Music Video Research: The History Of Music Videos

The modern music video is a relatively recent development within the music industry. In fact, the common music video format with which most of us are familiar has only been introduced within the last 40 or so years.

One of the earliest examples of music video dates back to early 60's - sometimes looked upon as a defining work in the development of the modern music video, The Beatles first feature film, 1964's 'A Hard Day's Night' set out a basic template on which a countless number of music videos were subsequently modelled. The band soon began to produce a number of video clips of a similar style which were known as 'filmed inserts'. The basic premise for these clips was to serve as a promotional tool, enabling the band to promote their recent releases across the world, without having to make a personal appearance. The success of this method was picked up on by a multitude of bands, growing in popularity throughout the late 1960's to early 70's, and soon became a crucial part of the promotional process for any band or artist aiming for wide scale success.

The commercial popularity of the modern music video as we know it was due to the introduction of music television in the early 1980's. The U.S channel MTV first premiered on August 1st 1981, creating a larger promotional platform in increasingly audience accessible manner. The first video to be played on MTV was The Buggles 'Video Killed The Radio Star'. As the channel was broadcasting 24 hours as day, it resulted in a higher demand for music video material, and consequently music videos began to play a highly important role in artists' careers, and thus a much more central role in popular music marketing.



Nowadays, the music video is often considered to be as important as the song itself, perhaps even holding high enough regard as to decided the level of success of the artist. Music videos are often regarded as an art form within themselves, allowing a different scope of artistic expression than could perhaps be conveyed in the music alone. It is fair to say that music videos have become highly ingrained into society, with a countless number of 24 hour video channels, specialised to entire spectrum of different styles and genres. In addition, the internet has become a crucial factor in music video promotion, with websites such as YouTube, launched in 2005 used to distribute on a larger scale.