Research into The Music Video

What is a music video?

A music video is one produced to accompany a complete piece of music or song, intended to promote the sale of music recordings - using the video as a marketing device and for artistic purposes. Through this, artist's singing talents can be showcased, along with how they perform, with music video’s playing an important role in the success of many artists and the music industry.

The experiences and temptations vary, depending on what a particular person responds to, knowing that the audience of a music video needs to be considered a great deal. Some examples of themes shown within a music video that benefit from this can include:

· urban drama (Suzanne Vega - Everything’s Gonna Be Alright)
· authority (Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun)
· money (Jay-Z - Big Pimpin)
· dance (Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal)
· teenage reminiscence (Smashing Pumpkins - 1969))
· graphical creativity (The White Stripes - Fell in Love with a Girl)

Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques.

History of the Music Video

Looking at the history of music videos has enabled me to get a real grasp on the impact they have had and how they transformed the music industry.

The TV show 'Countdown' played an important role in the development of the music video industry, premiering in 1974. Music video clips were used as a method of promoting acts that were to appear on the show. As the popularity of these video clips grew, the music industry began to realize the marketing potential they had here.

''Video Concert Hall,' was apparently the first video music program that was shown nationwide on American television, followed by ‘night flight’, shown on a US program. In 1981, the video channel MTV (music television) was launched, being the phenomenon that gained the power of the music video. They launched the channel with the video, "Video Killed the Radio Star." By The Buggles; broadcasting 24-hour-a-day music. Due to the amount of broadcast, more videos were needed to be produced, resulting in them beginning to play an important role in artists’ careers. Throughout the 1980s, MTV expanded to become an important tool used in music marketing. Singers not only used music videos to promote their albums, but also to create an image for themselves. An example here would be to look at Madonna, as her career was greatly influenced by her video that presented a sexy, appealing looking artist, being most associated with music video censorship. The controversy surrounding her marketing of sexuality began with the video for "Lucky Star", aand grew over time due to clips such as "Like a Virgin". In this period, directors and the acts they worked with began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos were made in a non-representational form.

In 1983, the 13-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller," was released, becoming one of the world's most successful and influential video in music history.



For each of Micheal Jacksons video's, there would be an elaborate narrative, the best example being this landmark 'Thriller'. Every new Michael Jackson video was seen as a benchmark in technology and storytelling. - MTV had been running for two years before broadcasting this video in 1983, revolutionising the genre and setting newstandards. He used this video to create a mini-comedy of music and gore, telling a story with a beggining, a middle and an end. The interesting choices and visuals in this video are, in themselves, innovations at this time. The general public was not familiar with this style and genre before this music video was released.

MTV went on to launch further channels, showing music video’s based for a particular audience, such as VHI for the older audience, featuring soft music, and MTV raps, bringing hip hop music nationwide - launching channels around the world during the 1990’s. The past decades of music video, whether seen on TV or on the Internet, have presented numerous art works expressing the street life and fantasy lives of modern sub-cultures. By looking at personal reactions to music video, it becomes possible to understand how music videos gain such significance.

Use of the internet

In 1997 the website iFilm was launched, which hosted videos, including those associated with music. Napster was another website which enabled users to share video files running at this time, using a peer to peer network service. Both of which increasing the promotion and knowledge of music videos, enabling more ways in which they can be viewed.

By the mid-2000s, MTV and other similar channels abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows, as these were more popular with its audiences; this lead to the release of the website YouTube which made the viewing of online video much faster and easier by 2005. MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology, launched in 2007. Such websites had a strong effect and some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. We can look at the band ‘Ok Go’ here, who achieved their fame through the videos of two of their songs, both of which first become well known online.

The Internet has become the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos.

Advanced technology

Apple's iTune's store is now apparent, providing a section of free music videos in high quality compression to be watched via the iTunes application. The iTunes Store has now begun selling music videos for people to buy and use on iPod’s, with video playback capability.

Following the rise of internet broadcasting and the popularity of video sites such as YouTube, independant filmmakers began recording live sessions to present on the Web - Offering freedom from the financial requirements of high-production movie-like clips; rising opportunity for people involved in music to become known. It was seen as the only method for little-known indie music artists to present themselves to a wider audience. Consequently, artists these days can spend millions on promotional videos, in order to make the biggest impression on the public

MTV officially dropped the Music Television tagline from their logo in 2010 in response to their increased commitment to non-scripted reality programming and other youth-oriented entertainment.