Call it the day the music died. On December 31, 2025, MTV’s last music-only stations shut down forever.
The last video played on MTV Music in the U.K. was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles—which was also the first video ever played on the original MTV channel in the United States back in 1981. That’s a good 44 years of music history, bookended with a song that explores the theme of technology changing the way people experience art. It’s beautiful, in a way: A song that mourns the end of the radio age is played to mourn the end of another era.
If you, like me, enjoy having random music videos on in the background while you work—or even just having them available to tune in when you need to tune out—you might think you’re out of luck.
Fortunately, the ever-inventive internet is here with an answer.
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Bring back the glory days
If you want that old feeling back—of turning on the TV and watching whatever crazy music video comes up while you work, or maybe just as an occasional distraction from productivity—there’s a website just for you.
➜ MTV Rewind recreates the experience of watching MTV in any decade, thanks to a database of thousands of videos.
⌚You’ll need all of two seconds to get started. Just head to the site and start watching.
Waiting for you is a slew of playlists—all shuffled—for the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. There are also channels for classic MTV shows like Yo! MTV Raps and Headbangers Ball.
The collections of music were curated using the Internet Music Video Database, a resource potentially worthy of its own write-up. All told, there are over 30,000 videos split between all the various channels, meaning you can leave this on for a long time and never see the same video twice.
I love that there’s no recommendation algorithm and basically no way to control things. That really brings back the experience of watching TV and seeing things you’d never otherwise seek out. You can click the “Next” button if you really hate the first song that plays, though.
☝️Oh, and there’s one more channel worth mentioning: It plays the music videos MTV broadcast on its first day in order, complete with a few of the original VJ segments. It’s an admirable internet attempt to both resurrect and modernize TV history.
- MTV Rewind is just a website—no apps, no downloads—so it works instantly and easily on any device.
- It’s completely free, and there are no ads (except some retro ones sprinkled in for the fun of it).
- The developer says this is a pure passion project, with no plans for monetization or ads, though you can donate to help keep it that way.
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