History of Music Videos - by Josh

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 Music videos first came into pop culture in the 1960s, which were largely introduced by The Beatles in 1965 when they started making promotional clips in a effort to promote their music without having to feature in-person. This helped spread their music, particularly in the USA as well as Britain were their songs featured on Top of the Pops. These were simple, black and white videos of the band playing their instruments and singing rather than a particular narrative and rather just sticking to a performance point of view. These promotional clips began to grow in popularity among artists and their fans towards the late 60s and in the mid 70s music television started up, however the most important music television: MTV didn't start until 1981 which aired music videos 24 hours a day. This was the start of the music videos playing an important role in artist's music marketing.

 MTV played a pinnacle role in the beginning of music videos as the station was the main way videos were broadcast and enabled people to watch artists' videos, which were hosted by someone known as a VJ (a video jockey), much like a radio presenter. Although MTV today does not feature 24 hours of music videos, it is still a major station for music videos. It features programs other than music such as 'Beavis and Butthead' 'Jersey Shore' in an attempt to differentiate itself with other rival music channels including: 4Music and Box. The first video shown on MTV was a song by the band: The Buggles called 'Video Killed the Radio Star', which could easily be a reference to how they believe music video stations would take over radio stations. MTV helped numerous artists achieve star status and the sale of their records, like how today we have to Charts Top 20 where the most popular bought songs are put in a Top 20 which massively helped the sale of their tracks. This is how No. 1 songs became very popular and ultimately helped artists and songwriters win awards at music awards such as the Grammys.

 The iconic and thoroughly unique Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' (image right), which is widely considered to be the best music video of all time was filmed in 1983 and cost $500,000, a record for that time (the most expensive video ever costing 7 million dollar was Michael and Janet Jackson's 'Scream' video'. The iconic nature of the video is due toit  being unlike any other,and due to its length it allows a short story to be created and is the only music video to this day that features dancing zombies. When the video was made zombie films were very popular and would have greatly interested people if they featured in a music video. The video relates a lot to zombie films and incorporated Jackson's unique dancing style, for which he was very popular - combining zombie films and his legendary dancing would be considered incredible at the time and even now, making it a timeless classic. An interesting thing about this video was that it was extremely popular with fans of all genres, however it did receive some critical reception from people saying it was too violent. Although the actual song is more Pop and R&B, because of the video it became very popular with people of all music genre tastes. I have posted a video of the dance below (play to see straight from the dance).

 In 1985 MTV launched another TV channel called VH1 (Video Hits 1) which was aimed at an older age group which featured softer music which helped Bruce Springsteen's album 'Born in the USA' achieve the best selling album of the year. Since Hip Hop had started to boom in popularity, MTV  released a show called 'Yo! MTV Raps' from which the group: Public Enemy launched their video 'Night of the Living Baseheads', which broke new ground in presenting music videos as a form of cultural expression for artists. Breaking into the 2000's the advent of applying music videos onto CDs gave a 33% growth for music videos across the world. Another important feature in the growth of music videos was the introduction of videos on iTunes, and after just 20 days over 1 million songs were downloaded. 

 Perhaps the most important part of music video growth was the launch of youtube and several years after: Vevo. These video streaming sites were able to show and promote music videos across the world over the internet, enabling music artists such as Ok Go and Soulja Boy to see more success through people able to view their videos online. Below is the infamous video for Ok Go's 'Here it Goes again'

 Without Youtube, this video would never have gained as many views and therefore been bought. Vevo was a part of Youtube launched in 2008 which posted and promoted videos through advertising on Youtube on the artist's behalf, which also enabled artist's to gain money through people viewing their videos online. People are made aware of new videos through related adverts next to the artist's video they are watching, e.g. if someone is watching an Indie Rock video like below the advert surrounding it will be promoting a new Indie Rock band's video. The advert in the video will gain money for Vevo (the video provider), Youtube (the video website) and the artist.

 Perhaps the most important statistic in online video viewing is that in 2010, the number of videos viewed online reached 34 billion views with an estimated 183 million viewers. Today, online viewing is the most popular way of viewing music videos, free for the user, it also generates money for the artist and site. People will tend to prefer online music video viewing as they can choose what music they listen to as Music Television tends to only play popular chart music. Music videos on TV also remain popular but with the increasing amount of people online Music Television could die out completely, which could explain why MTV is trying to expand viewership through shows other than that concerning music.