It's been about six months since Music 24, the Israeli equivalent of MTV was launched. The major difference between the two (besides the location of the artists) is that Music 24 actually plays videos.

It's a fun channel to watch and hopefully it will have a positive affect on those who watch it. I have mentioned before that music market has been dominated by the same mediocre songwriters for years. With the advent of Music 24, an opportunity arises for lesser known musicians to gain the exposure they deserve.

Obviously, a music channel can have a negative affect on the music business. MTV shows the same videos over and over.

I was initially very positive about Music 24 until I saw the video for the song "Superstar" by Roni. The song is catchy as all hell. A little research shows that the mastermind behind her instant pop hit was Cutfather and Joe, the producer team behind hitmakers like Kylie, Blue, 5ive, Atomic Kitten and Ace of Base. Worst of all, in her promo photos and on her album cover she is wearing a school girl uniform a la Britney Spears. Somebody needs to tell her that is so 1997.

Music 24 has a show where you can send a SMS message and choose one of two videos. A battle of the videos. I was watching and noticed that no one had voted and the song was almost over. So I sent a text message and voted for the video that I wanted to see (Cham al haYaraech by Berry Sakhoraf) and about ten seconds later Berry had 100 percent and his opponent had zero. This couldn't be. I was the ONLY person in the entire country who voted? I decided to conduct a test to see if this was true. I ran up the stairs, grabbed my digital camera and the results are as follows.


The Berry Sakhoraf video came on and I waited about two minutes into the video before I voted. As you can see the current score is zero/zero.




At about minute three I sent my text message and voted. Within ten seconds the results came up and the video I chose (A) received 100 percent of the vote and I consequently had to suffer through an Arik Einstein video. I concede at one point (about twenty years ago) Einstein was a great songwriter but his music has gotten pretty sucky. Ok, enough with the tangent.



Upon completing this experiment I learned two things.

Number 1: I was one of the only people in the country who was watching Music 24 and cared to vote.

Number 2. I am a loser with way too much free time on my hands.