My first experience of a music channel came one holiday in the 90s. The only English channel on the hotel room TV was MTV. I was pretty much hooked straight away, I could watch it all day. Some days I did watch it all day.
Not only did I like watching the music videos, but there was also programmes like "Most Wanted" and "Beavis and Butt-Head" that I liked watching.
A few years later I subscribed to Sky for the first time. By this point there were several music channels. In addition to MTV you had MTV Base, MTV2 and MTV Extra, there was VH1 and VH1 Classic plus The Box and Kiss.
Each channel had it's own identity, but despite this I found most of the time I'd be flicking through the channels to find a good song playing. If I didn't like the song that followed, or if an advert break followed then I'd be flicking through the channels again.
On one occasion I kept it on the same channel for several hours. This was The Box, a channel that had a list of songs appear on the screen that you could phone up and request. The new Alisha's Attic video had just been added to the list and I phoned up a requested it. I couldn't believe how long it took until they actually played it, they must have gone through the bulk of the playlist during that time. It put me off doing that again.
My Sky subscription ended following a house move. Instead we had Telewest, but the only music channel we had was MTV2. It quickly became apparent that as a stand alone channel it was crap, but the music policy of rock and metal didn't help. Some time later, The Box was added and initially that seemed great. Then MTV2 was removed and replaced by MTV Hits and VH1 Classic.
With 3 music channels, I was back in the business of flicking through the channels. It didn't take long to find the limitations though. First of all, there were occasions where all 3 channels were on an advert break at the same time. But also there was a fixed playlist on The Box and I was finding a lot of repetition on MTV Hits and VH1 Classic. As the playlist on The Box was displayed on the screen, I counted the number of songs I actually liked and there wasn't many.
Another house move followed and there was a satellite dish there, so I plugged in my Sky box and got the free music channels which were Chart Show TV, P-Rock and Channel U. The P stood for Punk and the U stood for Urban, these were both request channels but more specialist. By this point you could text your requests. A song I particularly liked on the Channel U playlist was "All I Need" by Fat Joe but hadn't heard it in a while, so one day whilst watching Channel U I texted that request and it was the next video to be played. I gambled on the fact you'd have less people watching a more specialised channel, and it worked.
The great thing about both P-Rock and Channel U was that they introduced me to lots of records I don't think I'd have heard otherwise. P-Rock didn't last too long though, it was perhaps a bit too specialised to be sustainable.
Another house move followed (yes I moved a lot when I was younger) and I had no music channels at all, just terrestrial TV. I did miss the music channels though and did feel a bit out of touch without them.
I eventually subscribed to Sky again, by this point there were loads of music channels. Many hours were then spent flicking through the channels. I was finding the general quality of modern music was in decline, but there were a few retro channels I'd spend more time watching.
After a while though I was starting to find repetition in the retro channels. That song I hadn't heard since 1992 had become the song I'd heard more times in the last week than in the whole of 1992. Another problem I was finding was that once I'd found a song I liked I would still continue flicking through the channels incase another channel had something better on, which more often than not it didn't.
YouTube was clearly a big factor in the decline of the music channel, but the music channel still had it's place. To me, the purpose of YouTube was to play a song that I specifically wanted to listen to that wasn't in my collection. The music channel was there to play me videos without me thinking about what I wanted to listen to, and to teach me songs I'd never heard before.
The problem was that this made the retro channels redundant. Very rarely would they play a song I'd never heard before and they'd make out that only 10 songs existed in 1992 and would play them over and over again. Away from the retro channels, eventually the quality of new music got so bad, it just wasn't worth seeking out anymore.
I've been trying to work out when I last watched a music channel. I remember deciding to give them one last shot a number of years ago, but every song was the likes of Chris Brown and Pitbull with their rap meets electropop type nonsense and I decided enough was enough. Maybe 10 years ago or so.
Nowadays, the people who actually like modern pop music are people who grew up with YouTube etc so are unlikely to watch music channels.
They could still have a purpose though. All things being equal, I would rather watch something on the TV than on the internet, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that. I've also no doubt there are people out there who like the anthem bashing that goes on, if everyone hated it then nobody would do it.
If you are someone who is happy for someone else to decide what music videos they see, are happy to see the same videos over and over again and would rather watch something on TV than the internet, there is one more problem with the music channel. That is the advert break. If you are greeted with an advert on YouTube, you can hit the skip button after 5 seconds. On a music channel you have a 5 minute advert break after every 2 to 3 songs. That's why I think the days of the music channel are numbered.
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