Music Video History

Today, music videos are a means for music producers to better advertise songs, and the artists performing them. The world's current technological advances, in areas such as smartphone technology and web 2.0, allow for many convenient methods in which the consumer may view these videos, thus, in more recent years, music videos have become highly popular.

This effort of convergence is what drives the producer's renown and the spreading of the Artist's/Music's popularity, as videos can be viewed by most the population in modern countries, where the majority of their target audience will be situated.

1890's-"Illustrated songs"

late 1800's 'Magic Lantern'

The precursor to music videos, "Illustrated songs" first emerged in 1894, where artists projected a series of still images to convey narrative/aspects of a song.

"Magic lanterns" produced the still images seen, accompanying the live musical performances heard by the audience.





1920-1960's-"Talkies", "Soundies", "Shorts"

"Talkies" were a form of musical performance comprised of projected images that were used to give meaning/expression to the music being played out of the audience's view. "Talkies" could be considered as the precursor to modern day music video media, as it was one of the first uses of visual media to express, promote and accompany sound media in a kind of synergy.

"Soundies" were a new form of media sensation, deploying the use of recorded video footage of staged and theatrical performances. The majority of these performances were of bands, as these bands dominated the music scene at the time.

The rise of MTV

Launching in 1981, MTV is an American basic cable satellite and television channel based in Los Angeles. MTV's initial purpose was to play music videos lead by well-known television personalities, with the aim of appealing to a younger audience, consisting of mainly adolescences and teenagers. MTV has been credited for tapping into and amplifying various cultural changes in the music industry, shifting regularly to meet the current demand from a dynamic audience demographic.

As of 2013, approximately 86% of american households with at least a single television receive MTV.

Modern media consumption-how has this affected the music industry?

Web 2.0-
Web users, since the introduction of 2.0, have become considerably more 'active' in the way they consume media. Users can now actively comment on and search for what they want to consume, and in some cases, thereby directly affect the producers/creators of the media themselves.



Technology-
Advancing technology has demanded a rapid evolution of the music industry; smartphones and other highly portable and convenient means of media consumption are now centre stage, and have revolutionized many aspects of modern media consumption. Because of this, in recent years CD's and other non-digitised means of music consumption have been in decline.