History of Music Videos

What is the purpose of a music video?

When did they become popular?

Music videos were introduced in 1894 when George Thomas created the first ‘illustrated song’, which later became known as the first music video. However, music videos only really came into their own in the 1980s. The birth of MTV and the later launch of VH1 catapulted music videos into the public eye and increased their popularity rapidly. In 1981 MTV launched in the USA airing ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ and thus, began the era of 24-hours-a-day music on television. This new outlet for music videos became a central role in popular music marketing and by 1983 the most successful and influential music video of all time was released – Michael Jackson’s 14 minute long music video for ‘Thriller’.

Who controlled the development of music videos in the past? Who now has control of the development of music videos?

In the past the development of music videos was largely controlled by directors and record labels. This is proven by Goodwin's theory on music video as he states that record labels demand lots of close ups of the artist; therefore, this shows that record labels have a significant amount of influence over the development of music videos.

Contrastingly, in recent years artists have been given an increasing amount of control. For example, Indie bands like Vampire Weekend can now come up with their own ideas for their music videos, which is shown by their music video for Giving Up The Gun, as they came up with the concept behind it. However, the amount of control that an artist/band has over the development of their music video largely depends on their genre music. Boy bands that belong to the Pop genre (e.g. JLS and The Wanted) conventionally have to include dance routinesin their music videos and therefore, have a limited amount of control over their videos in comparison to the record label who would have a large amount of control over it. Whereas, Indie boy bands would have a larger amount of control over the development of their music video as generally, Indie bands have a lot more control of the products that they produce because Indie music is based on a DIY ethos.

How have new technologies impacted on the relevance and importance of music videos?

Initially, two key innovations in the development of modern music videos were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use recording and editing equipment. However, more recently the introduction of the Internet, especially websites such as YouTube, and video-friendly iPods have had a huge impact on the relevance and importance of music videos.

By the mid-2000s, MTV had largely abandoned showing music videos in favour of reality

television shows (e.g. The Hills) - essentially, music videos were becoming a dying medium. But, the introduction of YouTube in 2005 largely helped to save the music video and make them more relevant audiences today, as they can now pick what music videos that they want to watch whenever they want and comment on the videos that they like or dislike.

Video-friendly iPods and iTunes have also affected the relevance and importance of music videos drastically because now audiences have the option to download their favourite music videos so that they can watch them on the go. This has had an impact because it means that music videos now push the boundaries even more in order to make people want to the extra mile and pay for them e.g. Lady Gaga's music videos are extremely popular because of their extravagance and short-film like structure.