Don’t tell Sean “Diddy” Combs that television channels dedicated to just playing music videos went the way of the Tamagotchi.
The rapper–turned–entrepreneur has been working on a project called “Revolt” for the better part of 18 months, and co-founder Andy Schuon told Ad Age what we can expect: “The way you go to CNN for breaking news or ESPN for sports — in six months to a year, we want Revolt to be that for music.”
And the programming, Diddy said, is “music, music, music. In 20 years we haven’t had the right kind of curated music done in the right way.” He also noted that whereas now Jay-Z waits to premiere a video on HBO “because at least it’s cool,” Revolt would be that hotspot in the future.
Well that’s all well and good, other 24-hour music networks haven’t done too well. FUSE is currently looking to get sold, having “never quite found the expected audience despite being in 64 million households,” Forbes reports. MTV2 gets approximately 161,000 primetime viewers, which isn’t a ton but still better than VH1 Classic’s 39,000 audience. MTV essentially ditched the music video model, letting songs shine in their original shows instead.
Still, Diddy is convinced that the music video network can thrive and CEO Keith Clinkscales emphasized its plan to “become part of the viral process.”
But will viewers clamor to their televisions to watch the next Miley Cyrus video or just go to Vevo, which also curates new and trending music?