History of a Music Video

Music videos are often produced for promotional purposes in order to engage their audience with visuals as well as sound, primarily aimed at their target market. In fact, they are often known as 'promos' due to their main function.

Music videos are crucial in the music industry particularly to the audience themselves as they are being the chance to impress the public with not just their vocals but also with their looks and their moves. We can see that since the first music video was produced, the intention of creating a music video may have been different.

Looking at Bessie Smith in 1929, and even later at Queen's famous Bohemian Rhapsody, there weren't many places music could get promoted other than on TV. There were no social media networks, music channels and not everyone owned a television.

Music videos have always been important for the artist themselves: they are an extension of their income! The performing rights society is an organisation that collects royalties from radio, shops and music video websites for the artist. So, each time a music video is played on TV the artist gains money. This just means that an artist tries to create a music video that fans will ultimately enjoy watching, as people will play it more frequently, gaining more royalties. Not only can you download an artist audio track , but also the video, which of course costs more, gaining more income for the artist.  

Nowadays, artists can win awards for their music videos. The VMA Award allows the pubic to vote for their favourite videos with categories such as, video of the year, best art direction, best cinematography, best editing etc. Time and time again, these awards give the artist great publicity ad often boosts their sales. 

Studying the history of music videos show how prominent the Internet has become. Not only can anyone watch any music video, but they can also be advertised on websites such as social media. People comment on youtube, Facebook, blogs and therefore publicity spreads! Unsigned artists can also use videos to gain publicity by uploading their own videos to sites such as Youtube. For example, Jessie J and Justin Bieber, two of the worlds most successful pop artists posted youtue video's of themselves, and now they are known world wide.