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MTV Launches Music Video Site

Posted by Soulskill on Wed Oct 29, 2008 07:15 AM
from the guess-what's-top-rated-right-now dept.
Media Music The Internet
An anonymous reader writes "MTV Music has just launched a website where they offer over 16,000 music videos — like YouTube, but with fewer notices and DMCA takedowns. They've also set up development tools for third parties to incorporate the content into their own creations. Users creating accounts at the site face other challenges, however, such as the six separate agreements and privacy statements that must be accepted via a single checkbox. Thankfully, at the time of writing the MTV Music website was making this process easier on its Firefox 3 visitors by automatically checking the accept box whenever any agreement is viewed."
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Submission: MTV Music goes online, has 6 account agreements by Anonymous Coward
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  • Enjoy it while it lasts (Score:5, Funny)

    by dyingtolive (1393037) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:18AM (#25553041)
    In about 8 months, they'll have nothing but Real World, and you'll have to go to www.mtvmusic2.com if you want to actually see music videos.
      • Why is this shit on /.? Is this really stuff that matters? You can find a good number of music videos on Youtube, Break, Liveleak, and many others.

        Because unlike 99% of videos on YouTube, MTV has offered them legally. And most likely, they've encoded them correctly rather than as stuttering captures from a 3rd-gen VHS copy-from-broadcast.

        Hey, I'll agree with you completely that I don't the "legal" distinction doesn't matter from a practical standpoint, but why would anyone prefer the illegal versions

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by HungryHobo (1314109)

        I take it Real World / Road Rules are like big brother over here. "big brother season 3065 now with even more fucked up people!"

        But unfortunatly this site isn't available to people in europe and I can't be assed going through a proxy.

        Fucking regional distribution. I'll stick with piracy since at least the pirate sites treat me the same whether I'm a fucking red blooded american or not.

  • Music video site? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chriscypher (409959) <slashdot&metamedia,us> on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:19AM (#25553051) Homepage

    I wonder how long until they subvert the channel to only broadcast crappy reality shows.

    • I wonder how long until they subvert the channel to only broadcast crappy reality shows.

      It's even worse already. All they are broadcasting at the moment is:

      Internal Server Error - Read
      The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

      Reference #3.934519d4.1225292456.1d7561c4

    • Actually.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by RulerOf (975607) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @11:58AM (#25557417)
      The people behind MTV Music's web presence filmed a short video detailing their goals with the site, and outlined how they'll separate the Music videos from other MTV content to help establish a more defined web presence. I found it worthwhile.

      http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=55086 [mtvmusic.com]

  • So that's where all the music went... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thomsomc (1247152) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:20AM (#25553065)
    I guess they finally had to move ALL of the music videos off the air and onto a new website. I was wondering where they were going to actually show music videos...now I know.

  • Neither music nor television (Score:3, Funny)

    by hoto0301 (811128) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:21AM (#25553073)
    mtvmusic2.com will soon be dominated by jackass and some other useless bullshit that will destroy any remaining dignity the internet may have once had
    • huh sorry i missed that i just farted?

    • Says you:

      will destroy any remaining dignity the internet may have once had

      Says DNA:

      There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

      Says I:
      http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1011281&cid=25553165 [slashdot.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by db32 (862117)
      Whoa whoa whoa...say what you will about MTV and their hordes of Real World style bullshit shows, but Jackass is awesome.

      1. They act like idiots. They know they act like idiots. They go over the top acting like idiots. Idiot watching is amazing so long as the idiots are safely corraled and can be observed from a safe distance. Even before Jackass, think back to all the videos emailed around and such...almost all of the videos were of people doing something monumentally stupid, all viewed from the saf

  • Does this mean..? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Burning1 (204959) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:21AM (#25553075) Homepage

    Does this mean that they can stop wasting our time with those stupid music videos on their TV channel, and get back to their reality TV roots...?

  • US only (Score:5, Informative)

    by JohnstonDJ (861127) <JohnstonDJNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:24AM (#25553095)
    I was thinking this was going to be really cool. If it was of a higher resolution than youtube, and all neatly organized it would be awesome. However It gets major negative points from me, as on the three video files I tried all i got was a "Copyrights prevent us from playing this file outside the U.S." Back to youtube for me.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by whoisrich (1194797)
      Urgh, im in the UK, and I tried the top 4 most viewed, and all were not available outside the U.S.
      • >Urgh, im in the UK, and I tried the top 4 most viewed, and all were not available outside the U.S.
        probably a blessing - be happy about it.

    • Which videos?

      I just clicked on couple of the videos from the front page and they work (Money For Nothing, Never Gonna Give You Up, Under Pressure, Touch Of Grey, Welcome to the Jungle).
      But boy does the sound on the Under Pressure suck.
      Apparently MTV forgot what that M stands for cause video runs and looks just fine. Better than most youtube videos I've seen.

      On a side note, comments like this make me feel old. And I'm not even 30 yet. XD

      Someone commenting on Under Pressure by Queen an David Bowie:

      dawimp523 1

            • Uhura: Captain? They want to know if you want to pay by credit card or Paypal.

              Captain: (Searches uniform) Ehrm I seem to have left my wallet at home. THis thing doesn't even have pockets! Spock?

              (Spock nerve pinches the first red-shirted guy on deck, gets that guy's credit card and hands it to Kirk)

              Captain (to Spock): Did you just nerve pinch that guy...

              Spock: I believe the proper term is 'identity theft', Captain.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by JohnstonDJ (861127)
        Looking around it seems to be that. About half the video files are copyright restricted. I know it falls under different copyright laws, but the files I am attempted to watch on the website I have viewed on New Zealands version of MTV. Damn having broadcast rights, but not streaming rights.

        • Re:US only (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ErkDemon (1202789) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @08:59AM (#25554067) Homepage
          Only about half? (!!?)

          As an exercise, I've just gone back and tried about twenty or thirty major MTV-friendly videos from major MTV-type artists and current chart singles (US and UK), and I haven't gotten a single one to play.

          Zero success rate. They all have the "US-only" copyright notice.

          This is bad. It has National Security implications. How are we supposed to convince the Aggrieved Iranian Youth to drop hardcore Islamic values and embrace the West, if we don't let them see the purty videos with wimmin-in-bikinis jumping up and down? They're just going to be even more aggrieved, and the people who win are going to be the repressive local governments who wanted to block all this material anyway.

          MTV is supposed to be the international shopfront for The American Dream. It's sometimes partly credited for the destruction fo the Berlin Wall (glum East-Berliners had illegal MTV cable wired under the Wall, and thought the West was all conspicuous consumption and pink cadillacs).

          How're you gonna export US aspirational fantasies to other cultures if you set up an info-wall that stops outsiders from being able to see in?

          "Hearts and Minds", people! Ya can't corrupt the youth of North Korea and Afghanistan with Decadent Western Values if you don't show them the goodies! Leave a vacuum, and, gawd, they're just gonna develop their own cultural material.

          The US has lost so much influence around the world in the last eight years in so many areas, popular entertainment is perhaps is last major niche where it can claim world dominance. Of those, TV and movies and music are the three "broadcastables". Pull the plug on world access to MTV, and you're losing a major component of the infowars where the US has technical superiority -- music tends to be cheap to produce, music videos tend to be expensive.

  • Give me the box (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RemoWilliams84 (1348761) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:25AM (#25553101)
    Great, now mtv has another way to brainwash kids into thinking this emo crap is music. I also hate how some of my favorite bands are pigeonholed as a certain type of music because if they ever have a hit song it has to be just the right amount of pop. I miss the box music network. They seemed to have a great rotation and mix of music, at least in my area.

  • Can I use a plug in to download the selected video or not.

    Something is up on Youtube recently as I am randomly getting junk FLV when downloading videos where a week or two ago all the videos I downloaded were viewable "offline"

    • Something similar happened to me. Upgrading VLC to the latest version seemed to fix it. Apparently, it wasn't a junk FLV, just a newer encoding.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thatskinnyguy (1129515)
      The new encoding isn't junk. It's MP4. Try changing the extension.

  • Proper music goes in the ears... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pandrijeczko (588093) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:25AM (#25553107)

    ...not the eyes.

    Yes, by all means show me a concert of some proper musicians playing live to an audience, or show me some historic footage of a band in a documentary.

    But please don't show me pretty "mini-movies" that do nothing more than try to distract me from realising how crap the underlying music actually is.

    MTV have done for music what pork fat has done for cardiac health.

  • Is it me, or is the music quality really really bad?

    It almost sound like they encoded the music as 96Kbit/sec mp3 and then added noise.

  • From what I see, compared to yesterday, looks like they are cutting back on comments, rating and logging in to keep streaming the videos. They must be seeing quite a bit of traffic.

  • Lucky default? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jonaskoelker (922170) <jonaskoelker@nOSpAM.gnu.org> on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:29AM (#25553141) Homepage

    Thankfully, at the time of writing the MTV Music website was making this process easier on its Firefox 3 visitors by automatically checking the accept box whenever any agreement is viewed.

    I sure as hell hope this is ironic. It's my vague recollection that there are laws (or court findings) against the default behavior being entering into a contract.

    In US contract law, there has to be a meeting of the minds for a contract to be formed. That is, both parties have to believe they agree on what the contract says.
    (Source: female lawyer from the defcon media archives; can't remember exactly who though)

    When you click next without having read the contract, have the minds met? If the checkbox is on by default, you implicitly say you do, but did you mean to do that?

    In any case, if it's not illegal, it's something that smells wrong.

    Consider this: when you install Debian or Ubuntu, you're asked whether you want to install popularity-contest, a program that reports anonymous usage data [which packages are installed, when have they last been used].

    I trust the Debian project and Canonical to not misuse that data, and to aggregate enough of it such that usage patterns which could identify individuals with high probability are lost in the aggregation process.

    But it's still the right thing for Debian and Ubuntu not installing popularity-contest unless the user explicitly wants to.

    -- Jonas K

    • Consider this: when you install Debian or Ubuntu, you're asked whether you want to install popularity-contest, a program that reports anonymous usage data [which packages are installed, when have they last been used].

      I've always thought popularity-contest is the dumbest application you could install. Don't agree? Here's my fictional top 3 as told by popularity-contest:

      1. popularity-contest
      2. linux-kernel-image
      3. xorg

      Genius.

    • Re:Lucky default? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jomegat (706411) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @08:01AM (#25553393)
      Oh yes, thankfully they check that box for me. I was at a drug store this summer trying to get some Sudafed, but in order to do that, I was presented with an electronic notice telling me how I could go jail if I told lies about my intended use of the product (or some such rot - thanks meth-heads!). As I was reading the notice, they clerk "thankfully" grabbed the pen and checked the "Yes, I read this and understand it" box "for" me before I had even finished the first sentence. I was astounded. She got all huffy when I insisted she start all over, because I wanted to read all the fine print before agreeing to anything.

      MTV's approach is not that much different.

  • ffs, Rick-Rolled already? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jonaskoelker (922170) <jonaskoelker@nOSpAM.gnu.org> on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:32AM (#25553165) Homepage

    Here's what a quick look on the site says:

    Top Rated:
    <img/>
    Never Gonna Give You Up
    By Rick Astley

    ffs, /.

  • MTV started out as a music video channel, which eventually took them to create MTV2, a channel of deranged muppets, guys getting kicked in the nuts and all sorts of contents created by and intended for brain-damaged idiots. They would have eventually created this as well, except that Youtube already fills this niche.

  • That's nearly a quarter of my mp3 collection!

    More seriously, the interface seems nice but the quality of the audio and video is similar to youtube and the non-English-language music offering is not too good. What is the point here really?

  • Maybe I'm just getting old (I am 25 after all), but who wants to sit at their computer at watch music videos?

    Let's see, you got sub-TV video quality levels, you don't have the convenience of a playlist, and you don't have the slick and trendy host who's "hip, rad, and down with it"* to tell you which songs you should want to buy.

    * I'm convinced that's what the kids say these days.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cashman73 (855518)
      Maybe I'm just getting old (I am 25 after all), but who wants to sit at their computer at watch music videos?

      Ever hear of S-Video out on your graphics card? Many computers have them these days.

      As for the quality, yeah, it's probably about on par with Youtube, though some are better, since they're converted from the original recording and not some fan's degraded VHS tape from the 1980s. Searching for a song on MTV's site is still a lot better than Youtube, though, since you generally get the song with

  • USA Only? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ErkDemon (1202789) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @07:51AM (#25553307) Homepage

    COPYRIGHTS RESTRICT US
    FROM PLAYING THIS VIDEO
    OUTSIDE THE U.S.

    So this site will shortly be eliminating pretty much all the competing sources of music videos on the web, but nobody outside the US is going to be able to watch it?

    Geographical firewalls on websites are a really bad idea. They're anti-www, anti free trade, and they Piss People Off. They make large chunks of the world population feel discriminated against, and resentful against the company or industry or country that's stopping them from being able to watch or read what other people can watch and read.

    They also make it more difficult to complain about other country-specific blocks, like China blocking its own population from being able to access certain external political sites. The more companies do this, the more frustrating the web will become.

  • It's still some corporation that thinks they know what it is I want to see.. right off the bat I tried...
    1. XTC
    2. Wall of Voodoo
    3. Human League


    Granted these are niche bands...nothing on any of these.

    When MTV gets around to allowing users to upload videos and then replacing them with their own pristine copies, I'll be impressed. Maybe they should have tried THAT model.

  • Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fireye (415617) on Wednesday October 29 2008, @08:33AM (#25553673)

    I was perusing this yesterday, and came across the Weird Al video "Don't Download This Song". One line in the original song goes:
    o/~ Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZaA o/~

    But the version on the new MTV site goes:
    o/~ Like *beep* or *beep* or *beep* or *beep* o/~

    Does anyone know if it was aired on MTV/VH1 this way, or is this unique to the web version?

    MTV: http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=108884 [mtvmusic.com]
    Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz-grdpKVqg [youtube.com]

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