History of the Music Video - Miss Georgiou

Create a list of the ways in which people can consume music videos. Has this changed over the years?

Youtube, iTunes (Portable), TV Top 40/20, Viva ,4Music, MTV, Vevo, 

The way in which Music Videos have been viewed has dramatically changed over the last couple of years. New technology has made it possible for audiences to access music videos quicker and in High Definition for maximum quality. These days access to such videos can be done with a few clicks of a button or screen. But this easy access hasn't always been available for audiences. The only other methods of obtaining footage of viewers favourite artists has been through TV Channels that specifically broadcast music videos usually in the form of a playlist or a Top 40/20 countdown, which means direct access to a single music video was hard and audience had to wait until it has been played possibly missing it if they move away from the TV.  

MTV or Music Television, was one of the first company's to broadcast music videos on the TV, based in America. It was launched on the 1st of August 1981. MTV's main target audience were young adults but in the recent years it has opened its range to teenagers and adolescents. The scale of MTV's audience in 2013 can be seen as 97,654,000 or 85.51% of households viewed the service. 

When MTV launched at 12.01am it started with footage of the first Space Shuttle launch of Apollo 11, followed by the MTV theme song, with the moons flag that had the MTV logo that changed colour. After this the first video ever broadcast of the channel was The Buggles, "Video Killed the Radio Star".

MTV used young employs to host the channels programming and introduce the next segment to be played, these people were known as VJ or Video Jockeys in which many of them became celebrity's, also in addition MTV was able to secure Celebrity VJ's who would play their favourite music videos for an hour with some famous celebrity's being Phil Collins, Tina Turner and Eddie Murphy.

MTV then expanded its genre list by playing Rock and Classic rock from earlier years before the channels launch. 

One year after its launch MTV started to introduce high profile black artists onto its channel such as Prince and  Michael Jackson after 1983. 

From 1984 MTV took a new approach to broadcasting and aired the first ever MTV Music Video Music Awards, it featured a live performance of Madonna's "Like a Virgin'. Awards in the shape of the MTV moonman were handed out to winners of certain categories. MTV in 1885 showed the Live Aid concerts held in both London and Philadelphia in aid to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia with 16 hours of coverage. From 1986 MTV furthered the ranged of genres broadcasted to audiences to alternative rock, Hip Hop. From 1997 introduced electronic acts including Daft Punk and Fatboy Slim. To the present day MTV has brought a range of different genres to wider audiences which wasn't considered mainstream and widened there target audience also. The success of MTV can been seen by the amount of other Music Video broadcasters that have entered the market in attempt to acheive the same success as MTV these include .............

The next major leap for the Music Video Industry occurred when they became available to other audiences internationally on the internet under YouTube from February 14th 2005. Youtube at first was  video sharing website in which user could upload, share and view videos. Various Music Videos were available from the start of YouTube's launch. but it wasn't until Vevo lauched on December 2009. Vevo is a service on that can be accessed via YouTube which offers music from Universal Music Group and Song Music Entertainment which are considered to be 2 of the 3 biggest record labels in the world. The access to new and specific music meant that audiences for the first time were able to make a decision on which music they choose to listen to and didn't have to watch countless hours watch music tv programmes to view their favourite music/artists. In addition it meant that the music industry in particular artist became more competitive in their music videos as the more they had been viewed by audience the more profit made through advertising profits and furthermore sales via promotion of the music video. 

The budget for music videos depends on may contributing factors the artist involved, extras, props, technology used, director, length, setting and so much more in essence a music video can be produced on a budget of a few hundred pounds or millions as there are a few basic items needed to create one, i.e. Cameras and Editing Software, to put the footage together in time and sequence. The most expensive music video ever produced was in 1995 and was by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson the production of Scream cost $7,000,000. The production was based on a spaceship and had amazing graphic visuals which were very advanced considering the time period. Scream has had 33.5 million views on YouTube and was broadcast to millions on prime time television on its release in 1995 around 64 million viewer.

 The Second most expensive was Madonna's Die Another Day released in 2002 costing $6,100,000 to produce, it was produce due to the released of the new James Bond film, which in turn helped to promote the film and features the artist performing stunts that were done by Bond throughout the film. Die Another Day has recieved 870,000 view on YouTube. But on its release in the first week of release the song had been viewed by 35 million people. The two music videos had complete different target audiences despite them being of the pop genre. Scream had a much wider audience which can be seen by the amount of hits it received compare to Die Another Day, whereas Madonna's audience was rather limited as it mainly attracted Bond fans as it was the theme tune for the film, but it still managed to reach a wider audience which cannot be compare to that of Scream. 

The technology used in Music Videos has dramatically changed over the recent years, the rise of the computer industry has to be considered as the main reason. The increase in the use of Green Screens, more Advanced Software and HD Video Cameras has made Music Videos more graphically pleasuring to audiences. Green Screen enable things to be edited in that aren't actually there. While Editing Software has made it easier for editors to string together hours of footage into a few minutes in a small period of time while also being able to add filters to footage to enhance the final production, being extremely precise and in sync with the beat of the music by the artist. 

Over the last few decades the tastes and preferences audiences has changed dramatically. In the first half of the 21st Century the main genres listened to were Pop, Soundtracks, Latin, Jazz, World, Blues and other similar genres. A mass change in audiences genre preferences changed in 1960 in which Pop , Rock, Folk and Metal, R&B/Soul became more popular and Jazz the most popular genre declined dramatically. This trend in music continued up to the mid-1970's when the genre Alternative/Indie broke onto the music scene. And then at the start of the 1980s was the birth of the Hip-Hop/Rap and then finally at the start of the 1990's Dance/Electronic was starting to become more popular among audiences.