I Want My IMF?
August 21st, 2007 by jeff
I was reading this article in Business Week today about how MTV might need to be concerned about a new venture by Universal called the International Music Feed.
Besides the obvious question of why anyone would want to compete with a dying network loaded with reality shows, I have to wonder what Universal actually hopes to accomplish.
For more than two years, a challenge has been quietly growing. Backed by Universal Music, the industry’s largest single player and a company that has a long history of tussling over music rights with cable and online companies, the International Music Feed is hustling to lure eyeballs away from MTV. Now the IMF, as it’s called, appears to have pulled together a robust catalog of music videos from most of the major labels.
It’s not a full-fledged, in-your-face, threat to MTV’s hegemony just yet. But IMF is a nod to the music industry’s ambitions to feed music to folks online, through their TVs, and even on cell phones. Of course, TV is the big banana—where money and eyeballs are the greatest—and so far, well, IMF is mostly dark for the couch potatoes of the world.
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Who is watching IMF? Well, there’s the rub. According to IMF, it gets an anemic 47,474 unique visitors a month to its Web site. And while it has 17 music channels on the online TV site Joost, and two channels on British cell-phone company Vodafone (VOD), it has just about no U.S. TV presence. It is available to some of satellite-operator DISH Network’s (DISH) nearly 14 million subscribers, a couple of tiny local cable companies, and the still smallish Internet-based cable systems being rolled out by telcos Verizon Communications (VZ) and AT&T (T).
The company claims it has the potential to reach 10 million TV viewers in all, a far cry from the 91 million U.S. viewers that MTV gets in the U.S. (or for that matter the 90 million who can get MTV sister channel VH1 or the 59 million who get MTV2.)
Oh, yeah, if I were MTV, I’d be quaking in my boots. What a clusterf*ck the record industry has become. They are so stuck in the old school way of distributing music, they feel they need to challenge a music network that doesn’t actually play music anymore.
The IMF has numerous problems it faces. I’m no internet or broadcast communications expert, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out a few things.
1. The Tube is already better than any music video channel on the air. It’s run by a former MTV honcho and understands that, in reality, all people want to see is videos without vee jays and game shows and reality shows. Just videos. If you want to challenge someone for dibs on people who want to watch actual videos, you are trying to hook the wrong fish.
2. The term “video on demand” should mean EXACTLY that. YouTube understood this from day one and all anyone in the industry, including Universal, could think to do was sue them for infringement. They had the ability to provide publicity for bands most of us had forgotten about for FREE and they demanded to be paid instead. Stupid. Now, the IMF wants to show you the same thing, but their way. That means no simple format, no embedding, nothing that people actually want in the first place.
3. The IMF website gives you the ability to register and get your OWN BLOG! Whoopadee freaking do! You mean, what MySpace, Facebook and countless other blog software titles and social networking sites already provide, you’re do too? That’s so forward thinking of you. It’s like the mystery of why sports radio websites put endless amounts of crap on their sites from “babes” to traffic and weather to online games, nevermind blogs with no RSS feeds. Just do what you do best and forget the rest of it.
4. Most importantly, Universal is dooming itself to both search engine optimization and popular culture oblivion with the name and acronym. Everyone knows that “IMF” stands for the International Monetary Fund. Good luck swiping that Wikipedia entry. In addition, the name (and their grandiose mission) seems to indicate that the IMF is distributing the best “international” music, code for “world music” to most people who have spent the last 20 years bowing to the music industry and its need to compact everything into a neat little demographic. I’m sure that will draw the attention of people looking for Youssou N’Dour, but Fall Out Boy, not so much.
The music industry is its own worst enemy. They built an empire on sand that has been eroded and instead of moving to a more stable location, they are just trying to pour water on the sand to make a mud castle. How about trying something different for a change instead of creeping along like an ancient monolith? I’m guessing that’s way too much to ask.
IMF is run by 2 exMTV’er…one the head of programming and music (andy schuon) and the other the head of production and svp of programming (greg drebin).
Have you watched any of the content on the tube? nothing current or relevant, but if you’re listening to wings, then that says enough about your music tastes.
IMF offers over 3000 music videos on demand…not on line, but through the cable operators…that’s on demand.
Yahoo and aol already make EVERY MUSIC VIDEO available on-line…but NONE of the international clips that are available on imf.com are available ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET…no where.
You are the wrong demo for IMF, have obviously NEVER SEEN THE CHANNEL, so speak of what you know and not what you hear.
oh, and world music is a genre of music…as is pop music. IMF is a global pop station, playing hip hop, rock, alternative, r&b…from the us and around the world…not world music, not local folk music (not polka from germany) and me and all my friends think it’s pretty cool to have been watching it none stop since we discovered it.
I got a chance to see sample some of the IMF myself and I didn’t find it to be earth shattering. Amazingly enough, I do realize that world music is a genre. However, if you think the average American is going to suddenly discover the joys of Israeli pop music or the wonderful rhythms of the Senegalese through a TV network, you are fooling yourself. Most Americans, sadly, are not savvy enough when it comes to music to love anything left of Fall Out Boy or High School Musical.
And if you think Wings songs appearing in my recent plays list is a knock on me, well I guess I’ll just have to live with your scrutiny. Generally, I prefer not speculate or make wild generalizations about people I don’t know, but if you must, I think I’ll survive.
And I think I’ll continue to speak of pretty much whatever I want since, last time I checked, this is MY blog. You are welcome to disagree. Freedom of expression is a lovely thing, isn’t it?
I do stand by my assertion that on demand on my television is inferior to on the internet. That’s common sense given that the net is much more widely accessible.