Earlier this week, music fans across the internet were devastated to learn that Paramount Global was shutting down the MTV News website, “as part of broader website changes across Paramount.” That meant that an archive of music history, from the rise of blog rap to the breakouts of international superstar artists like Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and more was just gone in an instant, all because someone flipped a switch.
However, it’s not all bad news: Today, the Internet Archive announced it had created a directory of MTV News posts via the Wayback Machine. The index contains 460,575 articles previously published at MTV.com/news — here’s how you can access it.
This link leads to the Wayback Machine with the MTV News prompt already queued up and ready to go. These include posts about the fashion of the 2003 Grammy Awards, MTV’s announcement of the split between Taylors Swift and Lautner, and more.
In addition to MTV News, Paramount also shut down the sites for CMT, Comedy Central, TV Land and Paramount Network. This was an attempt to direct users to Paramount+ but… I don’t know how effective that’ll be, considering there’s no included promise that the desired content will be found there. At least they still have the best Super Bowl ad of 2024.
