History of music video

History of Music Videos

As technology has progressed in many ways over the years, it now allows people to consume music videos in a variety of different ways. Music videos are short films created to integrate a song and an image. It is also produced to promote an artist or explain a narrative to the audience.

Since the first ever music video was shown to the public in the 1980's, technology has advanced a substantial amount which now allows the audience to access and view music videos on many different things some of which may consist of Television on music channels, YouTube, smartphones and social media (Facebook & Twitter).  

Over the last 33 years, music videos have become more popular each day and we are now at a point where music videos are as popular as television programmes and people watch music videos purely for their entertainment.
During the 1980's music videos were not known as a big entity and only had small air timings o TV shows like top of the pops. The song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by the band Queen was the first music video ever to be shown on TV. However all of this changed when the media executive Robert W Pittman came up with the idea to have a TV channel solely for music only. That was when the music channel MTV was created in 1981.

MTV

MTV is used to refer to Music Television. It is an American network in New York City that was started on 1st August 1981. MTV was the first music channel ever created and the initial purpose of this channel was to play music videos purely for peoples entertainment. The first ever music video to be broadcasted on MTV was "Video killed the radio star" that was sung by the Buggles. During that time only a few thousand people could watch it on the satellite television at the time as technology back then wasn't as advanced as it is now. During the early eighties, most people couldn't access cable or satellite television, so viewing music videos was a very rare thing. During the early eighties when more bands and artists began to make music videos. MTV then really took off when more of the population had access to cable television. Viewing music videos then became easier then ever and it was basically the norm for most artists to create a music video to accompany their singles.

YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website that was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006. On this website, users can upload, view and share videos as well as commenting their thoughts and feelings on any videos. YouTube also allows people to subscribe.
Subscribing is when someone enjoys watching many videos in particular which could be videos put up by one specific person. They can then subscribe which allows the audience to get informed/notified whenever the subscription uploads a new video or makes any changed to their YouTube profile.
Over the years, YouTube has developed a lot. By 2006 YouTube was one of the fastest growing websites on the internet uploading more than 65, 000 new videos and 100 million video views per day in July and was rated 5th most popular website. Throughout the years YouTube has continued growing and this year managed to get 1 billion users visiting the site every month.

This year it has been well known to the public that the song 'Gangnam style' which is sung by the South Korean musician PSY, has had the most views on YouTube so far, with a shocking 1,832,815,152 views on YouTube. This song was released in July 2012 as the lead single of his sixth studio album. 'Gangnam Style' became the first ever YouTube video to reach over a billion views and by November 2013, the music video had been viewed over 1.834 billion times.
By September 2012 'Gangnam Style' had been put in the Guinness world book of records as the most liked video on YouTube. It then subsequently then won the award for the best video at the MTV Europe Music Awards that was held later that year. By the end of 2012, the song had topped the music charts of more than 30 countries which include; Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Budgeting
During the 90's, music video production had become more cinematic, and the budgets were bigger. Artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna had some of the most expensive videos of that era, making videos that would cost £5-7million to produce.


Michael Jacksons music videos have always been ridiculously expensive.
In 1983, he spent $800,000 on 'Thriller' which would now be worth about $1.4 million today.
His music videos were getting more expensive to produce which left him spending  over $1.2 million on his music video for his single 'Black or White' and in 1992 he spent even more on the music video for his song 'Remember The Time'.

However his song 'Scream' had become with no doubt the most expensive music video to produce which cost 7 million dollars.

The 7 million dollars were used on... 

Computer-generated spaceship: $65,000

Breaking guitars: $53,000

Morphing artworks: $50,000

Michael's makeup: $3,000

Janet's makeup: $8,000 a day

Choreography: $40,000

Giant video screen: $80,000

Lighting: $175,000

Cost per day: $636,000 (about 11 days)

Total cost of 11 sets: $5,000,000

Music Genres
Over time, music genres have changed and progressed to different styles and mixed with different genres and example of this is how Rock music started out in the 1960′s. By the late 1960′s, lots of rock sub-genres had been created, including hybrids such as folk rock, blues rock and jazz rock fusion. Each combining the styles of both or more categories.
By the 1970′s punk rock was created, which included themes of politics and social differences. By the 1980′s it developed sub genres such as New wave and post-punk, followed by the alternative rock movement. From the 1990′s, alternative rock began to dominate the rock music scene and break through the mainstream, in the form of grunge, Britpop and indie rock. Since then, further sub genres have been created such as Rap Rock/Metal, Pop Punk, Nu Metal, Garage rock and more.