Death by Digital: 80’s Music Videos Are A Casualty Of War

Every war has casualties. While certainly there isn’t a direct assault going on against the decade that gave birth to the little slices of visual music known as “the music video” — the end result is the same; the systematic demise of the vignettes that reformed an industry.

I’m a proud Generation X’er. I was weened and raised on television in the 70s and 80s. I was present and accounted for on August 1, 1981 when MTV Music Television hit the airwaves (I was 12 years old).

The very first music video played?

MTV became synonymous with music and with Generation X. This love affair with tiny movies set to music would continue well into the 1990s — and MTV created new markets for music and diversified greatly in those years; setting the stage for non-mainstream artists and musical genres entry into popularity.

From 1995 to 2000, MTV played 36.5% fewer music videos. Almost overnight, MTV became “the station that doesn’t…