A while ago I wrote about MTV music video archive being put online, free and open to the public. I think this is a great move on their part, and one of the best parts about it was they also were giving access to their media via an API – perfect for developers wanting to tap into this resource in media applications – and a great opportunity for MTV to extend their media reach.

However, TechCrunch is now reporting that MTV will be discontinuing API access to the embeddable video player. This means that any developers who were using the API to fetch music video content with the player are going to be cut off. Although I realize MTV is concerned about their media rights, this is a major blow to the freedom of their amazing video archive. The new MTV video API limitation not only hinders developers from building powerful and relevant applications, but also themselves from continuing to extend their reach and connect with viewers. MTV’s Justin Tormey breaks the bad news via the MTVN Content API Developer Blog.

One final note – forcing developers to simply link to MTV video content, rather then embed it, reminds me of the ABC Hulu deal – ABC tv show listings show up in Hulu searches, but to watch shows, users have to click over to ABC’s own, ultra terrible ABC video player. – Pop up window, quasi-functional full screen mode, re-windowing from full screen for ads, forced click to continue from ads, non-standard video plugin install, etc. – Ugh.