Rapper/entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs is set to launch a new cable music channel in December called Revolt TV, which will be available on both the Comcast CMCSA +0.75% and Time-Warner networks. According to various interviews, Diddy’s vision for Revolt is that it look more like MTV used to (playing music videos and being music-centric) rather than what it’s now become (a lifestyle channel based around reality programs). Indeed there may be a hole in the market for it, since Fuse now seems to be the only music network dedicated to current music. Still, some might wonder if a network based on early MTV can be successful in our current Music 3.0 world.
Many within the industry would like the answer to be yes, since the music business rose to its greatest financial peak during the years that MTV played videos and had programs built around them. Up until the music network came on line, radio was the principle means of promoting new product. MTV became a new and welcome promotional tool, helping to create the new stars that the industry needed, while helping to create a market for the then new and more profitable CD.
But what MTV also did was to change the nature of the music business star-making machinery. Gradually, a pretty, marketable face became much more important than the actual music that person created. Looks became an essential feature when a label considered signing a new act. If you weren’t photogenic enough, you wouldn’t get on MTV. If you weren’t on MTV, you lost out on the promotional tool with the most heat of the day. In a way, you can’t blame the major record labels for adopting this strategy, since most were owned by publicly traded companies by this time and had to appease their shareholders first and foremost. It was the path of least resistance.
MTV was the beginning of a paradigm shift in the business in more ways than one though, since now classic artists like Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie were previously given multiple album releases to break through. In the MTV era, either you were a hit right out of the box or you probably didn’t get a chance at a second album. The quarterly bottom line was calling, so the labels did their best to hedge their bets. The motto became something along the lines of, “All things being equal between two artists, take the good looking one.”
Then came the music videos themselves, where many directors thought of themselves as auteurs making a feature film that just so happened to have music artists in it. The budgets went into the stratosphere, charged to……..you guessed it, the artist. It could be hard enough to recoup your recording budget in those days, let alone a video budget that was twice as much.
Thankfully, the days of the overflowing budget are long gone except for a select few. At the moment, it’s possible to make a music video with a budget in the hundreds of dollars, not hundreds of thousands like before. Video gear is vastly improved, is amazingly inexpensive, and production knowledge is easily attainable. That has leveled the playing field, at least production-wise, because it means that any artist has the potential to make a great music video. Why should they care if they’re good looking or not?
My guess is that Revolt TV won’t have a huge effect on the industry either way. It will be a nice outlet for some artists, and may even make a career or two (if the network catches on in the first place), but it won’t have the tremendous promotional impact that MTV had either when it began or was at its peak.
The problem is that we now live in a different world. Even though Fuse is in 64 million homes (Revolt will launch in only 18 million), it’s struggled for ratings and is rumored to be on the block by parent Madison Square Garden Company. Perhaps Diddy can provide a focus and identity that Fuse could never find, but there’s still the fact that so many 18 to 34 year olds find most of their music on YouTube these days. Can Diddy provide of a reason for enough of them to alter their music consumption habits? It’s too early to tell, but either way, it will be good to have more music back on television again.
