A music video or song 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. Although the origins of music videos date back much further, they came into prominence in the 1980s, when MTV based their format around the medium. Prior to the 1980s, these works were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional clip", "promotional video", "song video", "song clip" or "film clip".
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.
1974-1980s. The beginning f music Television
The Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds, both of which premiered in 1974, were significant in developing and popularizing the music video genre in Australia and other countries, and in establishing the importance of music video clips as a means of promoting both emerging acts and new releases by established acts. In early 1974, former radio DJ Graham Webb launched a weekly teen-oriented TV music show which screened on Sydney's ATN-7 on Saturday mornings; this was renamed Sounds Unlimited in 1975 and later shortened simply to Sounds. In need of material for the show, Webb approached Seven newsroom staffer Russell Mulcahy and asked him to shoot film footage to accompany popular songs for which there were no purpose-made clips (e.g. Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking"). Using this method, Webb and Mulcahy assembled a collection of about 25 clips for the show. The success of his early efforts encouraged Mulcahy to quit his TV job and become a full-time director, and he made clips for several popular Australian acts including Stylus, Marcia Hines, Hush and AC/DC. As it gained popularity, Countdowntalent coordinator Ian "Molly" Meldrum and producer Michael Shrimpton quickly realized that "film clips" were becoming an important new commodity in music marketing. Despite the show's minuscule budget, Countdown's original director Paul Drane was able to create several memorable music videos especially for the show, including the classic film-clips for the AC/DC hits "It's A Long Way To The Top" and "Jailbreak". After relocating to the UK in the mid-1970s, Mulcahy made successful music videos for several noted British pop acts—his early UK credits includedXTC's "Making Plans For Nigel" (1979) and his landmark video for The Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star" (1979) which became the first music video played on MTV in 1981.
The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. In 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK number one in nearly a decade thanks to director David Mallet's eye catching promo for "Ashes to Ashes". In 1975, The Who released their all-music feature film Tommy, directed by Ken Russell, based upon their 1969 rock opera of the same name. Also in 1975, the band Queen ordered Bruce Gowers to make a promo video for their new single "Bohemian Rhapsody" to show it in Top of the Pops; this is also notable for being entirely shot and edited on videotape. The Alan Parker film adaptation of Pink Floyd The Walltransformed the group's 1979 concept double-LP of the same title into a confrontational and apocalyptic audio-visual labyrinth of stylized, expressionistic images, sounds, melodies and lyrics. The long-running British Rock music show The Old Grey Whistle Test produced a number of pioneering videos made especially for the program throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.
Video Concert Hall, created by Jerry Crowe and Charles Henderson, launched on November 1, 1979, was the first nationwide video music programming on American television, predating MTV by almost three years. The USA Cable Network program Night Flight was one of the first American programs to showcase these videos as an artform. In 1980, New Zealand group Split Enz had major success with the single "I Got You" and the album True Colours, and later that year they produced a complete set of promo clips for each song on the album (directed by their percussionist, Noel Crombie) and to market these on video cassette. This was followed a year later by the first American video album, The Completion Backward Principle by The Tubes, directed by the group's keyboard player Michael Cotten, which included two videos directed by Russell Mulcahy ("Talk To Ya Later" and "Don't Want To Wait Anymore"). Among the first music videos were clips produced by ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith who started making short musical films for Saturday Night Live. In 1981, he released Elephant Parts, the first winner of a Grammy for music video, directed by William Dear. Billboard credits the independently-produced Video Concert Hall as being the first with nationwide video music programming on American television.
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.
Two key innovations in the development of the modern music video were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment, and the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing.[citation needed] The advent of high-quality color videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era,[citation needed] enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. However, as the genre developed, music video directors increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video. During the 1980s, music videos had become de rigueur for most recording artists. The phenomenon was famously parodied by BBC television comedy program Not The Nine O'Clock News who produced a spoof music video "Nice Video, Shame About The Song".
In this period, directors and the acts they worked with began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos were made in a non-representational form, in which the musical artist was not shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare; three early 1980s examples are Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City", directed by Arnold Levine, David Mallet's video for David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure", and Ian Emes' video for Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur". One notable later example of the non-representational style is Bill Konersman's innovative 1987 video for Prince's "Sign o' the Times" – influenced by Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" clip, it featured only the text of the song's lyrics.
In 1983, one of the most successful, influential and iconic music videos of all time was released: the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller", directed by John Landis. The video set new standards for production, having cost US$800,000 to film. The video for "Thriller", along with earlier videos by Jackson for his songs "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", were instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV. Prior to Jackson's success, videos by African-American artists were rarely played on MTV: according to MTV, this was because it initially conceived itself as a rock-music-oriented channel, although musician Rick James was outspoken in his criticism of the cable channel, claiming in 1983 that MTV's refusal to air the music video for his song "Super Freak" and clips by other African-American performers was "blatant racism".
On March 5, 1983, Country Music Television, or CMT, was launched, created and founded by Glenn D. Daniels and uplinked from the Video World Productions facility in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The Canadian music channel MuchMusic was launched in 1984. In 1984, MTV also launched the MTV Video Music Awards (later to be known as the VMA's), an annual awards event that would come to underscore MTV's importance in the music industry.
In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 (then known as "VH-1: Video Hits One"), featuring softer music, and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV. MTV Europe was launched in 1987, and MTV Asia in 1991. Another important development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many videos had on British TV at the time), without presenters. Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art computer graphics. The show moved to ITV in 1989.
The video for the 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" made pioneering use of computer animation, and helped make the song an international hit. Ironically, the song itself was a wry comment on the music-video phenomenon, sung from the point of view of an appliance deliveryman both drawn to and repelled by the outlandish images and personalities that appeared on MTV. In 1986, Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" used special effects and animation techniques developed by British studio Aardman Animation. The video for "Sledgehammer" would go on to be a phenomenal success and win nine MTV Video Music Awards.
In 1988, the MTV show Yo! MTV Raps debuted; the show helped to bring hip hop music to a mass audience for the first time.
1992–2004: Rise of the directors
In November 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Floria Sigismondi, Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Romanekand 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, Sigismondi, and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallström and David Fincher.
Two of the videos directed by Romanek in 1995 are notable for being two of the three most expensive music videos of all time: Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream", which cost $7 million to produce, and Madonna's "Bedtime Story", which cost $5 million. "Scream" remains the most expensive video of all time. In the mid to late 1990s, Walter Stern directed "Firestarter" by The Prodigy, "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve, and "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. During this period, MTV launched channels around the world to show music videos produced in each local market: MTV Latin America in 1993, MTV India in 1996, and MTV Mandarin in 1997, among others. MTV2, originally called "M2" and meant to show more alternative and older music videos, debuted in 1996.
2005–present: The Internet becomes video-friendly.
The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share video files, including those for music videos. By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows, which were more popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to pioneer with the show The Real World, which premiered in 1992.
2005 saw the launch of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video much faster and easier; Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and MySpace's video functionality, use similar technology. Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. The band OK Go may exemplify this trend, having achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, "A Million Ways" in 2005 and "Here It Goes Again" in 2006, both of which first became well-known online. (OK Go repeated the trick with another high-concept video in 2010, for their song "This Too Shall Pass".)
The 2008 video for Weezer's "Pork and Beans" also captured this trend, by including at least 20 YouTube celebrities; the single became the most successful of Weezer's career, in chart performance. In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its merger with Google, YouTube assured the RIAA that they would find a way to pay royalties through a bulk agreement with the major record labels. This was complicated by the fact that not all labels share the same policy toward music videos: some welcome the development and upload music videos to various online outlets themselves, viewing music videos as free advertising for their artists, while other labels view music videos not as an advertisement, but as the product itself.
In 2009, Thirty Seconds to Mars' music video "Kings and Queens" was uploaded to popular video-sharing website YouTube on the same day of its release, where it has garnered over one hundred million views. It also received over forty million plays on MySpace. "Kings and Queens" was featured as iTunes Store video of the week and was one of the most downloaded videos ever to be featured. The video also received four nominations at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, making 30 Seconds to Mars the most nominated rock artist in VMA history for a single year.
MTV itself now provides streams of artists' music videos, while AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The Internet has become the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos. At its launch, Apple's iTunes Store provided a section of free music videos in high quality compression to be watched via the iTunes application. More recently the iTunes Store has begun selling music videos for use on Apple's iPod with video playback capability.
To further signify the change in direction towards Music Video airplay, MTV officially dropped the Music Television tagline on February 8, 2010 from their logo in response to their increased commitment to non-scripted reality programming and other youth-oriented entertainment rising in prominence on their live broadcast.
Vevo is a music video website launched by several major music publishers in December 2009. The videos on VEVO are syndicated to YouTube, with Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue.
MTV
MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American basic cable and satellite television channel owned by the MTV Networks Music & Logo Group, a unit of the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom. The channel is headquartered in New York City, New York. Launched on August 1, 1981, the original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys," or VJs. In its early years, MTV's main target demographic were young adults, but today, MTV's programming is primarily targeted at adolescents in addition to young adults.
MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the U.S. and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have gone independent. MTV's influence on its audience, including issues related to censorship and social activism, has been a subject of debate for years.
As of August 2013, approximately 97,654,000 American households (85.51% of households with television) receive MTV.
