Here's an idea no one thought of before: a TV channel that shows nothing but music videos 24 hours a day. Like, really, nothing but music. No commercials. No hosts. No REAL WORLD. No REMOTE CONTROL. That, at least, is what APPLE MUSIC TV looked like on Monday, when it arrived, unannounced, 39 years and two months after MTV showed up on a cable channel you probably didn't have and about 30 years after people started complaining that MTV doesn't show videos anymore (full disclosure: I, like everyone else who ever worked there, fielded some of those complaints). Apple Music TV promises to stay that way at least until Thursday, when the wall-to-wall video format, broken up only by occasional short interview clips with artists whose videos you're about to see, will make room for two BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN specials promoting the album he'll release at midnight that night, while special #2 is still showing. There's no word yet on when Apple will add its own version of TABITHA SOREN, but my money's on 2021. How could you not? In the meantime, Apple Music TV, which is a mouthful of a name and which lives inside the Apple MUSIC and TV apps, has a strangely new feel for an old idea. Like MTV but unlike YOUTUBE and other streaming video hubs, it's a lean-back experience. There's nothing to do but watch the videos play, one after the other; as TECHCRUNCH's SARAH PEREZ notes, there are hardly any social or interactive tools, and the ones that are there seem purposefully hard to find. It's refreshingly counterintuitive in that sense. It's also relentlessly current and pop. The first day's programming was a repeated loop of Apple's Music's all-time most popular songs, which started and ended with DRAKE. Going forward, notwithstanding the Boss, a typical hour of programming will look something like "DUA LIPA, TAYLOR SWIFT, TATE MCRAE, ZAYN, J BALVIN, PINK SWEAT$, BLACKPINK, VICTORIA MONET, BIG SEAN," according to Apple editorial and content head RACHEL NEWMAN. Tuesday night, I ran into a slightly older bloc, meaning ED SHEERAN, PHARRELL, BEYONCÉ and KATY PERRY. Classic rock. Newman says content from other Apple properties including Apple TV Plus (who names these things?) will be worked in, but apparently Apple Music TV won't create its own content. Whether that means there could be an UNPLUGGED or 120 MINUTES in the channel's future is unclear. For now, watching blocs of professionally made 3- and 4-minute videos can be mesmerizing in short bursts, and a reminder that some pop stars are still doing creatively oddball video work (have you ever just sat back and watched "OLD TOWN ROAD"?). Some lyric videos are in rotation, too, which is weird; the illusion that you're watching television disappears under their weightlessness. It seems unlikely that, 39 years from now, anyone will ponder, or re-watch, Apple's day one playlist the way people do MTV's first day. Since videos were relatively rare and only certain kinds of bands were making them, MTV's early programming came with a built-in aesthetic, one the channel developed to great effect in its early, new-wave years. Apple has no such novelty on its side, and is showing you what people are already listening to at its own, and other, music services. But can it create a different kind of freshness and charm by reverse-engineering such a service into old-school TV? Can the charm last? Is there a business model in it?... A warning, of sorts, to TIKTOK: Figure out how to properly pay royalties on user-generated content, or "we might have a similar situation like we do with SOUNDCLOUD, in which the major labels enforce serious licensing restrictions, causing them to figure out how to monetize quickly. And ultimately losing what made it special at the beginning." That's the message from MATT BRINKWORTH, head of digital at the OMNIAN GROUP and a fan of the platform... If you're the guy who signed SKID ROW and STONE TEMPLE PILOTS, chances are you have a lawyer on speed dial who can help you free a man wrongfully convicted on a cocaine charge. LAVA RECORDS CEO JASON FLOM on how he started his side gig of righting legal wrongs... UMG is planning to go public in 2022... TOM LEHRER, the 1950s and '60s multi-hyphenate satirist who's now 92 years old, has posted all his lyrics on his website and declared them public domain, to be "downloaded and used in any manner whatsoever, without requiring any further permission from me or any payment to me or to anyone else." He says his music is coming soon to the same website, which for some reason he's planning to shut down on Dec. 31, 2024, "so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long"... RIP SPENCER DAVIS, the bandleader but not singer of the group of the same name, OUTFIELD singer TONY LEWIS, British DJ TIM "DJ CHUCKS" COLE of the CORRESPONDENTS and British rock journeyman CHARLIE AINLEY.