History of Music Videos (Industrial Context)

 Music videos, though existing generally when music was placed over a moving video, didn’t become an industrial medium until the emergence of MTV in the 1980s.

In 1981, MTV released its first ever music video - to the song “Video Killed the Radio Star.” With this came extreme popularity of music videos, superstar artists such as Madonna would use music videos to promote their music in the west. MTV responded to this increase in music videos by creating the 24 hour MTV channel, where music videos would constantly run - allowing artists to easily connect with their audiences. In the 80’s and 90’s, dance and rock records commonly dominated the music video industry- two genres very popular in the west at the time. These western-based genres was due to a lack in streaming and high speciality of music videos - as only ABC1 audience members from the USA and Europe could mainly access music videos due to their concentration by the American brand of MTV.

In 2005, the creation of YouTube allowed for On-Demand streaming of music videos - leading to a mass increase in music videos in the mid 2000s. Change in streaming in the music video industry also resulted in a change in audience when YouTube first appeared in 2005. The idea that you no longer had to buy music to watch music videos or watch it on TV made it much more easier for the public to watch music videos. This switch to YouTube resulted in an all class audience due to its global accessibility and much younger audience, as the younger generations were much more likely to watch music videos as teenagers are usually more technologically revolving. The rise of YouTube also globalised the audience of music videos, with some of the most popular music videos of the 2010s originating from South America and Asia, this rise in global music videos resulted in a less rock/dance domination and more of a pop domination in the music video industry.

In the late 2000s, the rise of IPod allowed for audiences to stream high quality version of music videos - encouraging producers to create of intriguing and higher quality music videos.

In 2009, media company VEVO with its own music video streaming service, gets synced to YouTube, combining the two companies range of music videos, allowing for an even higher rise in audience interaction in music videos.