History of Music Video

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. These days music videos are made purely as marketing device to promote the sale of music recordings. Music videos first came into their own in the 1980's, when MTV based their format and then later with the launch of VH1.

The term 'music video' only became popular in the 1980's. before that they were called 'Filmed inserts' , 'promotional film', 'promotional clip' or 'film clip'. In China music videos were knows as 'MTVs' because the network was responsible for bringing them popularity in the country. They are now known as MVs in China.

Music videos have a wide range of styles such as :

Animation

Live Action Filming

Documentaries

Non-narrative

Many music videos do not interpret images from the songs lyrics, making it less literal than expected.

In 1981, the video channel MTV lauched, airing 'Video killed the radio star' thus began the era of music 24/7 on TV.

This new outlet for material allowed the music video to become very popular in music marketing.

Iconic moments on the chart are Michael Jackson's thriller. It is the most successful and influential music video of all time. The video is nearly 14minutes long and set new standards for production as it cost $500,000 to film. This video also played a key part in getting videos by other African American artists played on MTV. Thriller was directed by John Landis (a film director).