History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film that accompanies a piece of music or song. Modern music videos are primarily used as a marketing device to help promote the artist/band. Although the history of music videos go back much further they only began to come into their own once MTV (and later with the launch of VH1) based their format around the medium during the 1980’s. It was then when the term ‘music video’ came into popular use. Prior to that time terms such as “promotional (promo) clip’, ‘promotional (promo) film’, ‘film clip’ and ‘filmed insert’ were more commonly used.
Many music videos use a wide range of styles for filming technique e.g. animation, live action filming and documentaries, however, most music videos do not interpret images from the songs lyrics, making it less literal than expected.

In 1981 MTV was launched and so began the age of 24 hour music television. The first song played by MTV was ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’. Singers such as Madonna not only used music videos to promote their music but also to create their image, a common thing that has carried on into the 21st Century with artists such as Lady Gaga also using music videos for the same purpose. In 1983 the worlds most influential and successful music video in history was released; the 14 minute long video for ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson.
By 1997 MTV had expanded their channel and were world wide with channels such as VH1 being launched in 1985 (which played more mellow and softer music for an older audience) along with MTV Europe (1987), MTV Asia (1991), MTV Latin America (1993), MTV India (1996) and MTV Mandarin (1997).
MTV launched the MTV Video Music Awards (which were later knwon as the VMA’s) in 1984, an annual awards event that would soon come to underscore MTV’s importance in the music industry.
By the mid 2000’s MTV had stopped showing a large number of music videos and began showing reality TV shows instead and in February 2010 they official dropped the 'Music Television' tagline to signify the change towards Music Video Airplay. However, music videos have played a huge role in the success of many artists and the music industry, which without MTV would not have been possible.

Two of the most expensive music videos to ever be made are the video for ‘scream’ by Michael and Janet Jackson which cost $7 million to produce, followed by Madonna’s video for ‘Bedtime Story’ which cost $5 million to produce.

In the late 1970’s the long running British TV show ‘Top of the Pops’ began playing music videos, however the BBC placed strict limits on the number of ‘outsourced’ videos they could play, therefore, a good video would increase a songs’ sale as viewers hoped to see it again the following week.

Two of the key music innovations in the music video development were the development of easy to use and relatively cheap video recording and editing equipment. This along with the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply.

By the 21st century the internet had become video friendly and Napster, a peer to peer file sharing system that ran between 1999 and 2001 enabled users to share videos with ease. By 2005 ‘YouTube’ was released making the viewing of online video faster and much easier. MySpace’s video functionality also used similar technology when it was launched in 2007. Websites such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘MySpace’ had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos and bands and artists noticed the success of releasing videos mostly or entirely online.
The videos “A Million Ways’ (2005) and ‘Here It Goes Again’ (2006) by the band 'Ok Go', exemplify this trend as both first became popular via online viewing. The internet has become the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos.

However, some videos made are too explicit to be shown at a time when a mainstream audience would be watching (or at all), therefore video censorship was introduced resulting in various videos being banned. The first video to be banned by MTV was Queen’s 1982 hit ‘Body Language’ due to thinly veiled homoerotic undertones, plus lots of skin and sweat which was deemed unsuitable for a television audience at the time.

Madonna has been the artist associated with the most video censorship throughout her career. The controversy started with the video for her track ‘Lucky Star’ and amplified over time due to clips such as ‘Like a Virgin’. The subject matter discussed in ‘Like a Prayer’ caused further outcry due to it’s sexual, religious and racially oriented imagery. In 1990 the video for ‘Justify My Love’ was banned by MTV for it’s deception of homosexuality, cross-dressing and group sex.

The most recent video to be banned was the video for ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga as MTV stated that the content was not suitable to be shown with their programming, however it soon began to be shown on European channels. Previous Lady Gaga videos such as ‘LoveGame’ have also attracted criticism for things such as sexual content.

(source: Wikipedia)