Bit of background info...

A2 media:

Music Video:

What are music videos?

Musical videos first came about in short musical films in the early 1900s, however music videos really came into there own on the 1980s due the introduction of MTV. This lead to a large number of recording artists using music videos to advertise their music in a different media format. Technology helped making and producing music videos much easier, The advent of high-quality color videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era, enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. However, as the genre developed, music video directors increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video.

As music videos became more and more popular artstsit created more lavish videos with higher budgets in hope of making the song memorable for the video making people remember it and want to buy it.

Influential TV shows like Top Of the Pops lead to music videos being more accessable to the general public as they would show bands playing ‘live’ or show the song in its music video. However if a vidoe was deemed inaproriate it may have lead to it being edited to reduce public controversy or else banned.

With digital televisison allowing viewers to have more channels, channels like MTV and VH1 to grow as the audience had increased, music on the internet has lead to illegal airings of music videos being shown which has lead to record labels trying to crack down on websites like YouTube which allow users to upload their own vidoes online. However some artists have used this to their advantage and made videos or songs that can only be heard on the internet making users deliberatly seek the song or music video out.

TV channels devoted to music viedos have been made to cater for different genres of music, kerrang, which focuses heavily on mainstream rock from the USA and the UK, other channels have taken it a step further and created channels that focus on more undergroung music like scuzz or channel u which focus more on undergroung metal and rock and grime respectivly. The box and TMF focus on more popular music, whereas MTV2 is used to show music in popular culture and youth culture.