VMAs: A Venue for New Music?

I didn't see the VMAs but I saw the re-run (in which they showed clips of famous people talking about what they saw. Because of it I hate Taylor Swift. Watch it and you will share my sentiment). This year they tried something new. For the past 24 years (as this was their 25th anniversary) they have had the top artists of the year perform their hit singles but this time around we heard what was to come. We heard Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" remix. We heard T.I. and Rhianna play with the song that was made famous by the popular Nume Numa video with their song "Live Your Life." Finishing off the night, and who else could you expect to have the finale, was Kanye West with what will likely be his first single, "Love Lockdown" off his fourth album, slated for in early December. As brand new songs just released but not on album or itunes, the songs are getting play all over the internet (numerous supposed "studio quality" versions of Kanye's song have been shut down but more pop up on youtube) with one video having 165,000 hits in just five days on the web.


There are arguably few venues in which these songs would reach a larger audience so there is little gamble there but the first version of a song that fans hear is often the one they like most. Live recordings of songs are virtually never as popular as the version perfected in a studio. Will fans who watched the VMAs still respond positively to these songs, who would usually top the charts, or will they be surpassed by songs who were released conventionally? In an era in which musicians are constantly looking for new ways to top the competition, maybe this is merely the latest experiment. The question is, will it fail?