History of Music Videos

What is a Music Video?

A video that goes with a song, these usually last the same length of the song (not all the time), features the artists in some way (not always), tell a story (don't have to), they aim to be visually memorable or good enough to make an audience want to watch again.

Early 60's

"The Monkees" was a TV show that used filmed segments that were accompanied with music by the same group. This was based off The Beatles first feature film "A Hard Days Night" which used sequences with musical tones in them this was used a basic template for future music videos to base themselves off. The second feature by The Beatles "Help!" was filmed in colour in London and used different clips, using long shots and close ups. 

Late 70's

Long running show "Top Of The Pops" started to play music videos though they did have some retrctions placed on them by the BBC on the number of outsourced videos that could be played. This meant that a good video by an artist could mean more sales of that song.

1980's

In 1981 the U.S launched a channel called "MTV" airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and began to air 24 hour a day music on television. This meant that music videos could become a central part in the popular music market, acts like Duran Duran, Adam and the Ants and Madonna had a great deal of success due to the videos having some sort of appeal to make people want to re watch them many times. 

2005:

This year saw the launch of the website "YouTube" which made it easier and a lot more convenient to be able to watch music videos by any artist. This also meant that anyone with a camera could create a music video or anyone could make a parody video. The band "OK Go" who became famous online after publishing "A Million Ways" and "Here It Goes Again" which both became popular online. The band also use a special feature throughout their video that makes it eye catching and unique such as their latest video is a set of optical illusions. 

2009:

The band "Thirty Seconds to Mars" released their music video for "Kings and Queens" at the same time of its release where the video got over 100 million views and was featured on iTunes as video of the week and became the most downloaded video to be featured.