If you’re looking for music videos online, probably the first place you go to is YouTube. If what you’re looking for though are “classics” or “oldies” from previous years (well, ever since they started making music videos in the 80s), you’ll still be able to find them, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired. Now YouTube is partnering with the Universal Music Group to remaster some of these iconic music videos to preserve them for future generations who would be curious what music videos looked like in the olden days.
Starting today, you’ll be able to see some of these remastered music videos on YouTube already. You have, Janet Jackson’s When I Think Of You, Boyz II Men’s End of the Road, No Doubt’s Don’t Speak, and some relatively new ones from Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, The Killers, etc. You’ll know that videos have already been transformed from SD to HD when they have the #Remastered label on top of the title as well as the music video description.
You also don’t have to search for remastered versions as the upgraded ones will replace the official original versions both on YouTube and YouTube Music. They will still be able to keep the original URL as well as the view counts and the likes (and probably dislikes). You’ll notice the vast difference in the quality as YouTube and UMG tries to bring you an improved viewing experience whether you’re watching on your phone, desktop, or other bigger screens.
Their goal is to remaster almost 1,000 videos that are in UMG’s catalog. The plan is to add more titles every week until they are able to finish the entire catalog by the end of 2020. This way, the videos will have been preserved as the “works of art” that a lot of them actually are.
Go ahead and start revisiting these music video classics in all their new HD glory. Some are even celebrating milestone anniversaries, like Tom Petty’s Free Fallin (30 years), Beastie Boys’ Sabotage (20 years), and Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance (10 years) and then wonder where all those years went.
