2001 NARM Convention & Trade Show Keynote Address

By Judy McGrath

Monday, March 12, 2001

Music definitely brings us together. And music is what brought me to MTV so many years ago.I guess it's no secret that MTV is about to turn 20 years old. Although I think some of the people I work with would like to keep it a secret. They're nervous about us looking like we're getting older, like we have a choice or something. They say, “Call it a birthday, not an anniversary."

Well, I'm not nervous about it. I'm damn proud of it. MTV is celebrating its 20th anniversary, 20 years of music television, which we invented, continually reinvented, and still do better than anyone else.

But what I'm really proud of, and what I'd like to celebrate this morning, is the 20th wedding anniversary of MTV and you guys, the recording merchandisers of America. I mean when you think about it, we really are like this old married couple. We've been together for 20 years, we know each other's quirks and perks, we can practically finish each other's sentences. Sometimes we squabble, but most of the time we're the best of friends.

But the best thing about our relationship, the thing that separates it from most 20-year marriages, is we're still really good at it. I mean it, we've got the moves, we've got the groove, together we're performing better than we ever have.

Just to give you some idea of this love thing we got going — 2000 was a record breaking year for music sales, and MTV played a very big role. Five artists — Eminem, Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC — sold over 1 million records their first week of release, after major MTV exposure the week before — stunts like Eminem hanging out on the channel and *NSYNC hosting TRL.

Radiohead credits MTV2 for helping them debut at number one in sales, and they didn't even make a video. What they did make were these odd, artsy 20-second video blips which we ran all over the channel. The blips not only promoted the album, they made MTV2 look really cool.

We threw a roller derby party for Jay -Z, and his album debuted at well over half a million, right ahead of Outkast, who had just been featured on Making of the Video. We made Papa Roach a staple on TRL, before they were getting any radio play, and their sales shot up to 100,000 a week. And Mudvayne is getting lots of early love on MTV2 helping them make that critical new connection with music fans that will spur their sales.

Then this year, we participated in a little event called the Super Bowl. OK, the game may have been a snooze, but the halftime show, which MTV produced, with, you know, Aerosmith and Britney and *NSYNC and Nelly and Mary J. Blige … made history. Not just MTV history and Super Bowl halftime history, but record merchandizing history. It turns out our modest extravaganza had a direct effect on sales.

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits album, which had not been on the SoundScan charts for more than a year, came back on the charts Feb. 17th at #13. Another Aerosmith album, "Big Ones," hadn't seen the charts since August of 1999. It resurfaced that same week at #28. I won't go through everybody's chart position, but Britney, *NSYNC and Nelly all saw spikes in their retail record sales in the weeks following the halftime show. Which means simply that the potential audience for music remains massive, and that to reach that audience, nothing compares to music on television.

And when we take the power of music on television and partner with you - the music merchants - it can really turn out to be a beautiful thing. We've worked with many of you in many different ways. Together, we've created in-store displays that help you sell music while supporting our programming. We've created a significant partnership with Trans World Entertainment to put TRL and DFX sections in all of their stores, and spotlighted new music with the Spankin New Music brand.

Tower Records featured the music of our "100 Greatest Pop Songs" series, with a display featuring as many as 60 CDs from the chart. In Virgin Megastores, We're currently promoting MTVIcon, a new megastar tribute series that premieres tomorrow night with Janet Jackson and lots of special guests --- from Destiny's Child to Outkast to the Jackson Family.

So obviously this is a pretty happy, healthy relationship we've got going here — we, the music televisers, and you, the music merchants, And from the successes I've just cited,

one might conclude that we married for money. But I don't think it's that simple. Or cheap. It's not money, honey, that keeps us together. It's revolution.

Indulge me for a moment while I go back twenty years to those heady, romantic days when you and I first met. arrived at MTV in 1981, just a few months after it launched. It was an inauspicious launch — at the end of our first year, we were carried in fewer than 1 million homes. Today, of course, MTV is carried in more than 333 million households around the world and has not only grown into being the most watched network on the planet but also the most recognized media brand in the world. But you've probably heard all that before.

Anyway, I had been a writer at Conde Nast, working at Mademoiselle and Glamour and writing stories like "Women Who Love Men Who Hate Women and Why." I had two friends who were working for a guy named Bob Pittman over at a place called MTV. They told me MTV was looking for writers. So I went over and met with Pittman, an ex-disk jockey from Mississippi, and John Sykes, who used to sell records out of the trunk of his car at Syracuse University. Incidentally, at Syracuse Sykes, who now runs VH1 and CMT, roomed with a guy named Phil Quartararo, who now runs Warner Brothers Records. Was that destiny or what?

Where was I? Oh, yes. so Pittman and Sykes took a chance on me and I took a chance on them. We were all taking risks. MTV was completely different from the world I had known. At Conde Nast, the staff had degrees from Ivy League schools. At MTV, no one had degrees. Many were refugees from radio. Some just seemed like refugees. I guess we all were refugees from former lives. But the one thing we had in common was our passion for music. We felt that rock had the ability to change lives.

I'm sure everyone in this room knows what I'm talking about. I guess if you think back to the beginning, MTV's programming was kind of pitiful. We told people we had hundreds of videos — actually, it was more like 50, and half were from Rod Stewart.

But it didn't matter — we were part of a revolution. First of all, we were playing music that itself was born of a cultural revolution 20 years before. But we were playing it in a new way, music on television and in the process we revolutionized music and television.

To further the cause, we worked with other revolutionaries such as yourselves. From the start, MTV partnered with retailers to bring art to the masses. Early video stars like Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, the Go-Gos and Duran Duran, saw sales soar when their videos become hits.

It all became clear in Dallas. At the time, half of Dallas was wired for cable. On the cable side of town, Duran Duran records sold as soon as they were dropped in the record store bins. On the other side of town, the side not wired for cable, you couldn't give away a Duran Duran record.

And that, as I recall, is how the cable revolution began. The point I'm getting to, and we can all hope that in my nostalgic ramblings I'm getting to a point, and I am, and here it is: This revolutionary music that you and I are so in love with, that is at the heart of our love affair with each other, stands for many radical things. Well, you know the list — freedom, passion, tolerance, experimentation, everyone's an artist, make love not war, bite me — it's quite a list. But one powerful lesson we should learn from the music, and increasingly so today, is that technology is our friend.

Technology gave us the electric solid-body guitar, and the amplification that creatively empowered every garage band in America. And technology gave us the new platform called cable television which provided a home for music television. And it is technology, in the form of digital capacity and broadband internet content, that is about to bring us the next revolution in music. Which is what MTV 360 is all about.

This month MTV synchronized all its online and on-air elements, what we call MTV 360, to create a tremendous buzz for the debut of the Dave Matthews Band's album, "Everyday." 733,000 CDs were sold during the first week, the highest first week sales so far this year. Leading up to the release, the band's video, "I Did It," was the most-played clip on MTV, MTV2, and MTV.com. Fans could catch Dave Matthews on TRL, enter an MTV2 contest to "Spend a Week with the Dave Matthews Band," download "I did It" off MTV.com while checking the latest band news.

Dave came to TRL days before the record launched, played live on the show and stuck around for another half hour of jamming in prime time before a group of crazed fans. It's something we at MTV and MTV2 can do so easily. And there was no doubt, his fans were thirsty for new music ... they clearly ran to the record stores.

"Buzzworthy" ROTATION has now become "Buzzworthy.MTV.com," a triple-platform threat that promotes selected new artists simultaneously on MTV, MTV2 and MTV Online. This worked particularly well last year for Buzzworthy.MTV.com artist David Gray, who had been selling 5000 albums a week and by Christmas was selling 100,000 a week. Buzzworthy.MTV.com is just one of a brand new bag of MTV 360* tools that we're developing.

Is this a revolution? Not yet, but we're working on it. Our goal is to build a total music experience — the first multi-platform, multi-dimensional musical brand for the digital age. The MTV 360 environment will offer more access, more control, more interactivity, more data and more fun. In short, more music and more everything the music's about.

Right now it especially seems like all the old definitions of retail are up for grabs. How people get music, how they feel about it and how they relate to it is changing right before our eyes. But that's cool -- we have a lot of tools to work with. We have fantastic internet radio with Sonicnet a secure deal with RioPort, thriving television networks ... lots of good ways to touch music lovers. And what we're trying to figure out is, how do we use MTV, MTV2 and MTV.com in some fresh new ways that consumers will find compelling?

Fresh ideas are the key, of course. Like "Control Freak," which runs on both MTV2 and MTV.com. And DFX and TRL and VJ for a Day — those shows offer endless opportunities for cross-platform collaboration. They really are the shows of the future, and the best way to expose music to young fans. We go where they are and, and connect them to the music they need and want to discover.

But perhaps our best and biggest idea of the year so far is relaunching MTV2, which is absolutely critical to our new 360 world. MTV2 is now in over 30 million homes and in 18 of the top 20 media markets. The channel plays music videos 24 hours a day and focuses on breaking new artists and cutting edge music. MTV2 features videos from all music genres, including hip hop, rock, R&B, techno and has even brought back an music industry favorite with the return of 120 minutes.

Over the last several months, MTV2 has scored big in retail with artists like David Gray, At The Drive-In, Coldplay, and Nelly Furtado. And at this weekend's NARM merchandising committee meeting, we began brainstorming an MTV2 New Music initiative to help spotlight the artists of tomorrow in your record stores.

So it looks like MTV and NARM will be married for some time to come, at least another 20 years and a few more revolutions. And even if we get it wrong, the music will get it right. You can tell there's something in the air.

The revolution is coming. I don't know if it's cyclical, or political, or what. But whenever things get a little boring … maybe a little conservative, the music gets really good. Think about it -- Eisenhower gave us Elvis and Chuck Berry. Reagan gave us MTV. That's right, we launched during Reagan's first year. Later we made a promo that said, "MTV -- the best thing Reagan ever did."

So what's Dubya gonna give us? Personally I think the music will be revolutionary, and the videos will be insane. It's already happening. Don't believe me? Take a look at this video from Fatboy Slim that we're premiering March 22nd on MTV2.

Thanks for listening and keeping the faith.