VH1 Soul

VH1 Soul is a digital cable and satellite television channel and is the sister network to VH1. It showcases R&B, funk, soul, and Motown music from various periods.

The channel debuted in 2000 as part of the "MTV Suite" line-up of digital/satellite channels that included new MTV and VH1 channels. They played non-stop music videos, as well as several new Nickelodeon spin-off channels, such as Nick GAS, NickToons Network, The N, Noggin, VH1 Classic, CMT Pure Country, MTV2, and MTVX. The "MTV Suite" package was sold to cable companies and satellite providers as a bundle, so they could either choose to offer their customers all the channels or none of them.

In its early years, VH1 Soul's main focus was on R&B and soul videos of the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, along with live performance clips from even earlier years. Janet Jackson, Prince, TLC, Usher, Tony Toni Tone, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder were some of the channel's main staples. By 2003, the channel had stopped showing most of the pre-1990s videos that it had once played, since they were often played on VH1 Classic's Classic Soul program. The channel then gradually began to focus more on underground, alternative, and old school hip-hop videos, whilst continuing to feature new R&B musicians.

Presently, a selection of R&B hits from the past ten years, as well as several 1980s and early 1990s hip-hop videos, can be seen on VH1 Soul. Several of the more R&B-influenced modern-day rappers and their newest videos can also be regularly seen in heavy rotation on VH1 Soul; for example: The Roots, De La Soul, Kanye West, Common, and Talib Kweli. However, VH1 Soul still occasionally airs older 1980s or early 1990s R&B/soul hits, such as Prince's "Kiss", Mariah Carey's "Vision Of Love", Stevie Wonder's "Superstition", or Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You".

On February 1, 2006, VH1 Soul revamped its format, doing away with the model of random videos and instead allocating music videos to different TV shows, each catering to a particular musical style. In November 2007, the network also had their first event program, airing the Vibe Awards, which moved from the now-defunct UPN network and did not take place in 2006 due to the new CW network declining to air the program.

In the spring of 2007, VH1 Soul, along with its sister networks MTV Jams and MTV Hits, were briefly dropped from Time Warner Cable's line-up in Southern California when those franchises transitioned from Adelphia and Comcast. However, all three channels returned to that line-up within a couple of months, under a new, specialized tier of service. To date however, the three networks remain conspicuously absent from many of Time Warner and Brighthouse Networks' systems, most notably in New York City, as well as both major satellite TV providers (DirecTV and DISH Network, respectively).

Though the channel still specialises mainly in playing music videos, VH1's The Salt-n-Pepa Show has aired recently on the network. In February 2009, VH1 Soul aired VH1's Black to the Future as part of its Black History Month celebration.

In 2008, VH1 Soul began dedicating more of its airtime to commercials and programs, and began playing fewer music videos, alienating a segment of its audience that watched the channel specifically for its focus on music rather than program content. Programs such as the VH1 Hip Hop Honors Show, VH1 Rock Docs, and other programs from the VH1 channel line-up began to regularly supplant airtime which had previously been dedicated to music videos, in a pattern similar to the First Format Evolution which occurred on the MTV channel in the late 1980s. As of Late 2009, the non-music programming has been dropped from the station, along with the commercials. The channel today features a non-stop blend of all music videos new and old across all theme blocks.