History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. 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. In many of the music videos I analysed from the Indie genre, the videos included non-narrative approaches, for example Ellie Goulding's music video does not tell a story instead gives the audience various random ideas and images. On the other hand, although the music videos I studied did not include various aspects such as animation or live action filming, here is an example of an animated music video:

Here are some images I have retrieved from the music video 'deltron zero' by the rock band the 'Gorillaz'. The reasoning for the band wanting to use animated music videos is because they wanted to create them depicting a 'virtual band' of comic book characters.

Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. The main purpose of music videos are to act as a marketing device in order to allow the audiences to discover out more about the artist and the song, which then boosts the sale of the artist and their records.

Music videos really started to become popular during the 1980's when MTV was first introduced and proved to be a phenomenon. MTV had a profound impact on the music industry and popular culture. MTV has also been referenced countless times in popular culture by musicians, other TV channels and shows, films, and books. The first music video shown on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. MTV was shown on TV 24 hours a day, music videos had now become the most vital part in an artists career, allowing them to present themselves in a certain way that was gain them popularity and a boom in their record sales in particular. MTV would soon spawn numerous sister channels in the U.S. and affiliated channels internationally, as it started a new era of music videos.

As music videos were becoming more and more popular there was a sudden demand for directors. Directors such as Michel Gondry,Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. These were the people that now had the control of these music videos.

A more recent director is Tom Beard, who has directed many music videos for the band 'Florence and the Machine'. The videos he has worked on has proved to be a huge success, directing the bands music videos for 'Got the love', 'Cosmic Love' and 'Dog days are over'. Most of these music videos have been concept based and performance. I believe these music videos have been such a success due their uniqueness and the way they stand out amongst other music videos, with the use of funky props and unusual locations. On the 3rd of August 2010 'Dog days are over' was nominated for the Music Video of the Year.

However, nowadays instead of the directors being solely in charge of these music videos record labels and even the artists themselves will have a lot of say in the development of music videos. A record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion, and enforcement of copyright protection of sound recordings and music videos; conducts talent scouting and development of new artists and maintains contracts with recording artists and their managers. Artists nowadays will also be allowed to have a lot of say in the way in which they would like to present themselves to their audiences.

An example of a new technology that has impacted on the relevance and importance of music videos is Youtube. Youtube allows audiences to access not only music videos but tons and tons of footage in seconds, and televisions no longer are seen to be the main source of music videos. YouTube has made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to post a video that a worldwide audience could watch within a few minutes. Therefore, Youtube has the potential to reach a wide audience and therefore this is an advantage for many artists, allowing their music videos to be viewed easily, which will then not only increase the popularity of the artist themselves but may also increase the number of records the artist has sold.

An example to show how popular Youtube is nowdays when listening to and watching music videos is to show you the viewing figures of some of the videos I researched from the Indie genre.

Ellie Goulding's music video for 'Guns and Horses' had a massive 1,365,543 views. Along with Florence and the Machine who had 3,807,504 views.

However, it is not only signed or established artists that are focusing on music videos but it is also amateur artists who can you technologies such as Apple Macs to create their very own music videos. 'Channel AKA', formally know as 'Channel U' allows these amateur artists to show their work to audiences on the television. This has therefore boosted these artists popularity and many of these artists have now become extremely successful and talented music artists because of this new and improved technology. An example of this can be shown with the band 'N Dubz', who got major publicity simply from showing their music videos from 'Channel U', and are now an award winning band.