Brindle Media

Posts Tagged ‘The Stones’

I love Billy Joel’s music and I respect him as an artist. But I have to disagree with him on his generalization that “Before MTV music said LISTEN to me, and after MTV it said LOOK at me.”

I’d argue that pre-MTV rock music artists like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper and KISS were very much visual as well as music acts. Fashion and attitude have been part of Rock N’ Roll culture since its inception.

During MTV’s early years, our team of researchers surveyed MTV viewers in those markets where the channel was available in order to learn their reactions to the songs we played. We used a methodology common to radio where the respondent was asked to rate a song based on how familiar they were with it and their level of positive or negative reaction to it. Early on, we were trying to determine a way to factor the visual variable into the equation and we found that the MTV viewers we spoke to frequently responded “I’ve seen that song”. Consequently, we changed the language in our survey to ask “Have you seen this song?”.

During my four years as MTV’s Director of Video Music Programming, it was my observation that the video component might have created some initial interest in a song but, if the music didn’t strike that responsive chord with viewers which catapults a song into the level of viable hit, the video was going to provide the necessary momentum to save the song.

It’s always been about the music.

Image may attract attention but, in the end, it’s the relevance of the music and the emotional connection it makes with the listener that really matters.