Last week the ubiquitous YouTube – online purveyor of video content including many of Saturday Night Live’s most beloved skits – revealed to Billboard that it was negotiating with record labels for rights to post music videos from past and present for free. The move signals the company’s wish to add “mainstream entertainment” to its menu of home video offerings.
Labels should feel hard-pressed not to jump at such a deal. Only a year old, YouTube generates more than 100 million views daily. Bands have used its free upload services to promote their careers, some to surprising success. Warner Music Group and EMI both are reportedly interested. If others like Universal and Sony BMG also take the bait, every single music video ever made could potentially be up on the site within 18 months.
This means I can watch Michael Jackson’s Thriller anytime I want. Let me also interject that Thriller is the best music video ever. Forget that he dangles babies off balconies, “accidentally” visits women’s restrooms, and sports a removable nose. Thriller has stood the test of time – not just for its brilliant choreography, set design, and makeup – but because it was arguably the first to elevate the music video as an independent art form from merely serving as a function of a top-40 hit.
These days, YouTube is what MTV was in the 1980s, a decade chock full of artists whose careers were made by the Music Television network. Dire Straits sang the praises of money for nothing, the B52s invited us to get groovy at their love shack, and Madonna begged papa not to preach.
Those heady days are long gone (a cursory glance over MTV’s current programming is a good indication that we music fans have been punk’d). But YouTube could spring a revival. One certainty in business is that people like free stuff. iTunes, Yahoo Music, and AOL Music should be worried right about now, as their customers would undoubtedly flee their pay-to-view video services for YouTube’s free offering. Meanwhile, the labels – many of whom notoriously drag up artists from their back catalogs every few years for lucrative greatest hits compilations – would have a quick and viable outlet for promoting music that has remained on their rosters but has long since vanished from the public consciousness.
Sadly, this means Tiffany and New Kids on the Block might very well enjoy a renaissance. But it also means songs like Thriller, Sledgehammer, and Land of Confusion would all be gloriously restored to my CRT with a mere click of the mouse. Once I wanted my MTV. With such possibilities waiting in the wings, now I want my YouTube more than ever.
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