At the end of December 2025, MTV’s five dedicated 24-hour music channels in the UK went off air, following the loss of other long-running music TV fixtures such as Kerrang! TV and Top of the Pops. The reason for their termination was arguably due to changes in viewing habits and wider financial pressures and, as a result, marked the end of an era of music television that was truly golden for music video production and storytelling.

With such a loss of these key platforms, music videos changed for better or for worse thanks to social media platforms such as TikTok, in addition to the ever-controversial streaming platform Spotify and its now two-year-old video feature, where listeners can switch supported tracks from audio to full-length video. The statement that "music videos are coming back" rings true for many; however, they have shifted focus and are often now, more than ever, content-driven, made for algorithms and better suited to shorter attention spans.

Music videos have always been a key part of an artist’s marketing strategy, even from the beginnings of UK music shows like Top of the Pops, which often used artists' promotional videos when acts couldn't make it into the studio. Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, for example, was famously created while the band were on tour and unable to appear on the show, while ABBA were also early adopters of promotional videos like ‘Mamma Mia’. When MTV came onto the scene in Europe in 1987, following on from its US premiere in 1981 and launching with Dire Straits' promotional video for ‘Money for Nothing ’, music videos began to grow in popularity and status in popular culture to the point of some causing controversy and conversation that could be argued to represent early virality or cultural landmarking. For example: Queen’s ‘I Want to Break Free' and Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer ’ – both of which created very different kinds of controversy based on the 1980s' social climate.

When MTV’s flagship channel moved towards reality TV, social media took the baton, keeping the high-budget of many of the videos shown on the channel and opening doors to new audiences, where attention spans are shorter and the work is doubled, having to hook viewers within seconds before they scroll with vibrant visuals or immersive clues. It's something artists like Taylor Swift and PinkPantheress have become known for, from the sparkling, star-studded visuals of ‘Opalite’, featuring actors Cillian Murphy and Domhnall Gleeson, to the nostalgically colourful 2000s-adjacent sets of ‘Girl Like Me’. With cameos from reality TV and entertainment royalty like Graham Norton and Davina McCall, to kitschy costumes and purpose-built sets, the storytelling and cinematography are still present throughout these videos and many others across genres and the past five years; however, they are arguably catchier, filled with star power, and can be easily adapted for fan edits and social media consumption.

What does this look like algorithm-wise, though, compared to the videos themselves on YouTube? For Taylor Swift’s ‘Opalite’ music video, the numbers are strong, with around 30 million views to its name as of September 2026, compared to 15.6 million views attributed to a single 23-second clip on her official TikTok channel, making a point for YouTube’s longevity as the home of music videos, even with Vevo's shift in focus in 2018. It's a similar case for ‘Girl Like Me’, which has around 20 million views as of September 2026 via YouTube, while TikTok videos featuring the dance in the video's introduction are amassing around 22.4 million at their highest, with fan clips of the video itself bagging 370.3 thousand views. 

With these numbers and figures in mind, the proof is in the melodic pudding that music videos are back and thriving more than ever on socials and beyond into the streaming service realms. In 2024, Spotify took a leaf out of the book of vertical video-first promotion and launcged music videos in beta, turning them into what would become a somewhat key feature of the platform in recent years. By July 2026, it had also launched its first dedicated global music video chart, where artists could showcase both their well-crafted visuals and audio on the go. Although somewhat late to the party compared to other platforms, it has nonetheless been successful.

As of July 2026, Spotify found that listeners who streamed one of its full-length videos using the video option streamed that song 64% more often over the following three-week period than similar fans who only heard the audio, and went on to stream the rest of the artist’s catalogue 57% more during that same time frame. (Source: Spotify For Artists).

These figures reiterate confidently that music videos still have a place in many music fans' hearts, even if that place is somewhat different from late-night setups in front of the TV to see George Michael burn his leather jacket. Whether they’re cinematic enough to facilitate a cinema premiere where Taylor Swift discusses their concept, or just enough to bring sparkly dolphins out of meme culture and into aesthetics, these mini films move people to tears, laughter, or even introspection and make the world all the more colourful, even when they aren’t easily deciphered. The songs may be the star, but the music videos can often be the final piece to the narrative puzzle, and the world is a whole lot more creative for it.