The move came after the once-influential network shuttered its remaining 24/7 music channels across a number of European and overseas territories in December.
In the end, video didn’t just kill the radio star, it did itself in as well. After MTV’s parent company pulled the plug on its remaining music-only channels in the U.K., Ireland and Australia on New Year’s Eve — including MTV Music, MTV ’80s, MTV Live, Club MTV and MTV ’90s, among others — as part of a $500 million cost-cutting effort, fans of the once-dominant media brand lamented the end of an era.
And while false rumors suggested the move meant a total shutdown of the MTV brand — it did not — many former admirers were still moved to pay tribute to the formerly vital music video channel that made megastars out of Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and so many more in the 1980s and ’90s. (Editor’s note: this writer was formerly employed by MTV News).
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One enterprising superfan, in fact, went so far as to launch the exhaustive MTV Rewind site, which features more than 33,000 music videos spanning the 1970s-2020s, with no ads and a landing page that features the iconic first minutes of the debut broadcast from Aug. 1, 1981, including audio of the inaugural video, the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
Logging in is like a trip to the way-back machine of MTV’s early days, when the channel that has mostly been a repository for Ridiculousness episodes and other reality TV and sitcoms since the late 1990s regularly played clips from the likes of Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Pretenders, REO Speedwagon and The Cars.
The site features a navigator bar that bundles videos from the channel’s first day on air, as well as more than 6,000 clips from its beloved indie rock showcase 120 Minutes (think R.E.M., The White Stripes, Radiohead and the Flaming Lips) and 122 clips from its acoustic showcase, MTV Unplugged.
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Sprinkled in among the 11 channels are vintage commercials (Shake Weight, Atari 2600, Grey Poupon), as well as collections from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and 2000s and videos played on Yo! MTV Raps, the hard rock-focused Headbangers Ball and a “shuffle all” option. And while, like the old MTV, you can’t select which specific video plays next, you can fast forward and rewind at your pleasure.
The site, whose database is powered by IMVDb (The Internet Music Video Database) features a disclaimer from it’s founder, who goes by the handle “FlexasaurusRex La Creme” on X, that MTV Rewind is an independent, non-commercial archival project that is not affiliated with, or endorsed by MTV, or parent companies Viacom and Paramount Global; it notes that the videos are all hosted on YouTube.
At press time a spokesperson for Paramount Global had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the project.
“MTV was a cultural institution that changed music, fashion and youth culture. Then they stopped showing music videos and became reality TV,” Flexasaurus Rex wrote in a post over the weekend. “I felt a wave of sadness when the announcement hit. Nothing felt like it could fill that void. So I started coding. Built it in 48 hours: MTV Rewind… no ads, no algorithm, completely free reddit killed my viral posts (1.1K upvotes) because of auto-mod BS I’m broke, exhausted, and honestly feeling like s–t but thousands are using it and that’s what matters.”
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The latter is ironic because it was YouTube, in part, that helped to usher in the death of MTV’s 24-hour music channels by giving fans the opportunity to choose videos at will.
