Every artist is now a music video star thanks to YouTube, but the idea that artist will be seen before they are heard, started 43 years ago, when MTV launched on August 1, 1981, with “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Initially, the network struggled to compete with the radio due to a limited music video library and the niche status of cable TV.
By 1982, a docu-series was created questioning how long will radio last. Videos were designed for young people and are they were deemed bad for the brain by conservatives.
Black artists were not aired on the platform and several white superstars like David Bowie lashed out at the platform’s segregated programming. Executives at the station narrowcasted to cater to their preferred rock audiences.
MTV eventually had a few black music videos which Bowie said were played from “2:30 in the morning till around 6:00,” with rhythm and blues artists and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” helping to elevate the network’s influence on the music industry.
The channel propelled stars like Madonna and Duran Duran and revitalized the careers of artists like ZZ Top and Tina Turner.
Still there was a gap in the amount of video broadcasting the offered black artists.
In comes Bob Johnson with a business plan he tailored, and a $300,000 loan from John Malone, the ‘Cable Cowboy’ of Tele Communications Inc .who had several cable systems in American at the time. Malone is the chairman of Liberty Global, the parent company of Live Nation, Ticketmaster, SiriusXM and Cable and Wireless. In 2021, Liberty sold its interest in the radio business, but offloading its 5.94 million shares in iHeartMedia according to an iHeartMedia Securities and Exchange Commission filing, worth upwards of $150 million.
“BET came about in 1978/79, and it came about not because I was the only guy thinking about starting a cable network, a lotta people saw cable’s potential to start a niche program and I was just fortunate to be in the right place and right time put it together because I was working in the Cable Trade Association,” Johnson told My Black Diamond Cinema. So I met all of the cable executives who were building cable systems in the mountainous areas.”
After graduating from Princeton, Johnson found a job in Washington, D.C., which introduced him to the television industry. He served as the public affairs director for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the director of communications for the National Urban League’s Washington, D.C. office. He also worked as a press secretary for Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy and later became vice president of government relations at the National Cable and Television Association (NCTA). In 1980, Johnson launched Black Entertainment Television, which became a full-fledged channel in 1983. He left NCTA in 1979 to create BET. He said he took the programming idea BET adopted from black radio and black magazines, which already had targeted programming for minority communities.
“Black radio had been around a long time; it was targeted programming over radio. Magazines like Ebony and JET had also been around, offering targeted print content distributed through magazines. BET was an extension of those, but it involved satellite-cable technology, which had just emerged by the time I was in the industry,” Johnson said.
Bob started Black Entertainment Television (BET) with a focus on programming for African American viewers. BET started with two hours of weekly programming and expanded to a diverse array of shows, including music videos, political programs, comedies, talk shows, and sports. BET went public in 1991, was taken private in 1998, and sold to Viacom Inc. in 2000 for $3 billion, making Johnson the first African American Billionaire and the largest individual shareholder in Viacom. Liberty also received a stake in Viacom. It now reaches about 90 million households and has diversified into book publishing and event production.
Viacom Inc. had bought MTV Networks in 1985, leading to genre-specific shows and a shift towards non-music content such as reality shows and game shows. By the mid-1990s, most of MTV’s schedule was non-music programming, while VH1 catered to adult-oriented rock videos.
MTV2 launched in 1996 to revive MTV’s original spirit but eventually followed a similar path to its parent network. Despite less focus on music, MTV continued to celebrate music videos through the annual Video Music Awards and shows like “Total Request Live.”
In 2005, Video-sharing website YouTube picked up where MTV and BET left off . The social media platform, was founded by former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim on February 14.
Initially attracting around 30,000 visitors per day during its beta phase in May 2005, YouTube rapidly grew to serve over two million daily video views by its official launch on December 15, 2005, and 100 million daily views by summer 2006. The site’s rapid growth led to increased costs for equipment and broadband, along with legal challenges over copyrighted material. In November 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, opting to maintain its separate operation. Google addressed copyright issues by negotiating with entertainment companies and removing infringing content. In 2008, Google partnered with MGM to stream full-length movies and TV shows with ads.
Now, 99% of all music video content consumed on the internet is on the Google owned platform. YouTube Music has a free tier supported by ads with YouTube Music now having localized versions in 100 countries as of 2021. 77% of people aged 18-34 use YouTube to listen to music. Where YouTube eclipse radio is YouTube Music’s ability to switch seamlessly between audio and video playback.
YouTube reports that more than 2 billion logged-in users visit their platform every month and Over 20% of all viewing time on YouTube is spent on music content. According to YouTube more than 2 billion logged-in users visit their platform every month.
Users can find music in over 80 languages on YouTube Music and independent artists make up the largest category of content creators on YouTube, representing about 40% of all music content.
These are all features the neither radio nor television can provide but in a mobile world where more than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices, YouTube can do what radio and television did or music in the past.
Now, all over the world, artists release their music on streaming platforms and YouTube first before they get an impression on radio. Almost 50 years after the prediction of its death, will the ever resilient broadcasting FM channels maintain a share of music play and will artist continue looking to radio for success?
