After MTV closed down a lot of its 24-hour music-only channels – including five in the UK – on December 31, someone on Reddit has created an online alternative.
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The website is called MTV Rewind, and it plays music videos all day without any modern ads (though you might see a few vintage commercials thrown in) or reality TV shows. It hosts over 27,000 music videos from the 1970s onwards, and visitors can filter by decade, step back in time with Yo! MTV Raps or Headbangers Ball, or simply shuffle the vast archive and leave it to fate.
As it says on the site, “No ads, no algorithm, no login, just pure random discovery. Pick a decade. Press play. Let the chaos begin.”
Simply hit play, and it will behave almost exactly like a classic music channel – viewers can’t choose which video to play next, but there are options to fast forward or go back to another song. And, by triple-clicking the MTV logo, there’s the opportunity to save favourite music videos – which are then accessed by clicking the logo once.
MTV first launched in the US in 1981, and the first video to play on the channel was ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ by The Buggles. A European version arrived in 1987, opening with Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’, and a dedicated UK channel came ten years later with the video for David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds’ football anthem ‘Three Lions’.
Over the years, there has been a shift in viewing habits, with music videos gradually becoming consumed more often on YouTube and social media as opposed to traditional television. MTV UK went on to branch out into original programming, and the main channel abandoned music videos altogether in 2011.
It was reported in October last year that MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live would all stop broadcasting, but that flagship channel MTV HD, which shows reality series like Geordie Shore, would remain. A nod to the channel’s origins over four decades ago, MTV closed its UK music-only channels with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’.
MTV’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, also closed down channels in Ireland, Germany, Austria, Poland, France, Hungary, Australia and Brazil at the same time. When Paramount Global merged with Skydance Media in an $8billion deal in August, CEO David Ellison was said to be keen to cut costs, but was considering ways to revitalise MTV, and there has been speculation that there have been discussions about turning it into an online streaming service to rival YouTube and Spotify.