The History of Music Videos

1970's- On the hit TV show 'Top of the Pops', when an artist or band couldn't appear in person and they didn't have a music video to show of them, they would have dance troopes dance whilst the song was playing.
Top of the Pops was played before the watershed and was quite censorous. Acts would produce a promo that would be banned or edited.















1980's- MTV was launched as the first television channel to play constant music videos 24 hours a day. The first ever video to be played on MTV was 'Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star.'



-In the early to mid 80's, artists used much more sophisticated effects and added more of a story line to their music videos.
-Michael Jackson was the 1st artist to create the concept of making a short film as a music video. He used this concept for his video for 'Billy Jean'.

1983- Michael Jackson's short film for the song 'Thriller' took the music video to a new level. It was very unconventional to music videos seen in that era. It used conventions and techniques that you would have been more likely to see in a film. It used aspects such as a voice over, natural lighting and also included a title and credits. The cost to make the short film was $500,000.



1985- VH1 was launched. This channel played much softer music and was aimed at a much older demographic.
-Dire Straits music video for the song 'Money for Nothing' was a new level for computer animated imagery.



1986- The Chart Show on channel 4 was launched. It played solely music videos that were in the charts.
-Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' used special effects which hadn't been seen before in the world of music videos.



-Directors started to get more involved in music videos. Such as Michael Jackson's 'Bad'.

-Music videos started to have more and more money spent on them. Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys' had a budget of $4,000,000.