XLR8R TV Launches on Revision3

Music mag XLR8R (‘Accelerator’), which has been covering the electronic, hip-hop and indie pop beat for over a decade, just launched a new web show on the Revision3 network. A mix of band interviews, videos, concert footage, man-on-the-street interviews and slice of life shorts, it should feel plenty familiar to anyone who grew up with MTV.

While with only one episode to draw a conclusion from, I can’t say that there’s anything profoundly different or new about the show. Cute kids in hipster gear talk into the camera, graphics fly by, music pulses. The format is a tad staid, the personalities earnest. For a show about musicians who experiment and push boundaries, the show does neither. Not that that’s a bad thing — it certainly makes for digestible, if unchallenging, viewing.

After looking for a way to display their first episode, “Dis or DAT,” featuring French 8-bit pop artists DAT Politics, I remembered from my last Revision3 profile of iFanboys that the company doesn’t include embeddable players. Seems like a natural fit for the show — since there’s a very lively music blogging scene and countless MySpace indie nerds who could help spread the show on their pages.

Also, the ‘article’ link that accompanies the show just goes to the XLR8R homepage — where I couldn’t find anything about the show or the artists featured. Yes, I know I’m picking nits, but if you’re going to branch out into new media, it behooves you to take cues from others in the space and to make the audience’s experience as seamless as possible.