Monday, 15 January 2018

History of Music Videos

The first "music video" was used in 1941, in USA's bars and clubs. The music video was found in the Panoram Soundie jukebox that plays short video clips along with the music. This however is not the same as the modern music video. The form of music videos we are used to now were first seen in 1975 as Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. This video was considered groundbreaking and the start of the modern music video, despite still being rather different than what we are used to. In 1979 the first music video including computer animation was released by Devo.


A year later David Bowie releases Ashes to Ashes, which is considered a "ground-breaking" video. In this music video David Bowie is portrayed as someone ahead of the times.



Towards the end of 1981 MTV is launched making it the first 24-hour satellite music channel. It quickly becomes popular despite initially  a few cable TV operators carrying it. In 1984 Prince releases the movie Purple Rain, it's soundtrack is nominated for an Oscar and the album sells 15 million copies. The same year Michael Jackson's short film Thriller, a VHS was released about the making of Thriller and is the best selling VHS to date.


In 2005 the launch of YouTube allows people to watch videos online, this aids new artists to increase in popularity. iTunes is also launched this year which allows music videos to be downloaded. One million downloads occurred after twenty days. In 2010 there are 34 billion music videos online with 183 million viewers.

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