A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes.[1] Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos date back much further, they came into prominence in the 1980s, when MTV based their format around the medium. Prior to the 80s, these works were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional clip" or "film clip".
Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Many music videos do not interpret images from the song's lyrics, making it less literal than expected. Other music videos may be without a set concept, being merely a filmed version of the song's live performance.[2]
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In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child".[3] Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video.[3]
From 1907 to 1917: The phonoscène era.
In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Spooney Melodies in 1930 was the first true musical video series. Shorts were typically six minutes in duration, and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing.
Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", which is similar to a modern karaoke machine. The sing along concept is still used today, especially with younger audiences such as High School Musical. Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney, such as the Silly Symphonies shorts and especially Fantasia, which featured several interpretations of classical pieces, were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Warner Brothers also produced the cartoon "Three Pigs in a Polka", set to Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dances. This film actually included many elements to the Walt Disney version of the Three Little Pigs, such as the pigs playing a violin and a piccolo. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were also distributed to theaters.
Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues (1929) featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. Numerous other musicians appeared in short musical subjects during this period. Later, in the mid-1940s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film Lookout Sister. These films were, according to music historian Donald Clarke, the "ancestors" of music video.[4]
Another early form of music video were one-song films called "promotional clips" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of "soundies" were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also of torch singers, comedians, and dancers. Before the soundie, even dramatic movies typically had a musical interval, but the soundie put the music in the forefront; virtually all known jazz performers appeared in soundie shorts. The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.
Musical films were another important precursor to music video, and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl" (directed by Mary Lambert)[5] which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark "Thriller" and the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad" which was influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story.[6]
In 1956, Petrushka, directed by John David Wilson for Fine Arts Films aired as a segment of the Sol Hurok Music Hour on NBC. Igor Stravinsky conducted a live orchestra for the recording of the event. In 1957, Tony Bennett was filmed walking along The Serpentine in Hyde Park, London as his recording of "Stranger in Paradise" played; this film was distributed to and played by UK and US television stations. According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959.[7] It is no coincidence that the rise of popular music was tied with the rise of television, as the format allowed for many new stars to be exposed that previously would have been passed over by Hollywood, which normally required proven acts in order to attract an audience to the box office.
In the late 1950s[8] the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Jacques Brel, and Jacques Dutronc to accompany their songs. Its use spread to other countries and similar machines such as the Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA were patented.[8] In 1961 Ozzie Nelson directed and edited the video of "Travelin' Man" by his son Ricky Nelson. It featured images of various parts of the world mentioned in the Jerry Fuller song along with Nelson's vocals. In 1964, Kenneth Anger's experimental short film, Scorpio Rising used popular songs instead of dialog.
In 1961, for Canadian show Singalong Jubilee, Manny Pittson began pre-recording the music audio, went on-location and taped various visuals with the musicians lip-syncing, then edited the audio and video together. Most music numbers were taped in-studio on stage, and the location shoot "videos" were to add variety.[9] In 1963, singer Kyu Sakamoto is featured on the Japanese television program Shall We Meet At Seven? singing eight of his best-known songs, including his international hit Sukiyaki. Sakamoto is shown singing the latter as he walks through an alley past barrels.
One of the earliest Videos of a Top 40 hit, was Jan & Dean's "Surf City", produced in Summer 1963, contemporaneous with the single release reaching Number One nationally in July 1963 (ref: Wikipedia). Filmed on location on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, it's a period-piece, capturing much of the atmosphere and vibe of the Southern California early 60's beach scene. This video is readily available for download and viewing on YouTube.com.
Another early performance clip was The Animals's 1964 hit "House Of The Rising Sun". This high-quality color clip was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set; with the group lip-synching.
In 1964, The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary, it was a loosely structured musical fantasia interspersing comedic and dialogue sequences with musical ones. The musical sequences furnished basic templates on which countless subsequent music videos were modeled. It was the direct model for the successful US TV series The Monkees (1966–1968) which similarly consisted of film segments that were created to accompany various Monkees songs.[10]
Film critic Roger Ebert credits Lester with constructing "a new grammar":
The Beatles' second feature Help! (1965) was a much more lavish affair, filmed in colour in London and on international locations. It fitted the all-important musical sequences into a contrived fantasy adventure in which the group is pursued through a series of locales (including Switzerland and The Bahamas) by a band of Indian thuggee assassins bent on recovering a sacred ring which has come into Ringo's possession. The title track sequence, filmed in black-and-white, is arguably one of the prime archetypes of the modern performance-style music video, employing rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close-ups, and unusual shots and camera angles, such as the shot near the end of the song, in which George Harrison's left hand and the neck of his guitar are seen in sharp focus in the foreground while the completely out-of-focus figure of John Lennon sings in the background.
In 1965, The Beatles began making promotional clips (then known as "filmed inserts") for distribution and broadcast in other countries—primarily the USA—so they could promote their record releases without having to make in-person appearances. On November 23, 1965: At Twickenham Film Studios, The Beatles videotaped 10 black & white promo films, all produced by a British production company Intertel. They were "We Can Work It Out" (3 Versions), "Day Tripper" (3 Versions), "Help!" (1 Version), "Ticket To Ride" (1 Version), and "I Feel Fine" (2 Versions, neither of which were ever aired). One version each of the first two songs were aired on "Hullaballo" in the US on Jan 3 1966. Many clips were aired on "Top of the Pops" in the UK, and two were aired on "Thank Your Lucky Stars." Recent reports indicate the entire reel is circulating among collectors. "Help" and "Ticket To Ride" were re-released to accompany the CD release of the "1962–1966" or "Red" album in 1993. Composite edits of "We Can Work It Out", "Day Tripper", and "Ticket To Ride" are seen in "The Beatles Anthology," DVD set.
At the same time, The Byrds began using the same strategy to promote their singles in the United Kingdom, starting with the 1965 single "Set You Free This Time". By the time The Beatles stopped touring in late 1966, their promotional films, like their recordings, had become highly sophisticated. In May 1966 they filmed two sets of colour promotional clips for their current single "Rain"/"Paperback Writer" all directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg,[12] who went on to direct The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus and The Beatles final film Let It Be. The studio clips were straightforward performance films shot at Abbey Road Studios on 19 May, especially for broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show and prefaced by a spoken introduction from Ringo.
The location clips are considerably more elaborate and use vibrant colour footage shot on location in the grounds of Chiswick House, London. Both clips are notable for their use of hand-held camera work, rhythmic editing, slow motion shots and reversed film. The "Paperback Writer" clip is more conventional, with Lennon, McCartney and Harrison lip-synching and miming playing their instruments (although Ringo is notably not 'playing'). The "Rain" clip marked a major advance in stylistic terms; it uses some colour shots common to both clips but is also intercut with monochrome reductions of the Abbey Road studio footage, making it one of the first examples of this device in music video. Most notably, apart from a few brief shots (a close-up of Lennon lip-synching and a shot of the group under a tree miming playing their instruments) the "Rain" clip virtually abandons any pretense of performance and has no obvious narrative structure.
The colour promotional clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", made in early 1967 and directed by Peter Goldman[13] took the promotional film format to a new level. They used techniques borrowed from underground and avant garde film, including reversed film and slow motion, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and color filtering added in post-production. Reflecting the fact that these studio masterpieces were impossible for the group to perform live, their psychedelic mini-films illustrated the songs in an artful, impressionistic manner rather than trying to simulate an idealised performance or depict a narrative or plot.
At the end of 1967 the group released their third film, the one hour, made-for-television project Magical Mystery Tour; it was written and directed by the group and first broadcast on the BBC on Boxing Day 1967. Although poorly received at the time for lacking a narrative structure, it showed the group to be accomplished music video makers in their own right. It included elaborate edited sequences for the new songs featured in the film and the clips for "I Am The Walrus" and "Your Mother Should Know" have been screened many times on music TV shows in later years.
The monochrome 1966 clip for Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D. A. Pennebaker was featured in Pennebaker's Dylan film documentary Dont Look Back. Eschewing any attempt to simulate performance or present a narrative, the clip shows Dylan standing in a city back alley, silently shuffling a series of large cue cards (bearing key words from the song's lyrics). Many "song films"—often referred to as "filmed inserts" at that time—were produced by UK artists so they could be screened on TV when the bands were not available to appear live. Pink Floyd were pioneers in producing promotional films for their songs including "San Francisco: Film", directed by Anthony Stern, "Scarecrow", "Arnold Layne" and "Interstellar Overdrive", the latter directed by Peter Whitehead, who also made several pioneering clips for The Rolling Stones between 1966 and 1968. In the UK The Kinks made one of the first "plot" promo clips for a song. For their single "Dead End Street" (1966) a miniature comic movie was made. The BBC reportedly refused to air the clip because it was considered to be in "poor taste".[14]
The Who featured in several promotional clips in this period, beginning with their 1965 clip for I Can't Explain. Their plot clip for Happy Jack (1966) shows the band acting like a gang of thieves. The promo film to Call Me Lightning (1968) tells a story of how drummer Keith Moon came to join the group: One fine day, the other three band members are having tea inside what looks like an abandoned hangar when suddenly a "bleeding box" arrives, out of which jumps a fast-running, timelapse, utterly out-of-control Moon that Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle subsequently try to get a hold of in a sped-up slapstick chasing sequence to wind him down.
The Moody Blues made a promo video for their 1967 single "Nights in White Satin". Procol Harum made two promos for their 1967 hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale". One version shows band members walking among the ruins of Witley Court, footage of them performing the song onstage and documentary footage of the Vietnam war. The second version shows the band running towards camera (a device pioneered in A Hard Day's Night), followed by surrealistic sequences. The first (earlier) video included four of the five musicians on the hit single: Gary Brooker, Matthew Fisher, David Knights and Ray Royer; only the drummer was different, Bobby Harrison miming to Bill Eyden's drumming on the single. The second video included three of the five musicians on the single: substitutes were guitarist Robin Trower instead of Royer and B.J. Wilson instead of Eyden.
The Small Faces made several promotional clips in 1966–67. The B&W promo for their 1966 single "Hey Girl" shows the band performing and clowning around aboard a tram with a group of female fans. A colour clip for their 1967 single "Get Yourself Together" has band members dressed as police. The Troggs feature in a monochrome promo clip for their 1967/68 hit "Love Is All Around", showing singer Reg Presley's love affair with a girl intercut with concert footage and psychedelic elements.
The Doors had a background in film-making and both lead singer Jim Morrison and keyboard player Ray Manzarek were studying film at UCLA when they met. The clip for their debut single "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" is a filmed performance that uses atmospheric lighting, camera work and editing. It was directed by Elektra Records producer Mark Abramson. Their 1968 anti-war single "The Unknown Soldier", combines specially filmed footage of the group—including the depiction of a mock execution by firing squad—with extensive intercutting of stock footage, including graphic footage of the carnage of the Vietnam War. It was also directed by Mark Abramson based on input from Morrison and the Doors.
Although it made little impression internationally, there was a thriving local pop scene in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and bands there were quick to pick up on British and American trends. By 1967 a number of bands were creating early music videos for their songs. One of the first was the pioneering clip made by The Masters Apprentices for their 1967 single "Buried And Dead", which used candid stage and studio footage of the band combined with specially filmed fantasy sequences. Another notable Australian clip from this period is the promotional clip for "The Loved One" by The Loved Ones, directed by Peter L. Lamb as part of his 1967 short film Approximately Panther.
The Rolling Stones appeared in many promotional clips for their songs in the 1960s. One of the earliest, dating from 1964, showed the band on a beach, miming to their single "Not Fade Away", but this has apparently since been lost. In 1966, Peter Whitehead directed two promo clips for their single "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?"[15][16]
In 1967, Whitehead directed a plot clip colour promo clip for the Stones single "We Love You", which first aired in August 1967.[17] This clip featured sped-up footage of the group recording in the studio (including several shots of an extremely stoned-looking Brian Jones), intercut with a mock trial that clearly alludes to the drug prosecutions of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards underway at that time. Jagger's girlfriend Marianne Faithfull appears in the trial scenes and presents the "judge" (Richards) with what may be the infamous fur rug that had featured so prominently in the press reports of the drug bust at Richards' house in early 1967. When it is pulled back, it reveals an apparently naked Jagger with chains around his ankles. The clip concludes with scenes of the Stones in the studio intercut with footage that had previously been used in the "concert version" promo clip for "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby". The group also filmed a colour promo clip for the song "2000 Light Years From Home" (from their album Their Satanic Majesties Request) directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.[15]
In 1968, Michael Lindsay-Hogg directed three clips for their single "Jumping Jack Flash" / "Child Of The Moon"—a colour clip for "Child Of The Moon" and two different clips for "Jumpin' Jack Flash". One was a [monochrome clip] with what appears to be a live performance of the song; the other is the better-known colour clip, featuring the band in heavy makeup, miming to the same live recording used in the B&W clip. In 1968, they collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard on the film Sympathy for the Devil, which mixed Godard's political tracts with documentary footage of the song's evolution during the recording sessions at Olympic Studios in London. At the end of the year Lindsay-Hogg again collaborated with the Stones on their most ambitious project to date, the feature-length performance film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, which also featured John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton and rising UK band Jethro Tull, but unfortunately the film was not released until 1996 because the group at the time felt that their own performances had been below par.
So are two videos of Lou Christie for "I'm Gonna Make You Mine" in 1969. The Carpenters made a promo clip of their cover of the Beatles hit "Ticket to Ride". After 1969, the independent music movie clips came out of fashion with psychedelic music and style. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, bands preferred performing in TV shows which themselves became visually more attractive. Some artists were featured in straightforward documentaries such as The Beatles in "Let It Be" and the Rolling Stones in "Gimme Shelter".
On The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, which ran from 1971 to 1974, director Chris Bearde enlisted animator John David Wilson to direct animated segments of current hits of the day reinterpreted by the duo. Songs included Coven's "One Tin Soldier", Three Dog Night's "Black and White" and Melanie's "Brand New Key". Wilson later went on to self-produce many more animated videos for artists such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Jim Croce. The promotional clip continued to grow in importance, with television programs such as The Midnight Special and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert mixing concert footage with clips incorporating camera tricks, special effects, and dramatizations of song lyrics. The film of the Woodstock Festival, and the various concert films that were made during the early 1970s, such as Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii concert film used rhythmic cross-cutting.
In 1971, avant-garde group The Residents began filming what was supposed to be the first feature length music video "Vileness Fats". Due to time constrains and technical problems, the group abandoned the project in 1976. The group would, however, create videos for "The Third Reich 'n Roll" (which used props from Vileness Fats), "One Minute Movies", "Hello Skinny", and their cover of "It's A Man's Man's Man's World". Nicolas Roeg's 1970 cult film Performance contains a sequence in which star of the film Mick Jagger did a rendition of "Memo From Turner" combined with a psychedelic collage.
Many countries with local pop music industries soon copied the trend towards promo film clips. In Australia, promotional films by Australian pop performers were being made on a regular basis by 1966; in 1968 singer Lynne Randell featured in one of the first promotional clips for an Australian act that was filmed in colour, but most Australian clips from this period were in black and white, because Australia did not convert to colour TV until early 1975. 1970–71, Australian musician and filmmaker Chris Lofven made (monochrome) promotional films for two of the biggest Australian hits of the period—Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" and Spectrum's "I'll Be Gone". These were widely screened on Australian TV at the time and played a significant role in the success of the songs, which both became national #1 hits.
The genre-defining surf films of Bruce Brown, George Greenough and Alby Falzon and others are also notable for their innovative combinations of image and music featuring sequences of specially-filmed surfing footage, carefully edited against long music tracks, with no accompanying dialogue. Greenough's landmark 1972 film Crystal Voyager concluded with an extended sequence (filmed and edited by Greenough) that was constructed around the 23-minute Pink Floyd track "Echoes". The band was impressed with Greenough's effort and agreed to allow Greenough to use their music in his film in exchange for the right to use his film footage when performing "Echoes" at their concerts.
During late 1972–73 David Bowie featured in a series of promotional films directed by pop photographer Mick Rock, who worked extensively with Bowie in this period. These clips are important landmarks in the development of the music video genre in the 1970s, and they are also notable because they were made by a professional photographer rather than an established film or TV director, and because Rock was given total creative control over the clips. Mick Rock directed and edited four clips, all originally shot on 16 mm colour film, to promote four consecutive David Bowie singles—"John, I'm Only Dancing" (May 1972), "The Jean Genie" (Nov. 1972), the December 1972 US re-release of "Space Oddity" and the 1973 release of the single "Life On Mars" (lifted from Bowie's earlier album Hunky Dory). Mick Rock cites the "Life On Mars" clip as his favorite of the four.[18]
The clip for "John, I'm Only Dancing" was made with a budget of just US$200 and filmed at the afternoon rehearsal for Bowie's Rainbow Theatre concert on 19 August 1972. It shows Bowie and band miming to the record intercut with footage of Bowie's dancers The Astronettes dancing on stage and behind a back-lit screen. The clip was turned down by the BBC, who reportedly found the homosexual overtones of the film distasteful, although Top of the Pops replaced it with footage of bikers and a dancer.[19] The "Jean Genie" clip, produced for just US$350, was shot in one day and edited in less than two days. It intercuts footage of Bowie and band in concert with contrasting footage of the group in a photographic studio, wearing black stage outfits and standing against a white background. It also includes location footage with Bowie and Cyrinda Foxe (a MainMan employee and a friend of David and Angie Bowie) shot in San Francisco outside the famous Mars Hotel, with Fox posing provocatively in the street while Bowie lounges against the wall, smoking.[20]
In 1978 Canadian filmmaker Denis Koufoudakis created EXIT, a Super 8 student film that depicted a youth’s struggles with choices in an information overload era and his nagging thoughts of suicide. EXIT featured Boston’s Foreplay/Long Time for its soundtrack and was one of the first films of its kind to be recognized at an international film festival as it received an Honorable Mention. The rock video style short, having been shot on Super 8 film stock was damaged and is slated to undergo a digitized restoration for its 35th year anniversary.
The Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds, both of which premiered in 1974, were significant in developing and popularizing the music video genre in Australia and other countries, and in establishing the importance of music video clips as a means of promoting both emerging acts and new releases by established acts. In early 1974, former radio DJ Graham Webb launched a weekly teen-oriented TV music show which screened on Sydney's ATN-7 on Saturday mornings; this was renamed Sounds Unlimited in 1975 and later shortened simply to Sounds. In need of material for the show, Webb approached Seven newsroom staffer Russell Mulcahy and asked him to shoot film footage to accompany popular songs for which there were no purpose-made clips (e.g. Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking"). Using this method, Webb and Mulcahy assembled a collection of about 25 clips for the show. The success of his early efforts encouraged Mulcahy to quit his TV job and become a full-time director, and he made clips for several popular Australian acts including Stylus, Marcia Hines, Hush and AC/DC.[21]
After relocating to the UK in the mid-1970s, Mulcahy made successful music videos for several noted British pop acts—his early UK credits included XTC's "Making Plans For Nigel" (1979) and his landmark video for The Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star" (1979) which became the first music video played on MTV in 1981.[22] Countdown was partly based on the 1960s Australian pop show Kommotion and on the BBC's Top of the Pops but unlike its British counterpart, Countdown was not restricted in its use of music videos. The program was launched in late 1974, a few months after Sounds, and initially screened in a late Saturday afternoon timeslot, but in January 1975, only a few weeks before color TV was officially launched in Australia, it moved to the prime 6 pm Sunday timeslot; thanks to the ABC's nationwide reach, it rapidly became one of the highest-rating shows on Australian TV.
As it gained popularity, Countdown talent coordinator Ian "Molly" Meldrum and producer Michael Shrimpton quickly realized that "film clips" were becoming an important new commodity in music marketing. Despite the show's minuscule budget, Countdown's original director Paul Drane was able to create several memorable music videos especially for the show, including the classic film-clips for the AC/DC hits "It's A Long Way To The Top" and "Jailbreak".[21] Countdown became successful in Australia and other countries picked up on the format. At its highpoint during most of the 1980s it was to be aired in 22 countries including TV Europe. In 1978, the Dutch TV-broadcasting company Veronica started its own version of Countdown, which during the 1980s featured Adam Curry as its best known presenter. Although the ABC's facilities and expertise enabled Countdown to present regular studio 'performances' by local and visiting acts, rival shows like Sounds lacked the resources to present such segments, so they at first used music videos almost exclusively.
Like Australia, New Zealand was an early adopter of the music video format, with the seminal music TV show Radio With Pictures premièring on TV2 in 1976. Ready to Roll also premièred the same year.
The long-running British 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 TOTP could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. In 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK number one in nearly a decade thanks to director David Mallet's eye catching promo for "Ashes to Ashes". Another act to succeed with this tactic was Madness, who shot on 16 mm and 35 mm, constructing their clips as "micro-comedic" short films.
In 1974 the band Sparks filmed a promo video for their single "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us" from the album Kimono My House.
In 1975, The Who released their all-music feature film Tommy, directed by Ken Russell, based upon their 1969 rock opera of the same name. Also in 1975, the band Queen ordered Bruce Gowers to make a promo video for their new single "Bohemian Rhapsody" to show it in Top Of The Pops; this is also notable for being entirely shot and edited on videotape.
The Alan Parker film adaptation of Pink Floyd The Wall transformed the group's 1979 concept double-LP of the same title into a confrontational and apocalyptic audio-visual labyrinth of stylized, expressionistic images, sounds, melodies and lyrics.
The long-running British Rock music show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" produced a number of pioneering videos made especially for the program throughout the 70s and early 80s. These included a video of Frank Zappa's "City of Tiny Lights" made using claymation and videos made for performers such as Television, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield. The executive producer of The Old Grey Whistle Test was Mike Appleton. Derek Burbidge and Kate Humphreys directed and videoed many of the artists. The audio was always of prime importance. Gregg Baily was the recordist for the show on location. Although many assumed the bands were playing live, due to technical issues and the need to ensure performances were controlled, the bands often recorded the performance on the day of shooting prior to taping, and then mimed to this "live" track. Other directors and camera operators were Martin Pitts in the USA, and for England, John Metcalfe and Tim Pope and many others. Location shoots all over the world were an essential part of the program. Martin Pitts Directed clips for the Bee Gees that aired on the show.
American alternative punk rock group Devo created many self-produced music videos, which were included in the pioneering compilation "The Truth About Devolution", directed by Chuck Statler. Devo's video cassette releases were arguably among the first true long-form video productions. Also, one of their music videos "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise" was the first to use computer and traditional animation. Shock-rocker Alice Cooper took a video of his Welcome to My Nightmare concert showcasing the intense visual performance it gave. Alice Cooper himself makes reference to making one of the first music videos on the promotional videos for his album Along Came A Spider.
Video Concert Hall, created by Jerry Crowe and Charles Henderson, launched on November 1, 1979, was the first nationwide video music programming on American television, predating MTV by almost three years.[23] [24] [25] [26] The USA Cable Network program Night Flight was one of the first American programs to showcase these videos as an artform. Premiering in June 1981, Night Flight predated MTV's launch by two months.
Two feature-length films released on the cusp of MTV's first appearance on the dial contributed enormously to the development of the form. The first was 1981's Shock Treatment, a pseudo-sequel/spinoff of The Rocky Horror Picture Show principally written and scored by RHPS creator Richard O'Brien. Although it was a commercial flop, the film broke stylistic ground by being more focused and less visually ambitious – and thus easier to emulate on a tight budget – than either RHPS or Ken Russell's 1975 adaptation of The Who's music and storyline from the album Tommy, or even a lower-budget affair like The Ramones' Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
In 1980, New Zealand group Split Enz had major success with the single "I Got You" and the album True Colours, and later that year they joined Blondie in becoming one of the first bands in the world to produce a complete set of promo clips for each song on the album (directed by their percussionist, Noel Crombie) and to market these on video cassette. This was followed a year later by the first American video album, The Completion Backward Principle by The Tubes, directed by the group's keyboard player Michael Cotten, which included two videos directed by Russell Mulcahy ("Talk To Ya Later" and "Don't Want To Wait Anymore").[27]
Among the first music videos were clips produced by ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith who started making short musical films for Saturday Night Live.[10] In 1981, he released Elephant Parts, the first winner of a Grammy for music video, directed by William Dear. A further experiment on NBC television called Television Parts was not successful, due to network meddling (notably an intrusive laugh track and corny gags). Billboard credits [23] the independently-produced Video Concert Hall as being the first with nationwide video music programming on American television. [24] [26] [25]
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and 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 popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.
Two key innovations in the development of the modern music video were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment, and the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing. The advent of high-quality color videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era, enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. However, as the genre developed, music video directors increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video. During the 1980s, music videos had become de rigueur for most recording artists. The phenomenon that was famously parodied by BBC television comedy program Not The Nine O'Clock News who produced a spoof music video "Nice Video, Shame About The Song". The genre was also parodied by Frank Zappa in his satirical 1984 song "Be In My Video". Its increasing dominance had earlier been critiqued by Joe Jackson in his 1980 song "Pretty Boys" (which still referred to videos as "promos").
In this period, directors and the acts they worked with began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos were made in a non-representational form, in which the musical artist was not shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare; three early 1980s examples are Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City", directed by Arnold Levine, David Mallet's video for David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure", and Ian Emes' video for Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur". Other notable later examples of the non-representational style include Bill Konersman's innovative 1987 video for Prince's "Sign o' the Times"[28] – influenced by Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" clip, it featured only the text of the song's lyrics—the video for George Michael's "Freedom 90" (1990), in which Michael himself refused to appear, forcing director David Fincher to substitute top fashion models in his place.
In 1983, the most successful, influential and iconic music video of all time was released — the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film.[29][30] That video, along with earlier videos by Jackson for his songs "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", also was instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV. Earlier, such videos had been rare: according to MTV, this was because it initially conceived itself as a rock-music-oriented channel, although musician Rick James was outspoken in his criticism of the cable channel, claiming in 1983 that MTV's refusal to air the music video for his song "Super Freak" and clips by other African-American performers was "blatant racism".[31]
The Canadian music channel MuchMusic was launched in 1984. In 1984, MTV also launched the MTV Video Music Awards (later to be known as the VMA's), an annual awards event that would come to underscore MTV's importance in the music industry.
In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 (then known as "VH-1: Video Hits One"), featuring softer music, and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV. MTV Europe was launched in 1987, and MTV Asia in 1991. Another important development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many videos had on British TV at the time), without presenters. Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art computer graphics. The show moved to ITV in 1989.
The video for the 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" made pioneering use of computer animation, and helped make the song an international hit. Ironically, the song itself was a wry comment on the music-video phenomenon, sung from the point of view of an appliance deliveryman both drawn to and repelled by the outlandish images and personalities that appeared on MTV. In 1986, Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" used special effects and animation techniques developed by British studio Aardman Animation. The video for "Sledgehammer" would go on to be a phenomenal success[32] and win nine MTV Video Music Awards.
In 1988, the MTV show Yo! MTV Raps debuted; the show helped to bring hip hop music to a mass audience for the first time.
In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallström and David Fincher.
Two of the videos directed by Romanek in 1995 are notable for being two of the three most expensive music videos of all time: Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream", which cost $7 million to produce, and Madonna's "Bedtime Story", which cost $5 million. "Scream" remains the most expensive video of all time. During this period, MTV launched channels around the world to show music videos produced in each local market: MTV Latin America in 1993, MTV India in 1996, and MTV Mandarin in 1997, among others. MTV2, originally called "M2" and meant to show more alternative and older music videos, debuted in 1996.
The earliest purveyors of music videos on the internet were members of IRC-based groups, who recorded them as they appeared on television, then digitised them, exchanging the .mpg files via IRC channels. The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. 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. By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows, which were more popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to pioneer with the show The Real World, which premiered in 1992.
2005 saw the launch of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video faster and easier; Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology. Such websites 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 band OK Go may exemplify this trend, having achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, "A Million Ways" in 2005 and "Here It Goes Again" in 2006, both of which first became well-known online. (OK Go repeated the trick with another high-concept video in 2010, for their song "This Too Shall Pass".) Artists like Soulja Boy Tell 'Em and Marié Digby also achieved some level of fame initially through videos released only online.
The 2008 video for Weezer's "Pork and Beans" also captured this trend, by including at least 20 YouTube celebrities; the single became the most successful of Weezer's career, in chart performance. 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. This was complicated by the fact that not all labels share the same policy toward music videos: some welcome the development and upload music videos to various online outlets themselves, viewing music videos as free advertising for their artists, while other labels view music videos not as an advertisement, but as the product itself.
In 2009, 30 Seconds to Mars' music video "Kings and Queens" was uploaded to popular video-sharing website YouTube on the same day of its release, where it has garnered over one hundred million views.[33] It also received over forty million plays on MySpace. "Kings and Queens" was featured as iTunes Store video of the week and was one of the most downloaded videos ever to be featured.[33] The video also received four nominations at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, making 30 Seconds to Mars the most nominated rock artist in VMA history for a single year.[34]
In 2010, Lady Gaga's music video "Bad Romance" made headlines by becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube and whole internet of all time, music-related or otherwise, with 130 million views; it had over 430 million views by later 2011. It in turn was beaten later in the mid-year by the video for Justin Bieber's song "Baby", which had over 660 million views by later 2011. In November 2011, Jennifer Lopez's music video "On The Floor" becoming the most-viewed female video on YouTube, which had over 430 million views by later 2011.[35]
MTV itself now provides streams of artists' music videos, while AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The Internet has become the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos. At its launch, Apple's 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.
To further signify the change in direction towards Music Video airplay, MTV officially dropped the Music Television tagline on February 8, 2010 from their logo in response to their increased commitment to non-scripted reality programming and other youth-oriented entertainment rising in prominence on their live broadcast.[36]
VEVO is a music video website launched by several major music publishers in December 2009.[37] The videos on VEVO are syndicated to YouTube, with Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue.[38]
Following the shift toward internet broadcasting and the rising popularity of user-generated video sites such as YouTube around 2006, some independent filmmakers began recording live sessions to present on the Web. Examples of this new way of creating and presenting a music video include Vincent Moon's work with The Take-Away Shows; In the Van sessions, a similar platform;[39] and the Dutch VPRO 3VOOR12, which puts out music videos recorded in elevators and other small, guerrilla filmmaking type locations in a similar tradition called (Behind) closed doors.[40] All of these swiftly recorded clips are made with minimal budgets and share similar aesthetics with the lo-fi music movement of the early nineties. Offering freedom from the increasingly burdensome financial requirements of high-production movie-like clips, it began as the only method for little-known indie music artists to present themselves to a wider audience, but increasingly this approach has been taken up by such major mainstream artists as R.E.M. and Tom Jones.[41]
When the first country music videos were made is disputed. Sam Lovullo, the producer of the television series Hee Haw, said his show presented "what were, in reality, the first musical videos,"[42] while JMI Records made the same claim with Don Williams' 1973 song, "The Shelter of Your Eyes.[43] In addition, a film of "Galveston", a crossover hit for country-pop performer Glen Campbell in 1969, has appeared on the video sharing service YouTube.
Country music historian Bob Millard wrote that JMI had pioneered the country music video concept by "producing a 3-minute film" to go along with Williams' song.[43] Lovullo said his videos were conceptualized by having the show's staff go to nearby rural areas and film animals and farmers, before editing the footage to fit the storyline of a particular song. "The video material was a very workable production item for the show," he wrote. "It provided picture stories for songs. However, some of our guests felt the videos took attention away from their live performances, which they hoped would promote record sales. If they had a hit song, they didn't want to play it under comic barnyard footage." The concept's mixed reaction eventually spelled an end to the "video" concept on Hee Haw.[42]
Promotional videos of country music songs, however, continued to be produced. On March 5, 1983, Country Music Television, or CMT, was launched,[44] created and founded by Glenn D. Daniels and uplinked from the Video World Productions facility in Hendersonville, Tennessee. CMT's chief competitor, The Nashville Network (TNN), premiered two days later. CMT was positioned to play country music videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while TNN was geared toward programming lending itself to a "country lifestyle".
A competitor network to CMT, Great American Country, or GAC, went on the air in December 1995.
As the concept and medium of a music video is a form of artistic expression, artists have been on many occasions censored if their content is deemed offensive. What may be considered offensive will differ in countries due to censorship laws and local customs and ethics. In most cases, the record label will provide and distribute videos edited or provide both censored and uncensored videos for an artist. In some cases, it has been known for music videos to be banned in their entirety as they have been deemed far too offensive to be broadcast.
In the late 1970s and into the early 80s Jon Small Was touring with Billy Joel in Australia where they saw within their hotel rooms rudimentary videos of local musical talent on the Australian TV Channels. Argumentively the first television version of a Musical Video was conceived in Australia. They got back to their native town of New York City and went to Home Box Office in Manhattan N.Y. to propose the idea of having a musical filler in-between the HBO movies; this filler was to provide a low cost entertainment for the dead air time between movies aired on the visionary pay TV network. The first video to be banned by MTV was Queen's 1982 hit "Body Language". Due to thinly veiled homoerotic undertones plus lots of skin and lots of sweat (but apparently not enough clothing, save that worn by the fully clothed members of Queen themselves), it was deemed unsuitable for a television audience at the time. However, the channel did air Olivia Newton-John's 1981 video for the hit song "Physical", which lavished camera time on male models working out in string bikinis who spurn her advances, ultimately pairing off to walk to the men's locker rooms holding hands, though the network ended the clip before the overt homosexual "reveal" ending in some airings. The video for "Girls on Film" by Duran Duran, which featured topless women mud wrestling and other depictions of sexual fetishes, was banned by the BBC.
MTV did air the video, albeit in a heavily edited form. Laura Branigan initially protested an MTV request to edit her "Self Control" video in 1984, but relented when the network refused to air the William Friedkin-directed clip, featuring the singer lured through an increasingly debauched, if increasingly stylized, series of nightclubs by a masked man who ultimately takes her to bed. In 1989, Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" video (where the singer performs the song in an extremely revealing body suit surrounded by a ship full of cheering sailors) was restricted to late-night broadcasts on MTV. The Sex Pistols' video for "God Save the Queen" was banned by the BBC for calling the United Kingdom a fascist regime. Mötley Crüe's video for "Girls, Girls, Girls" was banned by MTV for having completely nude women dancing around the members of the band in a strip club. Mötley Crüe did make another version of the video that was accepted by MTV.
In 1983, Entertainment Tonight ran a segment on censorship and "Rock Video Violence."[45] The episode explored the impact of MTV rock video violence on the youth of the early 1980s. Excerpts from the music videos of Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Kiss, Kansas, Billy Idol, Def Leppard, Pat Benatar and The Rolling Stones were shown. Dr. Thomas Radecki of the National Coalition on TV Violence was interviewed accusing the fledgling rock video business of excessive violence. Night Tracks' producer Tom Lynch weighed in on the effects of the video violence controversy. Recording artists John Cougar Mellencamp, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss, along with directors Dominic Orlando and Julien Temple, provided a defense of their work. The episode's conclusion was that the controversy will continue to grow. Some artists have used censorship as a publicity tool. In the 1980s, the show Top of the Pops was censorious in its approach to video content, so some acts made videos that they knew would be censored, using the resulting public controversy to promote their release. Examples of this tactic were Duran Duran's aforementioned "Girls on Film" and Frankie Goes to Hollywood with "Relax", directed by Bernard Rose.
In 1991, the dance segment of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" was cut because it showed Michael Jackson "inappropriately" touching himself in it. Michael Jackson's most controversial video, "They Don't Care About Us" was banned from MTV, VH1, and BBC because of the alleged anti-Semitic message in the song and the visuals in the background of the "Prison Version" of the video. Also in 1991, emerging country music superstar Garth Brooks found himself at the center of controversy when his video for "The Thunder Rolls" was banned by both The Nashville Network (TNN) and Country Music Television (CMT). The video dealt with the issue of domestic violence in stark visual terms, and featured a heavily-costumed Brooks portraying an abusive husband. Although both Brooks and director Bud Schaetzle publicly denied that the video was crafted specifically to foster debate, its banning shed light on Nashville's conservative programming practices and brought attention to Brooks' developing sense of showmanship. In the wake of the video's critical acclamation, and with public support generated by nationwide "viewing parties" organized by supportive radio stations, TNN and CMT reluctantly began airing it. "The Thunder Rolls" went on to win the Video of the Year Award from the Country Music Association, and was named by both MTV and CMT as one of the "100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made."
Madonna is the artist most associated with music video censorship. The controversy surrounding her marketing of sexuality began with the video for "Lucky Star", and amplified over time due to clips such as "Like a Virgin". Outcry occurred over the subject matter discussed in "Papa Don't Preach". "Like a Prayer" courted heavy criticism due to its religious, sexual, and racially-oriented imagery. In 1990, Madonna's music video for the song "Justify My Love" was banned by MTV due to its depiction of sadomasochism, homosexuality, cross-dressing, and group sex which generated a media firestorm. The debate over the banning of "Justify My Love" by the Canadian music video network MuchMusic led to the launching in 1991 of Too Much 4 Much, a series of occasional, late-night specials (still being aired in the early 2000s) in which videos officially banned by MuchMusic were broadcast, followed by panel discussion regarding why they were removed.
In 1992, The Shamen's video for the song "Ebeneezer Goode" was banned by the BBC due to its perceived subliminal endorsement of the recreational drug Ecstasy.[46] Prodigy's 1997 video for "Smack My Bitch Up" was banned in some countries due to depictions of drug use and nudity. The Prodigy's video for "Firestarter" was banned by the BBC because of its references to arson.[47]
In 1993, Australian rock band INXS' song The Gift was banned by MTV because of its use of Holocaust and Gulf War footage, among images of famine, pollution, war and terrorism. As well as this, metal band Tool's music video for prison sex was banned from MTV, as the video and lyrics touch on the sensitive matter of child abuse.
In 2000, the music video for "Rock DJ" by Robbie Williams caused controversy due to the graphic nature of the video which featured Robbie Williams appearing naked and peeling off his skin to reveal bloody flesh, then ripping off his muscles and organs until he is nothing but a blood-soaked skeleton. The video was censored in the UK during the day, and was broadcast unedited after 10pm. The video was banned in Dominican Republic due to allegations of satanism.[48] Björk's 2001 song, "Pagan Poetry", was banned from MTV for depictions of sexual intercourse, fellatio, and body piercings. Her next single, "Cocoon", was also banned by MTV as it featured a nude Björk (which the nude body was actually a fitted body suit rigged with red string). Madonna's video for "Erotica" was aired only three times (each time after midnight) due to its sexual depictions of sadomasochism. More recently, Madonna's "What It Feels Like for a Girl" was banned in 2001 due to its graphic depiction of violence. She also pulled her "American Life" video because of its controversial military imagery that seemed inappropriate once the War in Iraq began; subsequently, a new video was made for the song.
In 2002, the video for "All the Things She Said" by Russian duo t.A.T.u. caused controversy as it featured the young girls, Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, embracing and eventually kissing. UK TV presenters Richard and Judy campaigned to have the video banned claiming it pandered to pedophiles with the use of school uniforms and young girls kissing, although the campaign failed. Capitalizing on the controversy, the kiss was choreographed into their live performances. Top of the Pops aired the girls' performance with the kiss replaced by audience footage. NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno cut away from the girls' kiss to shots of the band. Throughout their promotional tour, t.A.T.u. protested by appearing in shirts reading "censored".
In 2004, Maroon 5's video for "This Love" generated controversy due to intimate scenes between frontman Adam Levine and his then-girlfriend. Despite those particular scenes being shot at strategic angles, a censored version was released with a stream of computer-generated flowers added in to cover up more. The following year, Eminem's video for "Just Lose It" caused controversy over its parody of Michael Jackson's 2005 child molestation trial, plastic surgery, and hair catching fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. The video was banned from BET, and Jackson spoke out against the video, calling it "inappropriate and disrespectful to me, my children, my family and the community at large."
As of 2005, the Egyptian state censorship committee has banned at least 20 music videos which featured sexual connotations due to Muslim moral viewpoints.[49] In 2004, many family groups and politicians lobbied for the banning of the Eric Prydz video "Call on Me" for containing women dancing in a sexually suggestive way, however, the video was not banned. At some point in the past, the video for "(s)AINT" by Marilyn Manson was banned by that artist's label due to its violence and sexual content. In 2008, Justice's video for their song "Stress" was boycotted by several major music television channels due to allegations of racism and violence; the video depicts several youths committing various crimes throughout the streets of Paris, with the youths mainly being of North African descent.[50]
In 2006, Australian rock band Eskimo Joe's Black Fingernails Red Wine's original video was not shown on music video channels during the day, given an MA15+ classification and restricted to night-time airplay due to its criminal themes. As a result, a completely new video was substituted. The original video shows the band members kidnapping people at night and in the end, the kidnapped people are Eskimo Joe themselves. The edited video shows the band playing in an old building.
In 2010, 30 Seconds to Mars video "Hurricane" was censored because of its elements of violence, nudity and sex.[51] The short film was later released with a clean version that can air on television.[52] The explicit version is available on the band's official website with a viewing certificate of 18+.[53]
In 2010, a rumour circulated that Lady Gaga's video "Telephone" was banned by MTV, a rumour which reached some press outlets. The rumour claimed that MTV had banned the video because the content could not be shown within their programming. MTV denied the ban and showed the video frequently on European MTV programming.[54] Lady Gaga's previous videos have also attracted criticism for their sexually suggestive content; the video for "LoveGame" was refused play on the Australian video music program Video Hits, however, other Australian programs aired the video uncensored.
Ciara's video for "Ride" was banned by BET, with the network citing that the video was too sexually charged. The video was also subsequently banned by all UK television channels.[55]
Rihanna's video "S&M", which features the singer whipping a tied-up man, taking hostages and indulging in a lesbian kiss, was banned in 11 countries and was flagged as inappropriate for viewers that are under 18 on YouTube.[56]
Unofficial, fan-made music videos ("bootleg" tapes) are typically made by synchronizing existing footage from other sources, such as television series or movies, with the song. The first known fan video, or songvid, was created by Kandy Fong in 1975 using still images from Star Trek loaded into a slide carousel and played in conjunction with a song. Fan videos made using videocassette recorders soon followed.[57] With the advent of easy distribution over the internet and cheap video-editing software, fan-created videos began to gain wider notice in the late 1990s.
Such videos are sometimes known as OPV, Original Promotional Videos (or sometimes Other People's Videos). In the case of anime music videos, the source material is drawn from Japanese anime or from American animation series. Since neither the music nor the film footage is typically licensed, distributing these videos is usually copyright infringement on both counts. A well-known example of an unofficial video include one made for Danger Mouse's illegal mash-up of the Jay-Z track "Encore" with music sampled from The Beatles' White Album, in which concert footage of The Beatles is remixed with footage of Jay-Z and rap dancers. In 2007, a new form of lip sync-based music video called lip dub became popular in which a group of people are filmed lip singing in a seemingly random spot then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song. These videos have the feeling of being spontaneous and authentic and are spread virally through mass participatory video sites like YouTube.
Here are some music video stations from around the world:
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