Website, macOS · Out now
MTVRevived
Music television the way it used to be: pick a decade, and don't skip.
MTVRevived recreates the thing that made music television work: you didn't choose. You turned it on and it played. Pick a decade, or narrow it to one year, and a channel of music videos from that time starts — with era-appropriate commercials cut in between, on a CRT you switch like a real one.
Eight channels, from the fifties to now, and the television changes with them. The fifties are a wooden console with a black-and-white picture. The eighties are a black plastic set against a neon wall. The twenties have no bezel at all. Same idea every time: it should feel like the era, not like a browser tab.
macOS 14 or later · 1.3 MB · free, no ads, notarised by Apple
What It Looks Like
One television per decade, forty years in eight seconds.
The 1950s channel: a mahogany console television with a rounded, almost square screen, playing Kansas City by Wilbert Harrison in black and white. A caption card in the corner gives the song, the artist and the year 1959. 
The 1960s channel: a white space-age plastic television, oval like a helmet, playing Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The channel list down the right is picked out in mod orange. 
The 1970s channel: a wood-grain console with brass dials beside the screen, playing I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, the picture tinted warm amber. 
The 1980s channel: a boxy black television against a neon Memphis-pattern wall, playing Bust a Move by Young MC, with a cyan caption card slanted across the corner. 
The 1990s channel: a grey set on a grainy dark wall, playing Bulls On Parade by Rage Against The Machine, with a VCR-style PLAY SP readout in the top corner of the picture. 
The 2000s channel: a brushed silver flat television playing SexyBack by Justin Timberlake, the caption shown as a glossy blue pill. 
The 2010s channel: a thin black bezel around the picture, playing Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars, with a plain white caption card. 
The 2020s channel: no bezel at all, the picture glowing against an aurora of purple and cyan, playing Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift behind a frosted glass caption.
The Fifties Through Now
A channel per decade, eight of them, and each can be narrowed to a single year if you want 1994 and nothing else. The fifties and sixties are television performances and promo films, because music videos didn't exist yet — which turns out to be the best part.
It Looks Like A Television
Scanlines, channel-change static, a caption card with the song and the year, and a different set for every decade. A music video in a plain browser tab is just a video.
The Commercials Are The Point
Every fifth video is an advert from the same era: the Coke hilltop, Where's the Beef, the Energizer bunny, Apple's 1984. You can switch them off, but almost nobody does.
There's A Mac App
The same channels in their own window, with the decades on Command-1 through 8. It's free, it's notarised by Apple, and it isn't in the App Store — it lives here instead.
Growing
Five hundred and something videos and adverts, and it keeps growing as I add to it. If something's missing that shouldn't be, tell me.
How It Treats Your Data
Nothing about what you watch is recorded. There's a login for adding videos, which is mine; watching needs nothing. The Mac app is the same site in a window, so the same is true there.
Price
Free.
Questions
Can I request a video?
Yes — the contact page here works, or the support desk.
Why is the year sometimes wrong?
It shouldn't be any more. The years used to come from when somebody uploaded the video to YouTube rather than when the song came out, which put Vogue on the 2000s channel. That's fixed. If you spot another, tell me.
Is the Mac app any different?
Same channels, same library. It just isn't a browser tab, and it has proper keyboard shortcuts.
Do I have to watch the commercials?
No. There's a button to turn them off. I'd leave them on.
macOS 14 or later · 1.3 MB · free, no ads, notarised by Apple