The Death of the Music Video

The music video is in the casket. What once gathered a group of young teens to each other's houses to watch the newest drop on MTV is now reduced to a clip, an edit, or nothing at all, buried entirely.

​The music video didn’t just accompany a song; it created a world around it and was often the first destination for discovering new music, a tool that brought many audiences to the song or artist before they knew anything about it.

​In the age of MTV, the music video shaped pop culture and was a cultural event, defining youth culture. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” wasn’t just used to promote the song; it was a 14-minute horror film event. Meanwhile, Britney Spears' Catholic school uniform from “Baby One More Time” became a staple of 1990’s pop culture. These videos didn’t simply visualize sound; they told people how to live. They were three- to four-minute short films that taught audiences how to dress, dance, and exist within the zeitgeist.

​These defining moments now come from memes, short clips, or pictures of artists, diminishing the significance of long-form content. With YouTube democratizing video distribution in 2005, suddenly, every video was available at all times. The music video premiere that once gathered and bonded a room became a link, an independent activity to consume alone during a commute or before bed. But this was only life support. The true death came with the birth of TikTok.

​TikTok not only made videos available to mass audiences at any time, like YouTube, but it also radically reduced their length. Artists don’t need to perform at the same level they used to; they don’t need to create a visual world that surrounds the sound. They need exposure and the ability to produce a good clip that people will likely forget about and scroll past within 15 seconds.

​Additionally, while the camera is still important for an artist, video promotion is no longer dominated by long-form content. Artists don’t even need to know how to perform on stage to achieve success or sustain a long-term career. No one cares about a three- to four-minute dance choreography; they want a 15-second TikTok dance. Many artists don’t even make music videos anymore; visualizers or Spotify Canvas videos that repeat the same short clips over and over are just as common, if not more so.

​In addition, music videos are not only dead in the entertainment sense, but also in the political sense, as they no longer move political movements like they used to. Artists more commonly used music videos as a tool to make a statement and push culture forward, as the long-form format had the power and influence to do so.

​Notable historical examples include Madonna’s “Vogue,” canonizing ballroom culture to the mainstream in the U.S.; Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," a march to end racial violence (1989); and Radiohead's “All I Need” (2008), a collaboration with MTV’s anti-human trafficking campaign. The visuals extended and enhanced the message of these songs, pushing for change in ways that went beyond what audio alone could convey.  

​One of the most powerful examples in the past ten years is Childish Gambino’s “This is America” (2018) music video, where the creative genius Donald Glover addresses gun violence, police brutality, and racism through the juxtaposition of chaos and dance, symbolizing how American culture consumes Black art while ignoring Black suffering.

​Following the death of George Floyd and the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement, videos were created as tools to mobilize audiences politically. Still, few music videos have achieved widespread mainstream cultural impact or lasting relevance, as far as I have observed.

​However, one that has recently come to my attention is Bruce Springsteen’s protest music video, "Streets of Minneapolis," following the ICE raids and murders in Minneapolis last month. Something that stands out about this example is that Springsteen is an artist who reached his peak far before the TikTok era. He’s an artist who comes from a time when protest songs were more commonly used as vehicles for change.

​I think today’s cancel culture is definitely a factor in artists' silence and lack of overt political content. While many artists choose to stay quiet, artists like Springsteen remind us of a time when artists more frequently used their creativity to build worlds and make statements. What’s especially unique about Springsteen's "Streets of Minneapolis" music video is that he completed the entire process in just over a weekend. This reflects how artists from the past often operated with rawness and urgency, in contrast to TikTok culture, which prioritizes songs that go viral through repetition and reductions to short clips, catering to the audience's shrinking attention spans.

​While music videos still exist, they’ve been buried deep down below the surface of TikTok clips that dominate the internet. What was once a destination where artists built entire visual worlds for audiences to enter is now reduced to 15-second videos designed to capture attention briefly, not to hold it long enough to shape culture and movements.