Beyoncé’s last two albums, Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, arrived without her usual sweeping, full-length video visuals fans looked forward to with every drop. Instead, she offered carefully curated short-form reels, a deliberate pivot for an artist who helped define the visual album era. In 2024 during an interview with GQ US, she explained that the music needed “space to breathe,” noting that visuals can sometimes distract from the key messaging of the music.
Her decision reflects a broader cultural shift. The traditional music video, once a moment, a premiere, an event, is no longer televised. As music TV programmes and shows quietly lose relevance, artists are following audiences online and social media, where visuals now live in fragments rather than full frames.
From television to timeline
There was a time when discovering a new music video meant gathering around the TV, waiting for MTV Base or Channel O to cue the next cultural moment. Today, this ritual has been replaced by scrolling on your phone. A music release is now a snippet, a teaser or a visualiser... content designed to meet audiences where they already are: on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. In this new visual economy, impact is measured in seconds rather than minutes. Videographer and music video creative director Michael Holmes says the shift has forced creatives to rethink how stories are told.
“Music videos are not as fashionable as short-form 30-second mini music videos,” he explains. “This means we have to adapt so that we’re able to capture consumer's attention in those 30 seconds and make them choose to consume more of that content.”
Platforms like TikTok have rewritten the rules entirely. A dance challenge can propel a song up the charts, a handheld visual can reach millions without ever touching a TV screen, and virality can arrive long before a song has settled into the public consciousness. For emerging artists, the shift has flattened the playing field. For others, it signals the quiet end of an era once defined by spectacle.
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The art in the algorithm
Still, artistry hasn’t vanished — it has adapted. South African artists, in particular, are navigating this transition with intention. Singer Filah Lah Lah stands out for maintaining a strong visual language in a space that often prioritises speed over substance. “I’m inspired by thoughtful visual pieces, from Michael Jackson to Solange,” she says. “We’ve always seen music videos as short stories, another way to connect with the music and the artist. ”
Keeping the magic alive
Despite the dominance of short-form content, there remains a quiet hunger for visuals that ask audiences to slow down, work that unfolds with patience and intention. Filah believes that appetite hasn’t disappeared; it has simply become less visible. “Media as we know it has changed, and as artists we have to adapt,” she says. “But some things don’t need to change. A healthy, thoughtful creative process produces timeless work. There’s still space for meaningful visual storytelling, no matter the screen.” The challenge now lies in preserving cinematic depth within the language of digital culture.
Vertical framing, episodic rollouts, and richly produced short-form visuals have become new tools, not limitations. Creativity, after all, has always been shaped by its medium. So maybe Beyoncé is right. Perhaps music, and its visuals, simply need room to breathe. The screen has changed, but the magic hasn’t disappeared. It’s just moved into our hands, our feeds, and our world.
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