History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Modern Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Many music videos interpret images and scenes from the song's lyrics, while others take a more thematic approach. Other music videos may be without a set concept, being merely a filmed version of the song's live performance.



Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is considered the first music video. When the song was released in the UK in 1975 the band were on tour abroad and couldn't make it to Top Of The Pops each week when it reached no.1. No-one imagined the record would be so successful (at nearly 9 minutes long it was considered un-radio-friendly and the record company assumed no radio station would play it), and that is when they recorded the video to be played in their absence. Although it looks bad quality in comparison to what we have today, at the time it was revolutionary and people couldn't get enough of it.



In 1981, the US music channel MTV was launched - ready for an era of 24-hour-a-day music viewing. The first video played on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star (by The Buggles) but not until Michael Jackson's Billie Jean was MTV taken seriously, and seen as an alternative to radio. Nowadays, MTV has numberous channels dedicated to the different types of music;
'MTV' - which is general chart music, and other selections
'MTV Base' - which airs the R'n'B and Urban genres of music
'MTV Classic' - this channel airs the oldies from the 70's and mainly 80's
'MTV Live' - which shows the live performances of artists and sometime documentaries surrounding them.
'MTV Hits' - this channel shows all of the current charts, much like 'MTV' however, more specific. Mainly Katy Perry, Beyonce, anything current.
'MTV Dance' - airs mainly Electronic Dance Music such as DJ Fresh, Calvin Harris and David Guetta.
'MTV Rocks' - a whole channel dedicated to rock music, for example. The Killers, Linkin Park, and many more.
MTV also owns a number of other music channels such as VH1 and VIVA... This shows the power that MTV has created over the last 30 years. More than 320 million TV sets in 90 countries over 5 continents have access to Music Television (MTV).