Has streaming killed the video star?

By Betsan Branson Wiliam, First Year, French and German

As a Gen-Z who has fond memories of growing up and watching Alexandra Burke’s ‘Bad Boys’ on repeat, as well as directing and starring in my own music videos with my friends on Video Star, I was a little devasted when MTV announced at the end of last year that it would shut down all of its UK television channels at the end of 2025.

It wasn’t particularly shocking to me – Excluding The Traitors and Love Island, people aren’t really watching things on terrestrial TV, certainly not students (and as far as I’m aware nor do they spend hours watching music videos to their favourite songs). But it got me thinking of the last iconic music video release I remember. Crickets.

In October last year, Lily Allen released her first album since 2018, West End Girl, seemingly out of nowhere. It was a sudden shock to everyone. No singles, no music video, simply the full album released on one Friday. And it blew up. Tracks like ‘Pussy Palace’, ‘Madeline’ and ‘West End Girl’ were treated as unofficial singles, reaching top numbers in the charts, and so it raises the question: is there really a demand for singles anymore, and therefore music videos?

For those artists who do still release music videos, there is typically a positive response : Pinkpantheress certainly pays homage to her predescendant artists, whether it be a Sugababes sample, or a reference to Madonna’s infamous ‘Vogue’ performance at the 1990 MTV awards. This also applies to her music videos : Flashy, fun and full of energy, straight out of the 2000s, and most importantly – high budget.

PinkPantheress’ music videos to her most recent album Fancy That have had very high views and positive reviews, like one commenter who said “EFFORT IN MUSIC VIDEOSS WE ARE SOOOOO FREAKING BACKKKK”, receiving 10 thousand likes. However, even PinkPantheress only released the music video to ‘Stateside + Zara Larsson’ on the 15th of January, despite the single having been released four months prior, suggesting that she may have been waiting for it to prove itself before making such a high investment first.

Are music videos too risky of a project?

An extreme example of this phenomenon also would be Charli XCX releasing the music video to ‘Party 4 u’ the song from her album Claws which was popularised in 2025, post-Brat-summer, despite Claws being released in 2020.

In the 2000s and 2010s it seemed that any popular song, even if it wasn’t a single, would end up being accompanied by an even more popular music video.

‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga, featuring Beyoncé, is a perfect example of this – not only was it a release on the deluxe version of Gaga’s debut album, it was also nine and a half minutes long, directed by the Grammy award-winning director Jonas Åkerlund and filled with interludes of compelling and camp narrative with real dialogue – essentially a short artistic film.

Of course, not every music video needs to go to these lengths – I have an extreme nostalgia for the videos without any narrative. I still have memories of first watching the music video to Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ – extremely low budget due to its use of archive film footage, essentially an upgrade from my aforementioned Video Star music videos but nonetheless iconic.

Is the music video facing an existential crisis?

Ironically, ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ by the Buggles was the first and last music video to air on MTV UK – a song essentially about the phenoma MTV knows all too well : Out with the old, in with the new.

It seems that more and more people are making the switch to streaming services and simply forgetting the origins of music consumption. Pre televised music channels, Radio 1 singles chart was how the majority of the population kept track of the top 30 or 40, tuning in on a Sunday. Later, Top of the Pops came and experienced its peak audience viewership in the late seventies, being another way the British public would be in the know of the charts, often watching the music videos to the more popular artists who didn’t have the time to make an appearance on the show.

In an era where doom scrolling has become the norm, people no longer have the patience to watch a music video. An ongoing joke online is that Gen-Z only ever knows 15 seconds of a trending song, recognising only the trending sound on TikTok. How can we expect people to watch a music video when they can’t even listen to the song?

However, it is clear that televised music moments are still extremely profitable and important for pop-culture. The recent Grammy awards were televised in the US on terrestrial TV and watched by 14.4 million viewers, a figure which would be impressive for the British public but is in reality a decline for the previous years’ viewership in the US.

Instead, what seems more convenient for people is short and snappy clips, shared by broadcasters, such as a video of Cher announcing that the late Luther Vandross had won an award instead of Kendrick Lamar for his song ‘Luther’ which had 26.9 million viewers. It is clear that there is an interest by the public in these iconic moments on the screen, but just maybe not the incentive to watch the entire ceremony.

There isn’t an easy fix to this – it seems that the music video will simple be another victim to the natural selection of the 21st century – the test of attention.