Videos can be viewed at a number of locations; the most popular place to view videos is MTV, the best known distributor of music videos, known al around the world. MTV often acts as showing the charts and different compilations, allowing the potential audience of the artists, to gain a vibe of the artist. Allowing them to make there opinion wether the song. But often with videos it can be a video that acts as the persuader for the audience, putting across an image that will connect with the audience. Other methods of video distribution include buying the videos from online stores (such as itunes), doing this allows the video to gain unlimited exposure to the audience. The second most popular way is via you tube (a video sharing website), often fans will put the videos up on the site, allowing those who don’t normally watch MTV to get a taste of the artists and there genre. The use of you tube has really improved the status of videos in the past few years. An example of the you tube phenomenon is the video for the Jimi Hendrix song ‘Red House’, now because the song is so old it doesn’t have a video to advertise and promote it. But an avid Jimi fan composed his very own video to go along with the song and posted it on the site. The dawn of fan made videos has really allowed filmmaking and music to work in tandem. Sometimes film makers will remake existing videos, portraying the artist in a more suitable image, and represent them differently to what they believe the audience will perceive the artist as.
A video can often be the saving grace of a not so great song, someone may hear a song on the radio and not necessarily enjoy the tone, or sound of the song. But when the same person watches the accompanying video, attitudes can change. The composition of the video may represent the band as friendly appealing people, giving them positive gesture codes. By seeing the band in a different light to what they visualized it can turn the song around, and really make it appeal to the listener. Sometimes videos use there artists as the USP of the video, often placing them in a linear basic plot and making the artist the central theme of the video, to appeal to the audience. An example of this would be the Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’ video. The video represents Nelly as a stereotypical female; she is attractive appealing to the masculine audience. But Nelly begins to take hold of the situation in the video, showing a very powerful intimidating side to her attitude. Throughout the video she exploits the female stereotype, and puts forth her sexy image for the audience to ogle. The additional partnership of the frantic camerawork and linear plot makes the video extremely effective in promoting Nelly, and appearing to her potential audience.
For producers of television channels, such as MTV videos are one thing, money. A good video is one thing, but people need to see the video to appreciate it, so exposure is the life essence of videos. Producers will often place videos on shows that have the captive audience, in order to introduce the artist’s image to an audience who already appreciate the genre of the artist. Often television producers will create hype around the video, making the artists appeal lives on chat shows etc. , this is very successful in created desire for the video, and building unbearable anticipation for the video.
As I have mentioned before MTV is a powerhouse in terms of showing pop videos. MTV has spread into 342 million homes all over the world, having over fifty channels over the world it has became a national phenomenon, but it started as a humble cable channel….
August 1st 1981 was the day history changed, MTV launched and the MTV generation found there calling. Two months after its inception MTV has 2 million viewers, and within 2 years viewership had grown into 10 million, giving videos more meaning every year.
MTV then branched out into celebrity and began to have VJ’s (Video Jockey), one of these being ‘Adam Ant’ (mentioned before hand) who introduced each video to the rapidly growing viewer ship. Then in 1983 Michael Jackson insisted that his 14 minute video for ‘Thriller’ should be aired fully. MTV claimed it was ‘too long’ but some people assumed it was because he was black. Eventually the video was shown and became one of MTV’s most requested clips of all time, in addition to this Thriller sold 800,000 copies in one week, the MTV promotion was never questioned for the success of the album.
By the end of the 80’s the relationship between MTV and the music industry was without question, even spawning the VMA’s (video music awards) , a ceremony that entirely commemorated the music video in all its forms.
In 1989 MTV went political broadcasting from behind the iron curtain; additionally in 1992 MTV broadcasted presidential elections, hoping to raise awareness within its young audience.
1996 signalled MTV to be the first music channel to air online, 9 years before you tube and a year later MTV UK was launched, increasing the viewer ship by 2 million.
Finally in 2000 MTV’s revenue was announced as $3.04bn, a landmark victory for any channel, let alone one that shows music videos.
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