History Of A Music Video - Miss Georgiou.

In recent years technology has been rapidly developing, making it more accessible to a wider range of people. Parallel to this, the music industry has also, very much so, been developing. This has had a massive affect on how audiences consume the music in which artists create as the development of this technology has meant that audiences are now able to access content much more easily and efficiently. Audiences are now able to access artists content through a variety of brand new mediums which they wasn't previously able to use to listen to music. The first major impact on music streaming came from the introduction of the music channel MTV which was the innovator in making music more accessible to much larger audiences. Another of the most influential developments upon the music industry is the introduction of the internet as it has allowed numerous websites to be created which allow audiences to listen to music and view music videos by simply going onto one of these websites. The most famous of these websites is Youtube which has had a massive impact upon the music industry as it has allowed audiences to very easily stream artists content, which has meant that artists are able to be heard by a much larger audience as this website is now, due to advancements in technology, readily available to a extremely large audience, which artists was previously unable to do. The graph below (source: Wikipedia) evidently shows how development in technologies has led to music videos being much more readily accessible for audiences and therefore able to be viewed by a much larger audience.

1894- The first step towards a music video was made by George Thomas. He created 'the illustrated song' which became popular in 1894. The entertainment consisted of using a 'magic lantern' to project images onto a screen during live performances, this gave audiences a visual images to view when listening to the music. This was the initial introduction to visuals being added to music and led to the advanced music videos of today but it was still only able to be viewed by a small live audience. 

1926- Another innovator within the creation of a music video was 'Soundies' they also created a visual to go with the music by inviting the earliest form of karaoke. Soundies would provide the lyrics to songs on screen and encourage the audience to sing-a-long. Although this is completely different to a performance, narrative or concept based video it did emphasise the need for visuals to accompany live music. Soundies later furthered this progression by replacing the lyrics of songs with a revolutionary sequence of images which would show a dance sequence to be replicated by the audience during the song. This was considered as the earliest form of a performance based video. Despite this the lack of technology meant this was still only accessible for a limited audience who could see it live.

1945- Arguably the most influential impact upon the creation of music videos came in the mid 40's and was made by Louis Jordan who came up with the idea of creating a short film for her music. This was considered as the turning point for the creation of music videos as she wanted to create a short storyline which led to the creation of all narrative style videos. This differed to the lyrics or dance moves previously used by Soundies as Jordan had more ambitious visions in creating a video which would have more depth to the content rather than a succession of basic images.

1957- This was the year the first ever stereotypical music video was created. It was a video for 'Jailhouse Rock' in which megastar Elvis Presley can be seen appearing to sing the words of the song. The introduction of new technology which allowed the producers to record the song then separately record the video and put them together to make a whole video with both music and visuals was key within the development of music videos. Not only was this immensely important within the production process of a music video it also played a massive role within the development of how consumers view artists content as the making of this video, with both music and visuals, meant that this video was, for the first time ever, able to be watched on televisions. This meant that they was able to watch the video and listen to the music in a brand new way which meant they had access a newer much larger audience.

1981- MTV was the first television channel created primarily for music. It was launched on August 1st 1981 its initial purpose was to just play music videos with the assistance from television personalities. During these initial stages MTV was targeted towards young adults but since then it has developed and is now focussed primarily on targeting adolescents and teenagers as well as young adults. As of August 2013, 32 years after the channels launch, MTV is approximately received in 97,654,000 American households (85.51% of households with televisions). The introduction of MTV had a huge impact upon the music industry as artists was now able to appeal to a much larger audience because previously music videos was very rarely aired on TV therefore the millions of people who watched TV was unable to easily access these videos, whereas MTV's creation meant that there was a channel which would be able to air music videos which meant that the large TV audience had a channel to view which they knew would be showing artists content. Because of this MTV was key in helping the career of numerous performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince as there content was frequently shown on MTV therefore it was seen by a much larger audience than previously. It has also helped the growth of numerous genres because of the fact that this was the only channel which meant it had to broadcast a variety of audiences to appeal to every single person.

1983- It is in this year where Michael jacksons iconic music video for 'Thriller' was released. Seen as one of the most influential music videos of its time Michael Jackson's near 14 minuite long 'Thriller' music video set the benchmark of music videos and sparked world wide attention. The budget of $800,000 for this music video was dramatically higher compared to what the average music video cost to make helping the video gain over 190 million views and people are still watching it today.

2005- This year saw the introduction of the video sharing website 'Youtube'. Youtube was a website which allows anybody to share a video and then for it to be seen by everybody who goes on the website and plays it. The introduction of this service was immensely influential within the music industry as it meant that artists was able to post their music videos on this website and it could then be seen my a much larger audience than television could ever reach. This is shown in the graph above as the most viewed video PSY's 'Gangnam Style' has over 2,000,000,000 views which is forever rising. The development in technology within the music industry has allowed for audiences as large as this to be reached because Youtube allows its audiences to share the videos on its websites to other people by using various forms of social media such as Facebook and Twitter this means that each individual who shares the video on these platforms promotes the video to many more people causing it to spread rapidly. 

The research that i have carried out today will further my knowladge on the whole about the music indistry helping me know where to put my music video when completed to allow audiences to veiw it as easily as possible. Through the reasearch i conducted i also discovered that it is no secret that in todays day and age Youtube is the most effective means of me advertising my music video for consumption to my target audience and so Youtube is the means in which i will show my audience.