem will still hold even if YouTube videos are projected as crystal-clear 3D holograms. YouTube’s paradigm-shifting property is that it lets *anybody* be a dealer. When anybody is a dealer, nobody is a dealer. Too many choices, too many options: people tune out. When I want an apple, I don’t want to have to go door-to-door to see if somebody is selling one. I want to be able to go to the grocery store and *know* that they’ll have an apple. There are very few grocery stores in music video land1.
MTV is an icon because it was THE distributor and THE dealer2. What YouTube and its ilk have ensured is that MTV (the iconic MTV that is mostly meaningful to those born before 1985) will never happen again. Distribution will not be tied to the dealers of the content. The problem is that nobody has really stepped up to take the dealer role, and the dealer is the truly important piece of the puzzle. YouTube makes this problem worse, not better.
Here’s a little mental exercise to show you what I mean. Assume there is Video A and Video B. Both videos are of equal quality and appeal to the same tastes. Now imagine both videos are put on YouTube for distributioin. Now imagine Video A ends up embedded on 50,000 random blogs and myspace pages. Now imagine Video B is embedded in a post on Stereogum and Pitchfork. Which video is more successful? The answer is Video B, and that is why YouTube cannot be MTV: it is always constrained by the clout and reach of the dealer that embeds the video. Pitchfork gets people interested. Joe Everyblog… eh, not so much
Pitchfork and Stereogum are dealers, and strong ones, but they are dealers in the more general ‘music’ realm and not strictly in the “music video” realm. Where the hell are the music video dealers? Who’s going to tell me what I should be watching? I need a salesmen to help me make my purchase.
MTV exists online, sure, but it is mostly useful when you already know what you are looking for. Ironically MTV, the creator of the “I’m just watching videos with no purpose” mindset does not really cater to the behavior of discovering new music videos. I suppose it’s possible to just check into MTVs site everyday and watch new videos, but I don’t think it’s enjoyable or easy: I don’t know anybody who actually behaves in this way. MTV may be a dealer. but MTV.com is in no way the “MTV” of the internet3.
Ignoring MTV, The next biggest players in the purely online music video dealing game are:
videos.antville.org: A music-video community with user contributed content.
Cliptip: a blogspot blog ran by one man (I assume).
Shots Ring Out : *you are here
Some magazine-related outlets:
Paste
Promo
Check out this list to get extra-comprehensive.
And that’s really it4. Are any of these capable of being big-name video dealers?
As much as I love Antville, Antville failed at becoming the defacto dealer from the moment it was conceived. The reason is quite simple: Antville only works on relatively smaller scales. As more people contribute to Antville, it will inherently crumble under it’s own weight because it will simply replicate the same information bottleneck that prevents YouTube or the internet in general from being an effective dealer. To the average person, antivlle already has too much content to realistically consume in any consistent way. Given too many options: people just leave rather than make a choice. Even in it’s smaller form, Antville lacks a guiding voice and can thus be too chaotic for your average internet surfer.
That leaves sites like Cliptip and Shots Ring Out, which actually do filter content into manageable portions. These sites represent strong voices in the music video world5. Is this enough, though? Do music videos in the internet age need an MTV or a Pitchfork?
Yes they do. Will they get one? Maybe. Will it matter? Probably not.
Music Videos on their own aren’t profitable. Every major outlet you see music videos “succeeding” in uses them as secondary content. MTV stopped playing music videos because they make more money with other programming. Same with MTV2… MTV can end up at MTV345 and the same thing will happen: they’ll realize more people are interested in watching Real World/Road Rules Challenge 42: Whiny Bitches in Nebraska than they are in watching music videos. Music videos can’t support their own weight.
Here’s another mental exercise: Ask yourself why there is not a huge industry revolving around movie soundtracks. And I’m not talking about crappy summer movie filled with crappy pop songs soundtracks, I’m talking original compositions for films. It’s the same principle as music videos, just flipped: instead of video supporting music it’s music supporting video. Movie soundtracks sell, sure, just like music videos promote bands and records. However, the reason there is not a booming movie soundtrack industry is the same reason there will not be a music video “resurgence”: You cannot make a huge industry around secondary content. MTV will not happen again. MTV was successful because MTV *was* the phenomena, and it used music videos as stepping stones to move to bigger (not better) things.
So sure, maybe Shots Ring Out or Cliptip or some other yet to be created website will end up being the defacto dealer; the Pitchfork of the music video world. It’s just not going to mean all that much when anybody else can come around and make evenbettervideosite.blogspot.com with the exact same easily available content via YouTube 2.0. What we need now more than ever are true voices that can guide us through the information deluge. The era of monopolized dominance is ending… it’s easy to get content and it’s easy to deal it… IF you can get people to trust your word. The last great battle is the battle of quality control. We need true, died in the wool, passionate, talented critics to light our journey through the ever-growing YouTube forest. We need trusted dealers. Distribution is crucial, dealers are essential, but content is king. If content is bottlenecking at the dealer-level (YouTube dictates that to be true), dealers are still going to define success.
Who’s going to do it? Sites like this one and Cliptip are making a good go at it, but I have a feeling that our true saviour is probably lurking around Antville right now.
- I’m not quite sure what MTV is in this analogy, but it’s probably a shopping mall with a food court
- in conjunction with cable companies
- They could possibly still pull it off if they got their heads out of their Overdrive asses, but that ship is quickly sailing
- I’m using a fairly strict criteria here: the primary focus must be providing music video content and you need to have stuck with it for more than a few months (new players seem to pop up and go away every 6 months or so). No Fat Clips!, DoCopenhagen, etc. are all awesome but just don’t quite fit the bill. All love and no hate.
- The only way I’m managing to speak so objectively about my own site is to pretend I’m referring to the other guys who work here and not myself. It still feels a bit awkward.
I agree. We readers can find these videos on our own if we wanted to, but we come to SRO as consumers of your “taste” in music videos. That’s also why your holiday gift guide was such a hit - we agree in your taste in music & music videos, and so it’s only natural that that taste translates into excellent taste in material goodies too. [Shit now the word “taste” looks mega weird.] Keep up the good work!
Damn Jimmy Jam, I hope you copyrighted that “Real World/Road Rules Challenge 42: Whiny Bitches in Nebraska” idea. It’s too ridiculous not to produce!
So, what would be the end goal in all this? Yes your tastes are bomb. That is why people come here but people’s taste in general, suck. Hence the not so new MTV and the diabolic shows it puts out. I face a similar problem every time I talk about Brick. I could show people the film but the best response I would ever get would be “It’s interesting.” Mainly because they don’t understand the complexity of the film and how badass it really is. So, what is the end goal? To become popular enough to get everyone who should watch cool music videos to watch them but not big enough to get everyone to watch them? Or B.
music videos will be revolutionary again when you can buy them on iTunes for the same price as a single.
the success of video ipods will determine this.
The goal, George, is that you should have saw Brick at the ArcLight with Brian and I when it came out rather than jumping on the train a year later. You could have helped us recommend it to an indecisive Kevin Smith in the lobby.
I did neglect the whole iTunes angle here, mostly because numbers from Apple are vague at best. I’m guessing their music video sales are not quite up there with the TV shows (or movies, even). Half price would be a start.
Thanks, James, but I must have lost the invitation to that party. I think, however, I went like two days later for my birthday. I don’t see how the helps with my inability to bring Brick to the unknowing public. Maybe if I was a dealer they would listen.
Ignoring MTV, I know another player in the purely online music video dealing game: Superette
WE EXIST.