Pop/Music video history- Emma Murphy

• A music video is a short film/video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song.
• Modern music videos are made and used as a marketing device inteneded to promote the sale of music recordings.
• The term 'music video' first came into popular use in the early 1980s. Before then similar types of music vdeos were described as 'filmed insert', 'promo film' or 'film clip'.
• The videos use a wide range of styles including animation, live action filming, documentaries and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music vidoes blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Some music videos do not interpret images from the song's lyrics, making less literal than expected.
• In the UK the TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos the show could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week.
• In 1981 the U.S video channel MTV launched, aring 'Video killed the radio star' and the beginning an era of 24-hour a day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would by the mid 1980s grow to play a central role in poular music marketing. Many acts from this time period such as Madonna and Duran Duran owed a great deal of success to the way their music videos were played and promoted.
• In the past few years more websites have been created to feture music videos. the website iFilm, which hosted short videos including music launched in 1997 and Napster, a peer to peer file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001 enabled users to share video files, including those for music videos.
• in 2005 a website named Youtube was released which made viewing of online video faster and easier along with Myspace's video functionality which uses similar technology launched in 2007.
• As the concept and medium of a music video is a form of artistic expression, artists on many occasions have been censored if their contenet is deemed offensive and in some case record labels will either distribute videos edited or videos can sometimes be banned in theri entirety for being too offensive to broadcast.