MTV’s last real music-only corners outside the U.S. went dark recently. On New Year’s Eve, MTV’s parent company shut down the remaining music-only channels in the U.K., Ireland, and Australia — MTV Music, MTV ’80s, MTV Live, Club MTV, MTV ’90s, and more — rolled into a $500 million cost-cutting push. Fans took it as another nail in the coffin for the version of MTV that mattered: the one that lived on loud guitars, big hooks, and the kind of constant rotation that could turn a band into a household name.
A lot of people heard the news and assumed it meant MTV as a brand was getting wiped out entirely. That part got messy fast, but the bigger point landed anyway: the “music-first” MTV experience keeps shrinking. For rock and metal fans, it’s hard not to think about what that channel used to be, especially if your gateway was late-night programming and the heavier blocks that actually fed scenes instead of flattening them.
That’s where a new fan-built project started making noise. Billboard reported that a superfan launched MTV Rewind, a deep archive-style site with more than 35,000 videos spanning the 1970s through the 2020s. It’s built to feel like turning on the TV and letting it rip, not like scrolling an algorithm until you’re bored. The landing page even leans into MTV mythology, looping the early broadcast vibe from Aug. 1, 1981, including audio from the first video: The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
If you grew up with MTV as background radiation, logging into the site is a quick time warp back to the years when the channel actually ran on music. Back then, MTV pushed artists into the mainstream with repetition and timing, and it made larger-than-life icons out of Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and plenty more. For rock heads, the memory feels like stumbling onto the good stuff while channel-surfing and getting pulled into a band you didn’t know you needed.
MTV Rewind plays into that same lean-back feel. You can’t hand-pick the exact next clip like you would on a typical video platform, but you can scrub through what’s playing, fast-forward, rewind, and keep the stream moving. There are multiple channels inside the site, plus extras that add to the era-correct vibe; old commercials mixed in with the videos, the kind of stuff you’d half-watch while waiting for the next song to hit.
The big draw is that the site doesn’t treat heavier music like an afterthought. Alongside general rotations and decade collections, it pulls in programming-specific buckets that include Yo! MTV Raps and the hard rock-focused Headbangers Ball. There’s also a “shuffle all” option if you want pure roulette, like leaving the TV on and letting fate decide whether you land on Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, The Pretenders, Reo Speedwagon, or The Cars.
The site also highlights MTV’s alternative side: more than 6,000 clips from 120 Minutes, a major pipeline for bands that lived outside the center lane. If your taste runs from college rock into heavier alternative and back again, that archive matters. Think R.E.M., The White Stripes, Radiohead, and The Flaming Lips, all parked in a format that feels closer to TV programming than a personalized feed. There’s also an acoustic corner with MTV Unplugged clips for when you want the stripped-down versions without digging through a million unrelated recommendations.
Under the hood, the database runs on IMVDb (The Internet Music Video Database). The founder — who uses the handle “FlexasaurusRex La Creme” on X — frames MTV Rewind as an independent, non-commercial archive project that isn’t tied to MTV, Viacom, or Paramount Global, and notes that the videos are hosted on YouTube.
The most telling part is why the project exists at all. The creator’s post reads like a mix of grief, stubbornness, and adrenaline; pretty familiar ingredients if you’ve ever watched a scene keep itself alive when the larger industry moves on.
“MTV was a cultural institution that changed music, fashion, and youth culture. Then they stopped showing music videos and became reality TV. I felt a wave of sadness when the announcement hit. Nothing felt like it could fill that void. So I started coding. Built it in 48 hours: MTV Rewind… no ads, no algorithm, completely free. Reddit killed my viral posts (1.1K upvotes) because of auto-mod BS. I’m broke, exhausted, and honestly feeling like s–t, but thousands are using it, and that’s what matters,” he wrote.
There’s an irony baked into all of this. Video platforms made it easier than ever to watch exactly what you want, exactly when you want it. That same convenience helped bury the old 24-hour music-channel model that MTV used to own. But what a lot of fans miss was the programming: the feeling that you were sharing a culture stream with everyone else watching at the same time, and that you could get blindsided by something new because the channel decided it belonged in the rotation.
