Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog: MTV Music (Yes, it has an API)

MTV Music (Yes, it has an API)

MTV launched a new music video service, MTV Music. The UI is rather nice. Maybe it's the old man in me but I love the large, super obvious search box. They also allow for embedding...

Lush |MTV Music

What surprised me though was the lack of depth. I mean I was kind of pushing it with some non-popular choices (Control Machete, Chapterhouse, Shelby), but this is MTV! They should have something like 2 trillion videos in their vault. They had all the 'expected' alternative videos (Cure, Depeche Mode, etc), but anything a bit too far out there was absent. Shoot, they didn't even have Siouxsie, and any music site without the Banshees is sorely lacking. I can certainly find everything at YouTube.

Anyway, my excuse to bring this up was to point out that they have a nice API: MTVN Content API. Let's see who can get the first CFC wrapper done.

Hey - maybe if this Internet thing works for em, they could try it on TV as well. Imagine it - a whole TV station that did nothing but play videos. Nah, that wouldn't work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 8:20 AM. It was filed in the following categories: Music. It has been viewed 3,078 times and has 16 comments.

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Comment 1 written by DanaK on 28 October 2008, at 11:13 AM

yeah out of like 20 non-mainstream searches, Hum was the only band that came up that I wanted to watch. Pretty bad for the once main outlet of video based music.

I noticed the full screen never worked for me either. It kept the audio in sync, but just took a snapshot of the last part of the video when I hit full screen and just put up a stationary (pixelated) image. weird.
Comment 2 written by Josh Orvis on 29 October 2008, at 8:22 AM

I don't mean to be rude, but this *IS* MTV - did you seriously expect anything other than crappy modern pop music to be available?
Comment 3 written by DanaK on 29 October 2008, at 8:32 AM

maybe you're too young to remember when mtv was decent? ;)

Growing up they used to play a lot of stuff I liked late at night, back in the late 80s, early 90s before they became a wasteland of reality tv and bubble gum pop
Comment 4 written by Raymond Camden on 29 October 2008, at 9:12 AM

@Dana - Trust me, I do remember when MTV played music. I've mentioned it numerous times before on the blog, so I didn't want to go down that track again. ;) I discovered many bands on 120 Minutes.
Comment 5 written by Sid Wing on 29 October 2008, at 1:13 PM

Gotta luv us "MTV-Old Timers" that remember when MTV was the ONLY music video channel and actually had a GREAT repretoire of videos.

[Now if CMT or GAC came up with an API - I'd be in hog heaven. {grin}]
Comment 6 written by DanaK on 29 October 2008, at 2:40 PM

woops...ray ...my comment was at josh!
Comment 7 written by Matt Gifford on 30 October 2008, at 11:51 AM

Hey Ray!

Thanks for putting out the news on the API.

I've started work on a CF wrapper, which I'll be releasing soon. A slimline demo can be seen on the project page:

http://mattgifford.co.uk/projects/MTVN/index.cfm

Cheers guys!

Matt (aka coldfumonkeh)
Comment 8 written by Raymond Camden on 30 October 2008, at 11:56 AM

I'm sorry Matt. According to the license agreement for ColdFusion, only Raymond Camden is allowed to write CFC wrappers for services. Please stop immediately and send all code to Raymond.

(Kidding - be sure to submit to RIAForge!)
Comment 9 written by Matt Gifford on 30 October 2008, at 11:58 AM

damn, they should have told me that. Time to update the CC license, and have a word with Adobe! :)

Cheers, matey
Comment 10 written by MikeG on 31 October 2008, at 1:47 AM

@MTV-Oldtimers - I do miss the Headbangers ball! MTVMusic.com has the real music loaded already; Dio, Iron Maiden, Pantera, Judas Priest, Anthrax. What I want to know is why, now that y'all are old guys you admit to listening non-mainsteam bands from the 80's? - you woulda switched the channel so fast in high school/college had one of your buddies walked in the room [biggrin] that you woulda broke the remote.
Comment 11 written by Raymond Camden on 31 October 2008, at 6:18 AM

@MikeG - I'm a bit confused. Are you saying we would not have admitted to liking indie bands in high school? I know I did - although I was only a little bit into indie then. It was more late high school/early college where I got a proper 'education' into good music.
Comment 12 written by MikeG on 31 October 2008, at 3:38 PM

@Ray - yep, indie music is like scotch - an aquired taste. In high school/early college you woulda never got caught listening to anything other than mainstream - woulda been "quite time" listening.

BTW, got a chance to check out Matt's CFC - nice work Matt
Comment 13 written by Matt Gifford on 2 November 2008, at 6:38 AM

@MikeG - Thank you very much, Mike. I hope you find it useful. I'm very pleased with it, and am looking forward to extending it in the near future. :)
Comment 14 written by jax on 4 November 2008, at 3:29 AM

The problem with MTV has always been ( and still is) that it is too American. Even the european version suffers from this problem. :-)
Comment 15 written by Raymond Camden on 15 February 2009, at 4:38 PM

Ugh. So much for the API:

http://developer.mtvnservices.com/blog/read/Conten...
Comment 16 written by Matt Gifford on 17 February 2009, at 2:48 AM

Yeah, I wasn't overly impressed with their post about this.

The API could have been a fantastic service, but restricting it to the extent of forcing users to view videos on their site and not allowed embedded videos is just sad and ridiculous. For all of those people who have spent time developing and API interface, be it web-based or a desktop application, it's been a waste of time.
MTV should know better. You can understand the licensing laws for videos, but it's still a damn shame.