It seems that music listeners have been bemoaning the lack of music videos on MTV since the mid-1990′s. A subject many-a-person has waxed poetic about. So it comes as an interesting footnote to “MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, and thus has become obsolete as waves of people go to places like youtube” debate is the new music video website MTV Music.

The site is pushing hard with that “remember when we played these music videos” and the featured video page is peppered with the likes of Genesis, A-Ha, Dire Straits, Duran Duran, and Michael Jackson. The site itself takes some cues from NBC’s HULU, and it looks like the same proprietary video streaming technology.

ArsTechnica has a nice article about the service, which claims “MTV smacks YouTube, posts almost every music video ever.” And while the current Viacom lawsuit against Google/Youtube is not lost on me, the article overzealously states the actual number of videos that are actualy featured on the service. For example, Hikaru Utada, an international household name, whose album “First Love” is the #1 Best Selling album of all time in Japan is no where to be found. Her 2007 single “Flavor of Life“, the #2 digital song of 2007, reached 7.2 million worldwide downloads.

Even stranger, is a relatively less high-profile band The Polysics, do appear on the service. The Polysics owe a lot of their style to Devo, and their song “I my me mine” is quirky and fun.

The jury is still out whether MTV will be able to supplant Youtube as the “King of all Music Videos” – it’s been almost 15 years since it’s worn that hat comfortably.

Edit: It appears the site is having problems with embedding video. I’m going to leave this embedded video in the post, I’m curious if it will work for others. It isn’t working for me.