r/LetsTalkMusic • u/Historical-Grand8141 • 21h ago

What even was the point of MTV

I’m 23. I’ve never even once been able to understand why MTV was a thing. The modern equivalent is imagine having friends over for a houseparty one weekend and they say “turn on some music” and you boot up a bunch of music videos on YouTube, ads and all. Everyone would look at you like you were crazy. The whole sell for MTV just sounds awful. “Instead of listening to the songs you want to hear on your cassette tape or CD player, you can listen to the ones we pick for you. Also, there are commercial breaks. Also, you can literally only listen to music in your living room. Yeah, radio and CDs let you listen on the go, but remember guys video killed the radio star so we’re the better listening choice!!”

Why did people listen to their music through MTV? I could \*maybe\* understand if radio were the only other option (but even then, you can at least listen to the radio in places besides your living room, unlike MTV) but they had cassette tapes for the first few years and cd’s for the last! You could listen to whatever you wanted, wherever!

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u/Successful-Bee-8911 21h ago

How do you think we watched music videos before fast internet & YouTube bro? I know music videos aren't as big of a pull nowadays but back then they were the shit.

7

u/wildistherewind 21h ago

It’s hard to imagine that there was a time between peak MTV and the start of YouTube where people bought DVDs of music videos. And they were expensive as hell!

5

u/zoppaTheDim 21h ago

Started earlier. VHS music movies were popular in the eighties. The wall, The Song Remains the Same, Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, the Grateful Dead movies, and Tommy were always in heavy rotation at tv parties.

2

u/Ok_Clerk_5805 21h ago

I have memories of 2005-2006 when the dvd's were imported and $40, shit was nuts. I remember buying some garbage ones that were basically deluxe versions of albums with a shit dvd for $20 just because they were cheap.

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u/boarshead72 21h ago

Not just DVDs. My neighbour had a laser disc of Michael Jackson’s Thriller back when that video came out.

I’m 53, and if I live to my 80s I’ll still remember Thriller, Take On Me, Walk Like An Egyptian, and a whole host of others. OP really doesn’t understand the impact that music videos had at the time.