THE H

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F MUSIC

VIDEOS

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ME

S W

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ON

EARLY YEARS

In the 1926’s the rise of the Talkies brought to light a new type of short film. Vitapone shorts produced by Warner Brothers features many bands, vocalists and dancers. Musicals from the 1950’s became a leading platform for short- form music videos. An early example of which can been seen in Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (1953) starring Marylyn Monroe.

1960’S

In 1964 The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Days Night which featured musical elements. Their following releases including Help!, Strawberry Field Forever and Penny Lane would also utilise the short-form video as a means of promotion.

1970’S – EARLY 80’S

In the UK, the music chart television show Top Of The Pops began showing small numbers of music videos alongside standard in studio performances. David Bowie would achieve his first UK number one in nearly ten years due to the promo video for the song Ashes To Ashes.

1980’SIn 1981 the launch of the 24-hr music channel MTV became key to a songs success. The first song to gain airplay and subsequent success on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles. During the channels early years MTV was reluctant to play the music from African-American artists due to the belief that the channel was exclusively a rock music channel. Some have claimed that this was merely blatant racism. Whatever the reasoning, it all was to change when Michael Jackson released his 14 minute long form music video for the song Thriller. At its peak the song was aired in its entirety twice every hour resulting in the highest viewing figures in the channels history.

1980’S

The success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller helped pave the way for other African- American artists including: Whitney Houston, Prince and Janet Jackson all of which would achieve huge success in the 1980’s-90’s.

1990’S

During the early 1900’s music videos began to shift towards becoming an auteurs medium with music video directors becoming more prominent due to individual style and an advancement of new technology and special effects. Hype Williams has created music videos for: TLC, The Notorious BIG and Usher. Williams brought deliberate and overt surrealism into the rap-video arena. He dressed Missy Elliott in inflated plastic bag and Busta Rhyems in a black vinyl straitjacket making his videos and subsequently his artists look striking and standout among other music videos.

1995

In November 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium.

A breed a new talent emerged during the early 1990’s including :Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Floria Sigismondi, Stéphane Sednaoui and Mark Romanek.

Director Mark Romanek directed two of the most expensive music videos of all time: Michael and Janet Jackson’s Scream and Madonna’s Bedtime Story. They videos cost a reported $7 million and $5 million respectively. Scream remains the most expensive video of all time.

2005 – PRESENT

In resent years the rise of the internet has meant that music videos can now been seen more easier. Websites such as YouTube had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. The Internet has become the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos. The iTunes Store provided a section of free music videos in high quality compression to be watched via the iTunes application. More recently the iTunes Store has begun selling music videos for use on Apple's iPod with video playback capability. In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its merger with Google, YouTube assured the RIAA that they would find a way to pay royalties through a bulk agreement with the major record labels