One, a good video adds something to the listening experience. Yes, a video can also distract from what really matters: the song. Still, seeing a face with the voice and instrumentation helps to connect with the artist and not just the song. Well chosen visuals can make the listening experience more intense, colorful and fun.

Two, nowadays more songs are being released in a day than in one whole year back in the 80s. Way too many to keep track of. One way to filter all that new music is focusing on single releases that have an accompanying official music video. Since making a decent music video costs time and money, it is likely that artists and their labels only create videos for their better tracks and not for their lesser material. Of course, not every great song will have an official video, and not every song with an official video is great, but this choice makes the song selection process more manageable.

Because YouTube is by far the biggest video platform, MVP only tracks songs published there.

There is no hard definition. Deciding whether a video is an official music video or not, is quite subjective.

Before the rise of the internet and streaming services, there was a medium called TV. In many countries you had this TV-channel called MTV. MTV showed music video clips. One way to decide if a video is an official music video or not is asking: “Would they have shown a video like this on MTV (or similar music video networks)?”

Would they have shown a fan-made video? No. Would they have shown a lyrics video? No. A video made with random stock footage or poorly made A.I. content? No. Would they have taken an excerpt from a live-concert, tv-show or online performance to use as a video clip? Usually not.

Again, deciding what is and is not an official music video, is very subjective, and the criteria are fluid. What counts as an official video for a beginning artist with no money and only a mobile phone, would not count as a serious video for a big star with millions to spend. There also is a difference between genres. Sometimes the rules of what constitutes an official music video needs to be bent a little, to prevent excluding whole genres.

Another question that can be asked is: “was this video produced to function as an official music video?” Is it the main video to promote a potential hit single to the masses, or is it just additional content to make some extra money and please the algorithms. Sometimes that is pretty clear, sometimes it’s a guess.

On YouTube, you will regularly see the word ‘visualizer’ behind music video titles. Visualizers usually are place holders: videos to keep the fans satisfied until the official video comes out, which may or may not happen, depending on the reactions the song gets. To prevent presenting the same song twice, you will not see any visualizers on the MVP-website, even though some visualizers are very well made. For the same reason you will not see ‘performance videos’ (often choreographed dance videos) on the site.

It’s at least one of three criteria why a song makes it onto the MVP-website. One, because the song is great. Two, because the video is beautifully made or a lot of fun to watch. Three, because the artist is shockingly underrated and deserves to be introduced to a bigger audience.

Although MVP believes that everybody has the right to express themselves however they want, sometimes videos are too distasteful to share.

MVP does not actively propagate an agenda when it comes to values, lifestyles, politics, or religion. The opposite, a main objective is to boost familiarity and understanding between people with different cultural frameworks. MVP aims to unify. This website was made for open minded people who celebrate diversity.

Censoring is something MVP neither has the desire nor the time for. MVP does not check lyrics. It is impossible to know what each song is about, especially since the songs on the site are in many different languages. But, when it is obvious that an artist is spreading divisive or hateful messages, a song will not be featured.

In a world with abundant suffering, MVP tries to bring joy. For that reason MVP is likely to ignore videos that glorify war or romanticize gun-use and gang-life. Crime is the opposite of cool. It’s evil, and artists normalizing any type of violence should not be given a platform.

All songs should be new and published on YouTube in 2025. It frequently happens that artists re-upload videos of old songs. Sometimes it is clear that a video is a re-upload, but usually it is not, so it can happen that old songs make it onto the website by mistake. Feel free to contact MVP to point out the error.

Possibly the song did not meet one of the criteria to be selected. Likelier, MVP never saw the video. MVP collects and listens to dozens of songs per day, but that is still a tiny fraction of all the songs out there

Figuring out the exact subgenre for each song is tough. One, many songs are a mix of genres and influences. Two, there are more than a thousand different genres, many that MVP is still less familiar with.

If you know of any tools or resources that MVP can use to get better in distinguishing genres, please use the contact form.

Northern Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Western Sahara.
Eastern Africa: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Middle Africa: Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Sao Tome and Principe.
Southern Africa: Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa.
Western Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo

Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States Virgin Islands.
Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama.
South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela.
Northern America: Bermuda, Canada, Greenland, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, United States.

Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
Eastern Asia: China, Hong Kong, Macao, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Japan, Mongolia, Republic of Korea (South Korea).
South-Eastern Asia: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos), Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam.
Southern Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.
Western Asia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, State of Palestine, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

Eastern Europe: Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Ukraine.
Northern Europe: Aland Islands, Channel Islands, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Guernsey, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sark, Sweden, United Kingdom.
Southern Europe: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Gibraltar, Greece, Holy See, Italy, Malta, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain.
Western Europe: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Switzerland.

Australia and New Zealand: Australia, New Zealand.
Pacific Islands: Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, American Samoa, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Niue, Pitcairn, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna.

MVP does not want to overlook any countries or genres, but keeping up with all the music videos made in the world is crazy challenging. There are 20 regions, roughly 200 countries, 1000+ genres, and millions of artists. MVP is a one-man project with minutes per day, not hours, to spend on finding and uploading great songs. Giving each category the right representation all the time will be impossible, but will nevertheless always be the goal.