Friday 12 November 2010

A short history of the music video

The music video has always been a big factor the success of musicians and their songs. Many people say the origin of the music video was from an Australian TV show called countdown, where songs would be introduced with smalls snippets and clips of the band. Even before MTV existed there was a American TV show called "video concert hall", the first music video dedicated show.

1981 and the MTV generation begins; launching a 24-hour channel purely for music videos. 1983 and the most popular and influential music video ever was released; Micheal Jackson's 14 minute thriller video. Within five years music videos had become a big part of any single, this in turn meant more money was being spent on this promotional videos saw the release of Micheal Jacksons- scream costing $7 million and Madonna's-bedtime costing $5million ( two of the three most expensive music videos ever)

The 90's saw MTV go global launching in Latin America in 93 and then India and China later in the decade. In more recent times MTV shows more reality TV on it's array of channels rather than music videos. In turn this has been replaced by many other music channels usually being specialised in a certain type of music for example kerrang showing rock, AKA mainly grime and urban UK songs etc.