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Music Media The Internet

MTV Launches Music Video Site 192

Posted by Soulskill from the guess-what's-top-rated-right-now dept.
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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MTV Launches Music Video Site More

MTV Launches Music Video Site

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  • Enjoy it while it lasts (Score:5, Funny)

    by dyingtolive ( 1393037 ) <brad.arnett@no t f o r h i r e . o rg> 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 )
      It won't be night and day though. About 4 months down the line they'll throw in the occasional episode of Remote Control. That will entice us to want more. They'll also tone down our appreciation for the music videos by playing MTV Jams for a month or two. That's when they'll throw the bag of crap in our face and give us nothing but the Real World, Road Rules, the Real World/Road Rules Challenge, the Real Road Rules World Rules, and Road Rules Real World Rules Road World Challenge 6.

      • 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.

      • Screw the music videos.

        Give me Liquid Television back!

        Aeon Flux and The Maxx, too, while you're at it.

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

    by Chriscypher ( 409959 ) <slashdot@metamedi a . 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by dotancohen ( 1015143 )

      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

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by timmarhy ( 659436 )
      huh sorry i missed that i just farted?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jonaskoelker ( 922170 )

      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 ) <JohnstonDJ.gmail@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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by clickclickdrone ( 964164 )
        >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

      • Ah yes, Under Pressure. Truly an archaic and unknown obscurity.

        I truly fear for the next generation (And I'm only 22. Sigh.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Whiteox ( 919863 )

        Yeah, but they'll never show Faust or Bonzo Dog will they? It's just middle of the road crap.

        • Middle of the road crap is all that's profitable. The long tail theory didn't survive contact with Joe Downloader [harvard.edu].

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Whiteox ( 919863 )

            Thanks for the link. The long tail theory is very welcoming for me, as we get flooded with middle of the road in everything, the saturation makes us want something different.
            For example: Bonzo Dog created some fine music and were involved with the Beatles, Monty Python etc.
            So if you're a Beatles fan or a Monty Python fan, then eventually you get drawn to Bonzo Dog. Then you get to appreciate them for what they were.
            Faust is the complete antithesis of 'middle of the road'. When you get jaded with tin pan all

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by Provocateur ( 133110 )

              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.

            • Did you get the part about the long tail theory being wrong, at least as far as its 20/80 split goes?

              As the numbers come in, it turns out that even consumers (I use the word carefully here) on all-you-can-eat subscriptions never touch over 90% of the content on offer, and when they do touch the other 10%, it's very rarely. The long tail is there, but it's very, very thin indeed, and has little monetary value beyond marketing the total size of the content offering.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kent_eh ( 543303 )
      Same here in Canada.
      I even tried some Canadian bands, just for fun. Still "not viewable from outside the USA".
      But on their "sign up" page, you can select from the standard list of every country in the world as your location.
      Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
    • I'm in the United States and so far, two of the five artists I tried just aren't there. But they're on YouTube.

  • 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"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lxs ( 131946 )

      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.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @07:25AM (#25553107)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Is it me, or is the music quality really bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheSunborn ( 68004 ) <mtilstedNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @07:27AM (#25553113)

    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@yaho o . c om> on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @07:29AM (#25553141)

    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: (Score:2)

        by vlm ( 69642 )

        Here's my fictional top 3 as told by popularity-contest

        As a debian developer for many years I can assure you it is primarily used to split install media. The top quintile of popularity goes on the first DVD, the bottom quintile goes on the last, fifth DVD. If you are too poor to afford all the DVDs (or CDs), just start burning disks starting with disk #1, until you run out of cash for disks, and you'll probably end up having what you need on the disks you could afford.

        Another entertainment is to use it to justify dropping unmaintained packages, by the same ty

    • 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@yaho o . c om> on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @07:32AM (#25553165)

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

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

    ffs, /.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      Laugh all you want, but he's probably making more money now than he ever has in his life. He doesn't even need the food stamps anymore.

    • Top Rated:
      Never Gonna Give You Up
      By Rick Astley

      It's obvious MTV realized that if they wanted to compete with YouTube, they had to have the most popular music video of all time [mtvmusic.com] on there, or they just couldn't compete.

      On a more serious note, did anyone else notice that their flash player looks almost exactly like Hulu's? I wonder if there is some licensing agreement with Hulu behind the scenes?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Goaway ( 82658 )

      You think Slashdot has anything to do with that?

      Sorry to break it to you, but the days when Slashdot did anything to affect things on the larger net are long since past.

  • 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

  • Incredibly enough, there are some music fans that actually live outside the US. Obviously MTV doesn't think we are a large demographic given this message: "Copyright restricts us from playing this video outside the U.S."

    Just another reason they are irrelevant - sad really, given I used to love MTV growing up (then again, that was way back when the M stood for music).

  • 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. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by i_want_you_to_throw_ ( 559379 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @07:51AM (#25553311) Journal
    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.

    • Come on, all these groups are more than 30 years old.
      I'm also a fan of Human League, and it's a group from 1977 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_League [wikipedia.org]

      I remember a vague video from them at that time, but all these groups were not known from their clips. From 1980, the only video I remember was from a group named Aha.

      Argh, I'm feeling old now !

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by daeley ( 126313 )

        They play all three of those bands' videos on VH1 Classic's 120 Minutes show and others, so it's not like they don't have them lying around.

  • allmusic.com (Score:2, Informative)

    by pretygrrl ( 465212 )

    allmusic.com has a huge selection of videos, im guessing legally, as they are a huge site thats been around forever.
    i haven't had it happen where I looked for a video and not found it there.
    i bet they got more selection now than mtv will in 2 yrs.

  • So MTV is branching out into music, huh? Interesting.

    "After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network."
                          -The Onion

  • Why (Score:2, Informative)

    by Chutulu ( 982382 )
    the fuck is a band like Morbid Angel stuffed in a "Rock" category? And no Burzum or Bathory videos? This suxs.

    • the fuck is a band like Morbid Angel stuffed in a "Rock" category? And no Burzum or Bathory videos? This suxs

      And thus, MTV has successfully brought the Beavis and Butthead experience to the internet.

    • Because MTV only cares about demographics, and the average viewer of MTV would not be searching under Black Metal, Death Metal, or Doom Metal. Would I love to see videos by Woods of Belial, Deathspell Omega, Judas Iscariot, and Nargaroth? Hell Yes. Would MTV ever show them, if such videos even exist? Nope.

      MTV Europe, on the other hand, apparently shows videos by bands like Burzum, Bathory, and Immortal. Go figure.

  • People still watch music videos?
  • I can't view most of the videos do to copyright issues. Well, looks like they wasted their time with this.

  • Obscured videos (Score:2, Interesting)

    by implowry ( 989364 )

    I stopped watching all MTV channels when they decided to show half the actual video. When they do show videos they are 75% obscured by 5 not so invisible station identification emblems. Like I can't figure out what station I'm watching.

    Do I dare mention the enormous banners that either pop on screen or just stay there, telling you how you should watch the video you're trying to watch. I think I hate all of those things even more than Lewis Black [youtube.com] does.

    I'm sure that watching the videos on the computer in m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by British ( 51765 )

      They had a program called AMP in the mid-90s. Great show. Lots of interesting videos. About a year into the show, they went from playing full-length videos to "samples" of the videos for some bizarre reason. They screwed up a perfectly good show.

  • No 'Men Without Hats,' crashes Firefox on Mac OS X, lame.

  • 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]

    • this has to do with the version the label wants you see c.v. the version weird al originally made.

    • I'm sure it's the "music" station being their usually bizarre douchy selves. They probably bleeped it out because such information might be bad for the children. Kind of like how they blur our Al flipping the bird in Amish Paradise-- or, hell, even how they bleep out the word "Cocaine" in the "Jesus of Suburbia" video. Because goodness forbid a nice, young child hears an awful, horrible word. Not on a family friendly station!

  • At http://www.vh1classic.com/browse/video/17278/featured-playlists/index.jhtml [vh1classic.com], you can play lots of videos.

    These have been available on the VH1 Classic site for quite some time now, I believe.

    Since MTV and VH1/VH1 Classic share the same corporate parent, maybe they've just now added the VH1 Classic video content to MTV's site.

    Pete

  • MTV getting out of the Television business, and back into the music business.

    As to the Firefox drivel, nice to know click through EULA's are not evil, eh?

    --Toll_Free

  • I'm not surprised they're doing this - they know people watch Viacom owned TV shows on YouTube, so here's a breakdown of their plans:

    1. Launch a laggy, Web 2.0 music video site, covered with banner ads and siezure enducing Flash ads, with the same concepts as YouTube
    2. Sue every video sharing site to remove every Viacom owned media file from said sites
    3. ???
    4. PROFIT!?

    Give it a few months and there will be nothing on that site except MTV's classic "Reality" shows, half of which are copies of previous realit

  • Hmmm... at 38 my memory is not what it used to be. I seem to recall however, that in Joan Jett's version of Crimson and Clover, she pulled open a robe to reveal herself in a bikini. While I found the video, I didn't see that scene. Was it in "Touch?"

    P.S. Yeah, I'm kinda hard up at the moment.

  • No it's not Real World or Road Rules or Jackass or Cribs. I want 'Pimp My Car' because you guessed it...I want them to Pimp My Car!

  • Any competition is good. Just look at how fancast and hulu have changed up the whole tv game. Since these are legal and now you will have a place to find all of these music videos. A lot of music videos aren't on youtube because they have been taken down and a lot of them ...especially the ones which are a little older are horrible quality.

    So cheers now lets go back to bashing corporations like usual. :P

  • fuckers. Long live youtube.

  • If you want to look at what MTV should be, head on over to Pitchfork TV [pitchfork.tv]. Good music, lots of which you've never heard of, live performances, interviews, basically everything MTV used to be. *Somebody* out there still thinks they can make money playing good music.

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