6/30/10 Los Angeles Times 

"Warner signs a multiyear, nonexclusive deal to let MTV sell ads for thousands of Warner's online music videos." 

 

MTV has already chopped the "Music Television" corporate tag-line from it's logo and it's company profile. It seems strange now to take the last vestige of the dignity that music videos had left -- Youtube -- and somehow find a way to make it worse.

 

MTV used to help make music videos an actual commodity, something that help sell a song, break an artist, sell a T-shirt or magazine, and they abandoned the business model for cheaper, lowered-expectation, reality programming. It seems outlandish for MTV to still lay claim to controlling the way music videos are watched at this point, doesn't it?

Yet they have found a way back in. And maybe they'll encourage the music business to do better by its artists and songs...but knowing MTV, they'll just add a bunch of cell phone ads plastered around the sides. I'm sure Thom Yorke and Shakira are going to look much cooler teamed up with a Geico Caveman.