What is a music video?A music video is a short film or video sequence that accompanies a piece of music, most often a song. Music videos are often created with the intention of using them as a marketing device, to promote the release of the song and increase sales. Music videos are often called 'promos' because of this intention. Occasionally music videos are termed 'short form music videos' so that you are able to distiguish them from full length movies that contain musical pieces. One of the first full length films to be based around music was Disneys 'Fantasia', released in 1940. It was a animation based around classical pieces of music
The first music promos:At first, in times as early as the 1920's music would accompany films and would so be labelled 'visual music'. However in years to follow technology developed dramatically allowing the first music promos to be filmed.Queens Bohemian Rapsody (1975) is generally regarded as the first ever music video, although there were some videos of artists before that.
Top of the pops:In the UK the TV program 'Top of the pops' was extremely important when it came to the promotion of music videos.It dramatically increased the competition between bands and record labels due to the fact that the shows producers had strict limits on the amount of of videos it could use. A good video would mean that the songs sales would increase, in addition viewers would demand to see the video again the following week allowing for more promotion.
The 1980's:In the 1980's video producers started using sophisticated effects in their videos, it became increasingly common for videos to have storylines or plots. It is thought that Michael Jackson the first artist to use the concept of 'short film' in his music videos. This is shown in his popular songs, 'Thriller', 'Beat It' and 'Billie Jean'.
Controversy:Due to the commonly cencourous approach to music videos it was extremely unncommon for videos to contain any controversial content. However this changed when music video producers realised that they could use controversy as a form of promotion. They would produce videos that would be banned or edited, this resulted in viewers being curious and talking about the song, thus increasing sales.The first producers to do this were 'Duran Durans - Girls on film'. Madonna is also another artist that owed her success to controversy, her videos were perhaps the first to be prevocative.
IT era:
Nowadays you can watch music videos on mute, due to their aestetic value. It is now not uncommon for a viewer to be more interested in the visual qualities of a film rather than the audio qualities. Crtics often say that producers will now focus more on the quality of the video rather than the quality of the song as now videos affect sales most. In fact, if an artist released a song in 2012 without a video, i strongly doubt it would be able to get anywhere in the chart. Videos now focus on sexual appeal and effects rather than the song.
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