Ever since MTV first hit the airwaves, music videos have become a major part of pop culture. Today, we often associate music with its video before we associate it with its artist. The days of watching MTV or VH1 for hours at a time hoping to see your favorite video are now long gone. Instead, those interested in watching music videos are turning to the Internet to meet their needs.
Watching videos online works on several fronts. First, it meets the need that so many of us have for on demand entertainment. As a culture, we have been trained to expect things now. By viewing videos online we can call up only the videos we are interested in – we no longer have to wait until a video channel shows it. Second, watching videos online has created a new portability in video watching. Today’s technology means we can watch an online videos from our home computer, tablet computer or even a smart phone – we can watch videos anywhere we want.
There have been several technological advancements that made this possible, but perhaps the greatest is an increase in the speed of the internet. Today it is possible to stream videos, making it unnecessary to download the videos to a user’s hard drive. Those who choose to do so have the ability to download and save the videos, but many prefer to stream them.
Watching videos on line is faster and provides the user with the ability to view only the videos they are interested in.