History of Music Videos

A music video is a short video which shows a story of the song which the artist is trying to show. They are different styles of music videos depending on the artist and the song, including animation,live action filming, documentaries and non-narrative, sometimes even a live performance video of the song. They are made to market the artists and the songs. The first music videos date back much further than the 1980's but became more popular during the 80's, when MTV was made. MTV made people more interested in watching music videos. MTV launched their programme with the video 'Video Killed the Radio Star' to begin the era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. Many famous acts such as Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna were very successful because of their videos. In 1983, the most successful music video of all time was Michael Jackson's song 'Thriller' the video set new standards for music video productions and artist wanted to make their music videos bigger and better.

Top of the pops is a British music chart tv programme, made by the BBC and was weekly brodcasted. Each episode showed performances from some of the best selling popular music of that week, also showing the weeks singles chart.Top of the Pops started playing music videos in the late 1970's, in 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK number one with videos that were like short films.

Youtube is a video sharing website which users can upload, view and share videos such as, videos made by the users, movie clips, TV clips and music videos. Most of the videos have been uploaded by individuals, YouTube is a way to watch artists music videos and share your opinion on them. Lady Gaga's music video for 'Bad Romance' became the most viewed video on Youtube and whole internet of all time but was beaten by Justin Bieber's song 'Baby' and Jennifer Lopez's music video for 'On the Floor' becoming the most viewed female video.

VH1 was launched a few years after MTV, it was created to target an older audience focusing on the lighter and softer side of the popular music that was around at the time.

Vevo was launced in 2009 and is a music video website which was launched by several major music publishers. The videos are syndicated to YouTube, Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue.