Started in 1998, MVDBase: Music Video Database compiles information about music videos and their creators, and is meant to be cultivated by fans and prospective and seasoned professionals in the industry. However, anyone interested in music videos is advised to look elsewhere. The undertaking is an admirable one, but it can and has been achieved much more effectively.
Unfortunately, for reasons not known to this reviewer, the MVDBase does not as of this writing appear to be even close to the hub it has envisioned. Despite activity behind the scenes, the website’s design is very basic and antiquated, with cheap-looking buttons and bracketed links. Its colour scheme is pale olive green, grey, white and light blue. Most text is plain. The design evokes memories of a homemade website from the early days of the Internet and is partially surrounded by blank boxes reserved for unused advertisements. As a result, any value the database contains is hidden well from the prospective user. A website, especially one about music videos, should scream vibrancy. MVDBase murmurs disappointment, especially to the information professional.
There are indeed very valuable resources in the world that “only” have a user experience design problem, and the MVDBase does have some value. Searches can be done from a box on the lower left by technician, artist, video and business. Information in each music video record includes such data as a music video’s label, format, when it first aired and director, and sometimes also includes a video clip. Artist pages include tidbits such as birthday and whether they have won awards, but on the pages searched by this reviewer, the awards themselves were not clear. Information in many of the records explored was scant.
Regardless of aesthetics, clicking on the links does not make what value the database contains any more expedient. Many links from the home page take the user to pages that are listed as “temporarily down” or “coming in 2014”. One such page, Awards, is even listed as a “growing” feature in the Introduction section, and the Links page, although also down, is touted as helping creators increase their exposure online. A Search button actually brings the user to Advanced Searching, which is listed as “coming soon”. With these pages down for indefinite amounts of time, it is hard to determine what a user, and the MVDBase community as a whole for that matter, can expect to use. Updates posted on the home page do not include dates. Yet the database is maintained on some level. The last update as of this review was April 16th, 2015.
MVDBase is definitely an admirable idea, and no matter how good any competitors are, we – as the website also highlights as a major reason for its inception – need options. We need a MVDBase that fulfils its promise and lives up to the passion that is in fact present in its words. It has a knowledge and an interest, but to be useful, it needs to create something that reflects that knowledge and interest. This reviewer would be shocked if this website is indeed, as it claims, read by “many industry professionals”. As of this writing, 251 people were listed as liking the database on Facebook.
A space for an ad at the top of each page reads: “[W]ith over 15 years online, MVDBase is the ultimate reference for music videos/[TT]argeted advertising guaranteed!” With all of the time it has had, and with today’s standards, individual and across fields big and small – much less the music industry – MVDBase does not instil confidence, but rather ambivalence, except possibly as part of a design assignment for a music, LIS, or web design educator.
