History Of Music Videos

A music video is a short film that accompanies a song, often called promotional videos or promos. 1974 was the beginning of music television. In the UK the very popular music TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos, but did have very strict limits on the number of outsourced videos shown.

In 1981 the U.S music station MTV was launched and aired ‘video killed the radio star’, by the mid 1980’s music videos played a central role the music industry.

1983 was the release of the 14 minute long thriller by Michael Jackson costing $500,000 to film and has become one of the most iconic and influential music videos of all time. Before the airing of this it was rare for an African American artist to be featured on MTV.

VH1 was launched in 1985 by MTV showing much softer music and aimed at an older audience, followed by MTV Europe in 1987, and MTV Asia in 1991. By the mid 2000’s MTV and many of its overseas channels had stopped showing music videos in favour of reality TV shows as they proved more popular with its audience.

The launch of YouTube in 2005 made online viewing of music videos much more accessible.

In 20120 many artists began also releasing music videos, these were usually released prior to the actual music video and separately to the actual music label. There are often unofficial music videos released also, these are videos made by fans of an artist, consisting of images clips relating to the band or song or even clips shot by the fan themselves.